Rotary club of Burlington Central Meeting of Thursday 17th October 2019

Guests: Joe Chalklin; Kari Osfolk; Bert Radford; Yahel Stein - Exchange Student; David Tompkins and Jennifer Tompkins, Shawn's parents. 

This bulletin comes late with the apologies of the scribe who was away for most of the week. 

Friday night was (card etc.) games night at the Burlington Golf and Country Club the first of its kind, to foster fellowship in the club and have some good fun.

Terry Sedore has done a sterling job of getting speakers and is still in need of suggestions for speakers on a weekly basis.

Next week is the planning session which will be done using a form of electronic clicker which will give answers to the questions put to the club immediately, allowing for discussion. It's hoped that as many members of the club can attend this session as possible.

Janet Canavan mentioned again, the club citation, one of seven clubs in the district highlighting the club’s achievements during Lawrence's tenure. Lawrence was heartily cheered by the club. 

The chair of the nominating committee presented the names of the nominees but at this point not all the positions are assigned, this will be done later. Six new board members are David Beckett, Jim Brindle, Mae Radford; Joe Watson; Nila Mohibi and Nancy Penny. President-elect nominee is Renee Pepin.

During the master at arms section of the club a number of efforts at legal humour was made and with luck that will not be repeated.  

Sheila Welham’s nephew will be going to Peru and is planning to meet with Abraham, last year's exchange student who was so well loved by the members of the club.

Karmel Sakran wanted it to be known that the 16th annual Drive for charity in which his firm offers discounted wills and powers of attorney will hopefully bring in funds for the club.

Owen McElhinney introduced our guest speaker, Yahel, our new exchange student from Switzerland whom he described as smart, witty, intelligent and a delight as a guest. Yahel gave some enlightening statistics about Switzerland, a tiny, fascinating country surrounded by several countries on all sides consisting of 70% mountains, 1/240  the size of Canada with one quarter of the population. There are six languages. Yahel herself speaks Swiss German, quite different from German. She comes from a small town of 1000 in habitants that she describes as poorly connected with other towns and as a result is very peaceful, an hour and 15 minutes from Basel. Skiing and tobogganing are popular. Basel, at 180,000 is the nearest large town and offers the Rhine, which is swimmable, mountain biking and floor ball which are her passions. She loves team sports and much prefers to be outside if possible. She has two siblings whom she misses. Home sickness was quite strong when she first arrived before school started but she has settled in nicely.

She loves geography, chemistry, and sports and hopes to become a teacher, and on the side, to become a pilot. She wanted to take a break before the next stint of 8 1/2 years of studying, hoping to learn independence, make new friends, see different people and different languages and culture. She misses her Swiss food and mountain biking. The Swiss food seems to be largely chocolate and cheese and there are 450 types of cheese. The average Swiss person eats 10 kg of chocolate per annum or twice that of the US.

A few interesting facts: 

-  by law every Swiss home has to have an air raid shelter. 

-  Although cannabis is illegal in Switzerland they are said to be the highest consumers of Cannabis. 

- To show Swiss compassion it is illegal to own a single guinea pig; they must live at least in pairs.

Yahel presented two Rotary Club banners from her sponsoring club. 

She was asked to demonstrate yodelling which is one of her skills and she gave us a yodelling warm-up and perhaps in the future we will hear more.

Yahel was one of the organizers of the game night. She is clearly already well involved with the club and a great pleasure to have among us.

The meeting was ended with a reminder to bring questions for next week to add to those already on the list.

Anthony Ford-Jones