Catherine Brady put in a word for the "150 for 150" where 150 items would be available for the silent auction. Pre-sale of raffle tickets is also strongly recommended. We were told not to forget our thirtysomething family members some of whom have more disposable income and many members of the club! They will typically not think twice about "dropping" a couple of hundred dollars for such an event with good food and drink.

Janet Canavan thanks all the hard-working individuals here making this unique fundraiser a real success.

Our Rotary Youth Exchange student Wiktor will be leaving us this Saturday and there will be a barbecue for him on Friday evening and we're encouraged to come along for a drop-in farewell between 7:30 and 9 PM at 2317 Fleet Path.

Wiktor will be departing for Poland at 6:25 PM on Saturday July 15 and Sheila and others will be leaving for the airport at 2:30  and would love us to come along to see him off.

This year we have no fewer than five Masters at Arms taking on the tremendous role that Rod Collard played last year. Catherine Brady, Terry Sedore, Alan Ramsey, Rod Collard, and Bruce Maybury will be our Sergeants at Arms and will be emphasizing Respect, Decorum, and Participation. It appears that a number of people are unaware of the dress code for our meetings. Whereas jeans used not to be allowed, they are now; however athletic wear is not. It was unclear to me whether they were pulling our legs but sandals and no socks with shoes are frowned upon! Alan has clearly been dying to fine Bernie Scrivener after a lifetimes successful career in menswear and noted that Bernie was not wearing socks!

Rod Collard just returned from PEI where he met Larry Armitage in restaurant. He reminded us that at Lakeside a la Carte will feature 25 restaurants and numerous wineries and breweries participating for the delight of all.

Robert Martin but in a happy five dollars in recognition of Rod Coolard’s awesome tenure as Sgt. at arms. Owen McElhinney was sad to see Victor leaving us and this was echoed by the rest of us.

The Speakers today were Tristen Thomas our returning outbound student, and Wiktor.

Tristen spent her year in Lima, Peru and stayed with a family with three young people and clearly developed a very strong bond and great fondness for this family. She was with them for a full 10 months. She spent one month in the Amazon and went on numerous trips. She knew no Spanish to start with and obviously communication was very challenging but her family was extremely supportive and frequently made the whole thing fun and she blended in quite quickly. She took the wise step of deciding at a certain point after arriving that she should speak no English whatever despite her schoolmates attempts to get her to do so. I didn't hear her speaking much but I was able to tell that she has excellent pronunciation and clearly she became very fluent during her year. She found that relationships with people improved dramatically as the Spanish improved and she became very close with her host siblings and misses them so much. They nicknamed her Monita which means little monkey, owing to her love of bananas. She's looking forward to seeing them again when she goes to Lima for a mission trip in two weeks.

She told us a few things about Lima including the fact that they have no roofs to their buildings! For the very exceptionally rare time that it rains they use blue tarpaulins stay dry! They wear extremely casual clothing at school and the students only go to the age of 17 entering University a year younger than here. There is small number mandatory courses but she was able to do elective courses in photography and chess. In the courses that she really couldn't do because of her initial lack of Spanish she concentrated on learning Spanish grammar.

She did several trips including a camp at the two-week mark where she was able to meet other exchange students at a place called Arequipa which is above 2000 m and surrounded by dormant volcanoes. She also went to Lake Titicaca and Machu Picchu in Cuzco. One thing of which she had a bit too much was 3 Proms including one that went on until 6 AM and involved dancing "all night", not something she wants to repeat.

The Peruvian national dish is roasted guinea pig, and since Tristen has a guinea pig at home she did not partake. There are also 4000 different species of potato in Peru! She noted the huge level of poverty where 50% of people live in poverty in Peru. $300 a month puts one at the poverty line. The average capital per capita income is $3500. 60% of the population live on less than $190 per month. She remembered with trepidation the appalling driving in Peru.

Clearly her visit had huge impact on her life and she gave the club a tearful but heartfelt thank you for having sent her there.

Wiktor gave us a brief overview of his trip which he hugely appreciated. He was worried to start with he wouldn't even get here as it took two tries to get a visa to come to Canada! It was his first flight by himself and he was warmly welcomed by his Rotarian host family and their very first stop was to Tim Horton's. He found everything so different and amazing and even just looking at houses was something that fascinated him for quite some time and gave him lots to take pictures of.

He felt he felt quickly at home. His biggest stress was the anticipation of going to school because in Poland any new person attending a school is immediately noticed and feels the object of scrutiny where he declared that in Canadian school nobody knows anybody else and any new person is barely noticed, a bit of an indictment of the social structure of schools in Canada! He chose easy subjects as he had no English and started with photography and phys ed and developed his photographic skills. He enjoyed meeting international students and developed a real desire to travel in the future and is hoping to go to New Zealand Australia and Japan.

It's regrettable that before coming to Canada he was never invited to a Rotary club and really knew nothing about Rotary. He feels very much part of Rotary now and his mind is been opened to what Rotary stands for and through the considerable amount of traveling that he has done has really been made to feel at home and to get to know Canada. It seems that we have done very well by him.

His across-Canada trip was from Toronto to Niagara Falls then to Ottawa for the 150th anniversary celebrations. He had to stay in line for three hours even to get into Parliament Hill and as soon as he got onto the hill it started to rain and was a bit of a washout and very muddy. He only spent an hour during the celebrations. They then went on to Montréal, to Québec city in the old city, thence to Moncton and PEI where he was able to experience the ocean and the beaches. Nova Scotia was next, Peggy's Cove and Halifax before coming back to Toronto. He had an emotional leavetaking of his fellow travelers and international Rotarian exchange students.

He thanked all of his host families very warmly. Mike Molloy, Gerry Willard, Sheila Welham, Owen McElhinney came up to the front to wish Wiktor farewell and to be photographed together. Mike thanked Tristen for her ambassadorship in Peru and Wiktor for his fine representation of Poland to our club and to Canada and we will miss his weekly visits. Gerry presented Wiktor with a gift from the club to remember us by and to remember Canada.

The meeting was adjourned.    

Anthony Ford-Jones