Alexia Hallin - Rotary Exchange Student to Columbia
Our program on July 17th was presented by Alexis Hallin, and was a description of her year as a Rotary Exchange Student. She is a student at Mound-Westonka High School, and is the grand-daughter of our long term friend (who should be a member of our club), Phil Hallin. She spent the last school year in Columbia, South America.
Alexis has a visual presentation of her year, and showed pictures of her two schools, her host families, typical meals, and some of the cities she visited. There were a number of exchange students in the country and they frequently met together to do activities. During her year, she visited many of the principal towns in the country.
Some of her comments: she found that much of their food was deep-fried, and they serve rice at almost every meal. A student starts school and stays with the same classmates throughout the education process. During the question period, she talked about the violence that we hear about in the country, but said that none of the exchange students saw any problems, and that the majority of the Columbian people are very nice.
This year, she will be taking classes for high school AND college credit, and will “catch up” to her Westonka classmates that way.
Alexis had her Rotary Exchange Blazer jacket with her, and it was filled with badges from around the world.
Next week: Bob Pillsbury
Greeter: Darel Leipold