January 10 2019 - Eric goes to Poland
First meeting of the year and back at it - well, 29 of us plus 9 guests: Mana Sawamori, Anel Neumann, Eric Bily (more on him to come), Brent Bily and Kimberly Ingram (Eric’s parents), Sean Tomkins, Jennifer and David Tomkins (Sean’s parents) and Fareen Samji.
Ignoring the fact that 29 Rotarians doesn’t cover the cost of breakfast, here’s a few reasons why Rotary is off to a good start in 2019:
1) Fareen visited to promote a Rotary Polio-plus evening this Monday (Jan14th) at Fionn MacCools. It would be good to be there Monday any time after 4pm because 15% of gross sales from all customers (Rotary-connected or not) will be donated to Polio Plus!! AND… Fionn MacCools is a participating restaurant at Lakeside a la Carte (already committed for this year’s event). Two good starts to the year!
2) On January 24th our regular meeting will be at Next Door Social Space (Plains Rd E. next to The Lord Nelson). We will be presenting NDSS with a cheque representing raffle profits from last year’s Lakeside.
3) On January 30th Rod Collard and his team will be again serving lunch at Next Door Social Space. The team (usually Catherine Brady, Johanna Haan, Bryce Leggatt and Rod) could do with some extra help, starting at 10.30.
Our two inbound students, Mana and Anel, spent Christmas with their host families, they each had more than one Christmas dinner and several Christmas parties!
After Christmas they travelled to Calgary & Banff with the Osfolk family (the family of Kari, our outbound). They met grandma, grandpa and more extended family. In Calgary they visited museums, library and the Canada Olympic Park where they went on the bobsleigh ride! Then off to Banff for New Years where the temperature was -20C. The mountains were more beautiful than they imagined. They went hiking, cross country skiing, walking and they ate lots of wonderful foods.
The girls were grateful for the opportunity and are glad that they went on trip with memories that will last a lifetime.
The star turn for the morning was Eric Bily who was our outbound student to Poland in 2017/18. He returned last summer after the best part of a year away. Eric can speak in public quite nicely although he sometime turned to a pre-prepared speech, a prop he was probably better off without. But who amongst us, at age 18, was able to speak to a room of adults without his or her throat tightening. (Well okay CB, I don’t doubt you could – and did - many times.)
Eric apparently managed to grasp Polish quite well despite limited luck learning French at school; I would have thought French was easier. I’m not sure how far Polish as a second language will take you but Eric mastered some of its peculiarities, like the pronunciation of Łódź, his host city in central Poland, (pronounced something like Woosh).
He visited many places steeped in some of modern history’s most glorious, pivotal and horrific events: Warsaw, Gdansk, Krakow, Oświęcim (pronounced osh-viemshin, aka Auschwitz). Poland is the land of Mikołaj Kopernik (aka Copernicus), Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, Maria Skłodowska-Curie, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, and Karol Józef Wojtyla (aka Pope John Paul II.)
A bit of Polish history might be appropriate so I’ve lifted some from the club bulletin of December 18 2016. Wiktor Gluszczak (our then inbound student) told us that Poland all got started in 966 but came to a grinding halt in 1795 when it was seized and absorbed by its giant neighbours to the east (Russia) and west (Germany). A situation that didn’t change for 123 years until November 11 1918, a date celebrated ever since as Independence Day. Well, there may have been a few setbacks since then, starting around September 1st 1939 when Poland was propelled into decades of occupation, ruin, infamy and subservience – the neighbours again. In 2004 Poland (free at last) joined the EU, which Wiktor believed has been a good thing for Poland.
Eric was asked how he thinks the exchange has changed him. A tough question to answer when your parents are in the room. What do they think? What do I think? – Do our opinions mesh? Eric believes he is more independent and I’m sure he is. He is of course more worldly and is proud to know that he has lifelong friends around the world.
As you read this Eric is now in South Africa and will be for three months working to nurture orphaned wildlife. You can do that when you’re 18, indeed travel broadens the mind.
P. Scribe.
