The Central States Rotary Conference takes place every year in Grand Rapids on the Calvin College campus and brings together future, current, and past exchange students, as well as the parents of the future and past exchangers for one long weekend of meetings and fun. I had already been twice before, first as an outbound student (about to leave on exchange) and as a rebound student (just returned home), so nothing was really surprising this time around. I forgot how much I love being around exchange students though, especially the inbounds (the foreign kids currently living in their host country) and the rebounds. Everybody at the conference is so excited to be there, it's a truly infectious atmosphere. Norovirus would have a field day. I hope that made Ali laugh, or at least consider laughing.
Anyways, the days are filled with meetings about culture shock and reverse culture shock, breakouts where the rebounds get to brag to the outbounds about all the crazy things they did in their host countries, and inbounds give tips to outbounds about the country that they are about to be exchanging in, and inbounds and rebounds offer their advice to the Rotarians on how to improve the process for next years group. The conference has been hosted at Calvin for 30 years, so it all runs pretty smoothly, but it still requires a 40 page booklet to figure out where you need to be at what time. It's lucky for me that it is hosted at Calvin since that's only a 2 hour drive from Northville, as compared to the 12 hours driven by Rotarians travelling from Ontario, South Dakota, or Southern Illinois, as the Central States district encompasses all those places and everywhere in between.
My big piece was an 8 minute speech I gave during one of the general assemblies. I'd never formally spoken in front of more than maybe 30 people before, and the auditorium there held about 1,000 people but oddly enough I wasn't very nervous about it. I don't mind public speaking, and the fact that I'd be up on a stage with stage lighting on me meant I wouldn't be able to see anyone's face that well anyways. I was nervous about coming up with something that would interest all the exchangers and their parents, and not just be the same old alumni speech of, "exchange is awesome, mine was the very best, my life is now perfect because of exchange, praise me for my accomplishments" as I had heard in years past. I ended up trying to use the word exchange and breaking it apart, explaining how you need to give stuff up in order to receive other things from an exchange year (or life if we are thinking big picture). Giving up security to gain self-confidence, giving up pride in order to integrate, giving up home friends to make friends abroad, etc. The oddest part of giving the speech itself was the completely silent audience, I felt like I couldn't read them at all as to if they were bored, interested, or confused as you might with a smaller group. Everyone was very congratulatory afterwards though and a few exchange students came up to me later in the weekend to say they liked my speech so I think it went well. It was a rush to get all that applause, I would definitely do something similar again.
Past the rotary weekend, I have been working out some, playing league and practicing with DK. A good friend of mine from high school who went on a rotary exchange to Brazil when I was in Germany just came home this week from a 6 month solo trip to India, Egypt, Italy, and Denmark and it was so fun to see her again. She is transferring to U of M in the fall and I've been talking up flywheel to her...she even played a little goaltimate this week with us and enjoyed that taste of the sport. Her name is Grace, so we'd need to find her a nickname but she should be easy to name, because if you all think I'm ridiculous, Grace Doolittle has been one of my best mentors in goofiness. She took me to circus day camp once. We can both almost ride unicycles now.
I leave this evening for Germany so you probably won't hear from me for the next three weeks as I won't have a computer. I can't begin to describe how excited and emotional I am right now when I think that in just a week I will be back with my host parents who I lived with for a year. It's been two years now since I said goodbye to them in the airport. I can only imagine this will be a very sweet homecoming for me.
Flylove,
Frenchie
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