Stories

At 3:00 pm on Fathers Day the lucky winner was drawn.

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We are pleased to welcome our newest member Roanne Whitticase to the Rotary Club of Prince George.

Cindy Thomson presented Roanne with her Rotary pin. Wear it with pride Roanne !!

Health Report: I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter full of lots of Chocolate! I had a wonderful April and I am now very excited to May!

School Report: The reason I am a couple of days late in actually because of School. At the end of April the Kollegium (School) takes a week to allow teachers to take their students out into the real world and learn about the main subject. For the 3rd class we were required to stay within Switzerland, however; my host sister Samira Luggen spent a week in Prague and I am jealous! My main subject in school is Art and Switzerland has an excellent city of arts and culture. I was in Lucerne for the last week. I didn't do overly much as we did have to learn for school. I was able to visit the Capelle Bridge and Rosengart museum which was pretty impressive! Though I thought of the week to get closer to my classmates and that I did. Overall the trip was successful and I am very happy to have participated!

Rotary Attendance Report: On the 9th to the 14th of April I was in Venice and Rome, Italy. In Venice I was able to see more than I have ever imagined! The weather was gorgeous and the scenery was unimaginable. While in Rome I was able to visit everything from the Patheon,
Coloseum, Fontaine di Travi, and the Vatican. I have dreamed since I was a young child of visiting the Vatican. It has always been in my mind. Everything from the Architecture to the History has intriged me! The Vatican was larger and more impressive than I have imagined and it gives you the feeling of being extremely small when standing in the front doors. The trip cannot be put into words! Now, I am off to Paris as of next week. I am
extremely excited and I am already thinking of what to do and what to see while there. On Sunday I was on another Rotex weekend. This time I visited the largest Parliament in the World. I was in Glarus for the "Landsgeminde" which is a direct democracy where the people of the Canton meet in the city square and publicly elect new representatives and new laws for the Canton. I learnt a lot about it and now I realize that for the modern days we are in that there are more efficient ways of voting. I was happy though to have witnessed this tradition which has been going on for the past 600 years!

Other Activities Report: Outside of those trips and school I simply have not had the time! From today until Friday we have a Spring Break of approx. one week so I am sure I will find something to do. For example today Hiking in Blatten with my host family or the possibly trip to Italy tomorrow. I am going to be very tired when I get home!

Club President George Stedeford presenting a cheque to Caledonia Nordic Ski Club President Kevin Petterson to fund their Kids Play Park at the Otway Nordic Centre. The Play Park will be ready for use for the 2014-15 ski season.

The new Club Directory & Guidebook is ready for uploading for members who want electronic copies.  The Guidebook includes info on the Club, its goals & mission, its events, projects, and what we stand for.  It's a great tool to show people who may be interested in joining Rotary, and will come in handy for new members to get oriented to the Club.  For a hard copy, please see MaryAnne Arcand.

Last Month  PDG Penny Offer, Magdalen Leung and PDG Chris Offer visited a school in the mountains of Taiwan to attend the groundbreaking ceremony for a water filtration plant being installed with a Rotary Foundation Global Grand with support from the RC of Richmond Sunset and RC of Prince George. A tree was previously planted by the children in DG Rebecca MacPherson’s name to say thank you to District 5040 for the support. Later Penny signed a friendship agreement at the D3500 conference between D3500 and 5040.

The past month or so has been pretty fun, we had an entire month off for break and Chinese New Year. It was good to have time to rest and also do some traveling around with family and friends. For a rotary trip, all of the exchange students went for a three day trip to the east coast which was lots of fun. I also went to a lake at the near center of Taiwan with my host family for three days called Sun Moon lake, it was very beautiful. Also, we went to Hsinchu for Chinese New Years where we were around other family members for another three days, I won and received a lot of money.

Hello! 

I am very sorry that I haven't been doing my blog as often as i had said I was going to and that my reports have been slow to come in. i have been very busy here but have had no time to get any pictures up to let everyone know how it's going here and that I'm still alive!!! I will try to do so tonight but my computer is not letting me access the photos that I have been trying to upload for the past five weeks. I don't know what is wrong with it. I tried to get friends at school to help but they didn't know either.

As far as health wise goes; I got over my cold that I had and am feeling great now. I did hit my head quite hard last week and my host mother was very worried... well she still is but I am fine.

Christmas here in Taiwan just wasn't the same, a mutual thought from most other exchange students. It's not because we aren't with our families and it's not because there is no snow and it's not cold. It just doesn't feel like Christmas, it was just another day. Families don't celebrate Christmas the right way, i know it's not their culture, tradition or religion. To them, it is just about getting candy. The country as a whole, celebrates Christmas with decorations and such, but the people have no idea what it really is.

The language is coming along well. I can read, write, and hear it but my speaking isn't that great. Some of the vocabulary is kind of difficult to remember but most of it is very easy to remember. It's funny now that I can understand enough of the language to notice when people are talking about us in public and to know what they are saying about us. It's not nice all the time, but hey, at least we know what they are saying and then we tell them that understood everything they just said. The look on their faces is priceless! We, on the other hand, noticed quite early that we should be careful when we speak since a lot more Taiwanese can speak English, German, or French than we thought.

Bye for now!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

P.s.  I had written some of this about 2 - 3 weeks ago and instead of hitting the "send" button, I hit the "save draft" button. I thought it was taking a while to get a reply so I checked and noticed it. SORRY!!

Health Report: I have been sort of sick for the past two weeks. Almost everyone in our district has been sick. I think the reason is because when we go out for lunch or dinner, we take turns buying the drink since it is usually refillable. Therefore, only one person can buy a drink and everyone can share it. And now, everyone is sick.

School Report: At school, the only times I partake in the activities are on Mondays during P.E., every other Tuesday I have baking class, Wednesdays are spent in Chinese cooking for the first half of the day and Western cooking for the second half. Thursdays and Fridays are usually used for homework from Chinese classes. School is fun but very tiring, for most of the other exchange students as well, most of us live 40 mins to an hour away from our schools so we are usually all up around 6. It's good for us later on, I guess, that we are able to get use to waking up early but most students are so tired that they sleep during school. I have to admit, that I do this as well but only because I have no idea what is happening in class. When I ask the teacher or my classmates about what is happening, they tell me that it doesn't matter.

Rotary Attendance Report: I have gone to 6 rotary meetings and have another this friday that i have to do a speech in Chinese at. This past Saturday (20/10/2012) we had a culture class bike ride which was lots of fun, it was only 32 km though. I have missed some rotary functions because I have been doing other activities with my host families.

Other Activities Report: Almost every weekend, exchange students for my district as well as districts nearby get together to do different things. My group and I usually try to find active things to do such as cliff diving in Wulai (which is a lot safer than it sounds) as well as paint balling every now and then. Most of my district tries to keep as active as possible so they are a fun group to be with. I myself usually go to the gym or ride a bike around my area of Taipei, or a couple of the other guys will go to a skate park we found and try to skateboard or rollerskate. We are learning to do some tricks from some as the locals, we use these opportunities to try out our Chinese as well as to meet new people.

Comments-Requests: No comments or requests. Other than another thank you for sponsoring me to come on this exchange, two months in and it already feels like it’s going too fast.

So far this year, the Ramblers and Friends have made 32 trips to work on completing the Universal Boardwalk this year. These 32 trips have generated 1090 hours of volunteer labour ( 3316 total hours to date) and over 10,000 kilometres travelled between May 10th and August 3rd (32,000 kilometres in total to date).

Being in a room with more than 600 motivated Rotarians dedicated to doing good things in the worldis nothing short of awe-inspiring. The Pacific Northwest PETS is the biggest PETS in the world, and by all accounts, one of the most successful! PE's were there from California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, BC, Yukon, Alaska and Russia! The speakers were amazing, and had us all in stitches laughing (mostly at ourselves), or crying in shared pain. I was given all kinds of cool tools to help plan our year, which I'm already sharing with George for the year after - I'm excited, pumped, motivated, and believe it or not, even kind of organized! It was great getting to know the PE's from other clubs in our district, as well as exchange ideas from all over the country. You don't grasp the power of Rotary and Rotarians until you sit in session after session with inspirational people - people like you and me who want to make a difference in the world. We're going to have a great year - and I'm ready!

After learning of the tragedy at the Babine Forest Sawmill, the TELUS team members in Prince George were determined to assist those affected by this horrific event.  On February 16^th, a hot dog fundraiser was launched in the Prince George contact centre resulting in a total of $770.20 being donated to the community in Burns Lake.  This tragedy hit close to home for a number of the TELUS team members who have friends and family members impacted by the fire and the team members were happy to assist in any way possible.

The Burns Lake Rotary Club has established the Lakes District Tragedy Relief Fund, and will organize a benefit Saturday February 4th--- the location hasn't been announced yet. To donate, call club President Travis Morgan at 250 561-8908.

For more information, visit the Village of Burns Lake website (www.burnslake.ca) as well as the Rotary Club of Burns Lake (www.rotaryburnslake.org).

Mary Anne has offered to go out to Burns Lake on February 4 and help with the benefit event. Any body else want to join her? She has room for 5 in her truck. The President Elect out there is one of her loggers, so she is going regardless.

RYLA North was held at Ness Lake Bible Camp Sept 16-18, for participants aged 19-25.  In all, 22 participants came from all over District 5040 - West Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Kitimat, Terrace, Mackenzie, Quesnel and Prince George.  District Governor Hans Doge was able to join the group for Sunday morning, and encouraged the group to be creative, and reach out to their peers on behalf of the great cause of Rotary.

The group was focussed on creativity and social media, how to get young people involved in RYLA, Rotex and Rotaract using electonic media and communication, with the long-term goal of building an "app" for that.  The end product of RYLA North is the founding of a Rotaract Club at UNBC, and a RYLARocks! website, which should be live in the next few weeks.  It's very exciting to watch the enthusiasm and creativity of individuals meld in a group dynamic, and to see the concrete results and desire to move forward.  The RYLA program is well worth the investment of every club, the District and Rotary worldwide!

Special thanks go to the Rotarians who came out and spoke or led sessions: George Stedeford (Downtown), Dianne Nakamura (Yellowhead), Neil Godbout (Nechako) and Peter Thompson (Downtown).

About 80 members and guests were in attendance for the Rotary day celebration at the Coast Inn of the North on Wednesday the 23rd of February. We honoured Rotary for 106 years of "Service Above Self" with the mayor giving us a Proclomation of Rotary day in Prince George. We also received a letter from Shirley Bond congratulating us on our milestone and we had had Linda Coyle Membership Chair from our district 5040 fly in and share with us some history of Rotary and why being a member of Rotary is such an honour.

I would like to do....

• snowboarding
• cross-country skiing
• kayaking
• horseback riding
• bike riding
• fishing
• hiking
• climbing

Enthusiastic volunteers and proud supporters gathered at the Prince George Outdoor Ice Oval on Saturday December 11 for the official opening of the new Zamboni garage. The Rotary Club of Prince George was prominent among the donors who supported the construction of the Zamboni garage and Bob Hlina shared ribbon cutting honours with Alison Hoskins from Integris Credit Union.

Bryan Lockhart and Bill Quinn spoke to the club about the value of having a coach to take you to higher levels in business.

Definition:
Coach – "a vehicle to transport people from one place to another"

Coach – "to convey a person from one place to another" A process to support someone on their journey from where they are today, to where they want to be in the future

First, I'd like to thank Bob Campbell for his hard work as our Club President. Let's give him (another) round of applause.

It's an honor to be selected as the 68^th President of this Club, and to be chosen to carry on this club's tradition of Service above Self.

Dear Rotary,

As usual another month came and went. Like most months may was another very busy one. My month started with a visit to Walibi adventure. This was a day put on by the rotary for all the districts in Belgium. Walibi was like a Belgian Disneyland (about a quarter the size of Disneyland). But all the rides and the park itself was really fun especially being there with all the exchange students. And like typical Belgium it was raining the whole day we were there but we didn't mind cause that meant no lines for us and the entire park just for us.

Dear Rotary,

I hope everyone is doing well in Prince George. Here, I still can't believe it has already been 8 months. Where has the time gone! But once again I had a very awesome month. I started my month by going to Amsterdam with my host family and two other exchange students. We went to a few museums then did lots of shopping. The day right after was Easter. For Easter we had my host aunty, uncle and cousins come over for lunch. It was weird having a big lunch for a day like Easter when usually in Canada we have big dinners. But like Easter in Canada it was full of Chocolate!

Dear Rotary,

I am now at my 7 month mark. Wow, time goes by fast. I feel like as the time goes by I get busier and busier. March was a very good month. I was lucky and was able to have two friends from Canada come and visit me for a week. It was really cool being able to show people from back home my new life. I brought them to all the major towns and all the places I like to hang out at. It was a really fun week and kind of sad to say goodbye but felt good to go back to my usual daily routine.

Dear Rotary,

I can't believe I am already at my 6 month mark. February went by so fast. It has been a very busy one to. At the beginning of the month we had a rotary event at the European parliament. All the exchange students from all the districts were there including the "Newie's" (students who arrived in January). We got a tour of the parliament building then a presentation on how the parliament runs in the actual parliament room. It was cool that the parliament for all of Europe was in Belgium, one of the smallest countries in Europe. It was really interesting to hear the history of the parliament and how all of Europe works together. The day right after that I had a meeting with my district to discuss any problems or the good things about our exchange so far.

The Rotary Club of Kelowna - Ogopogo would like to sincerely thank your club for sending one or more students to our third Adventure in Tourism program which ran from March 21 to March 26, 2010. Judging from the student's comments the program was a resounding success!