About Taiwan
Perhaps this will do justice to last week’s high-spirited meeting.
It was high-spirited partly because of technical challenges. The Achilles Heel of a slide presentation used to be: 1) Getting the PowerPoint file to speak to the computer, and 2) Getting the computer to speak to the projector without needing to run its 14-minute virus check routine first, and 3) Persuading the projector to play its part. Well, we’ve moved on from those days. We now have a new laptop computer that speaks wirelessly to the golf club’s ceiling-mounted overhead projector, making the golf club’s projector system the new Achilles Heel. As I came to understand it, the projector system apparently decides who gets to see which slide-show and when, so if there’s another meeting going on in the house we may – or may not, get to see our show – when we want it – or at another time. This makes running a meeting tricky because you can never be sure what you’re going to see – or when (and I suppose the same goes for the other in-house meeting.)
This kind of threw a wrench into President David’s meeting plan so he moved our guest speaker (see below) to an earlier place in the agenda.
Our guest speaker was just-returned exchange student, Kari Osfolk , and she brought her mom & dad along, Sarah Morrison and Phil Osfolk. Other guests were RCBL’s Rtn. Jacki Murray and Yahel Stein our inbound exchange student from Switzerland.
So, Kari’s story was about her Youth Exchange year away. A year in Taiwan where language was a major challenge, school fairly easy going and food interesting, delicious and curious in turns.
You know how it is with these long-haul flights: starting at funny times of day or night and arriving at even wackier hours; after 13 hours aloft Kari emerged from Taipei International Arrivals at 04.30 and was greeted by a contingent of welcoming hosts who doubtless had got out of bed at 02.30 or thereabouts. Bless them!
On arrival, Kari and other exchange students received some basic language training. It was invaluable but Kari still struggled. Family engagement would have made it easier and it wasn’t until she’d been there for 5 months, and changed families to a home where the host-mom gave her lots of coaching and support, that it all finally clicked.
She stayed with three host families over the year, all having other kids of roughly comparable age but not all conveniently located for school. Her days included many long bus rides. Her high school was quite small with just 500 students. Girls were easy to befriend but boys impossible, they were just too shy, becoming all bashful, hoping to melt away.
Food include much that any of us (with maybe one exception) would have found curious, things like a complete, beak-to-feet, roast chicken, candied tomatoes, stinking tofu (her words not mine) and duck blood sauce. And then there was the fabulous fruit: mangoes, passion fruit, lichees, loquats and longans.
Kari enjoyed trips to other parts of Taiwan including a 2-day climb to the 3,500M top of Yu Shan, Taiwan’s highest peak, where the view was limited to the rain drops on the tip of her nose. Still she made it.
Oh, and there was the 6.1 earthquake too.
And so it went. Family life, friends, journeys and challenges. A young woman grown beyond measure. An experience she shares with Sarah, her mother, who was a Rotary exchange student to Norway a generation ago.
Another highlight of the morning was Joe Watson’s exuberant announcement of a planned fund raiser. It went something like this:
Joe. “We’re going to hold an auction of a valuable item worth three or four hundred bucks next week. Trouble is we don’t have the item yet. I’m still looking for something of value, so if you have something to propose let…”
Karmel. (rising to his feet) ‘Yahel will cook dinner for four at my house!”
Joe “Okaaay. Dinner at Kar---.”
Karmel. “Yahel’s a great cook. She cooks for us all the time, every other day. It’s no problem. She can make something great you’ll all love it.”
Joe. Great. So, dinner at Karmel’s cooked by Yahel. Fabulous!”
Karmel. “Yahel. Is that all right Yahel?”
And so it ended. The morning’s technical problems solved by Jim Brindle and Karmel.
P. Scribe