.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg){kind=small}
Graham Gilchrist, Club President with Celina
Rotarian Carin Jansen van Vuuren with Celina
This Tuesday we were very pleased to welcome back Celina Jensen, our 2019-2020 Rotary Exchange Student from Denmark. Celina told us that when she first came to Edmonton in 2019 she was sixteen and in grade eleven. Now she is twenty and has finished high school, got her driver’s license and attended a year at the Georgia Rotary Student Program in Lawrenceville, Georgia on an ambassadorial scholarship for International Students. She said that through her experiences with Rotary she has learned a few lessons that will stay with her for life. Some of these are:
Dreams can become reality
Don’t wait, take the chance now
Accept that nothing lasts forever
Home is not a place, but a feeling
Celina said that when she first returned home to Denmark from Edmonton she experienced reverse culture shock and it took her a while to adjust to being back in Denmark. She said that she has continued with her knitting, which she first learned in Canada, by starting a knitting club in her High School back in Denmark and more recently one at her College in Georgia. She considers them to be a success because people showed up every week for them.
When she heard about the Georgia Rotary Student Program to promote peace and cultural understanding for young people aged eighteen to twenty-five she decided to apply and was glad to be accepted. She was one of forty-four students from twenty-six different countries. The program has been offered by the Rotary clubs in Georgia since 1946. Celina said that she personally had four Rotary Club sponsors, whose meetings she attended and whose volunteer projects she helped out with. She stayed in the college dorm with eleven other girls from the program and became very close with all of them. She really enjoyed college life and the many different activities going on around campus. She also had a host family whom she spent holidays and some weekends with. One goal of the program is to introduce the students to the American way of life and Celina said it did that very well. She said that all the people she met were some of the nicest, kindest people she has ever known. She also said that she had never seen so many guns and American flags before in her life. She said that she learned a lot about their way of thinking and their opinions about gay people, democrats and mental illness were an eye opener. She also said that she got to experience the southern way of life through country music, rodeos, cowboy boots and many other cultural experiences. She also said she got to do some travelling with short trips to Nashville, Chicago, New Orleans, Washington DC and Florida. She said that as a result of hearing the disparaging way some people talked about their local police she decided to do a ride along with some and learned that they were actually pretty good people who had become police because they wanted to help others.
Through all of her experiences there she learned a few more lessons:
Diversity is a beautiful thing
Talk with everyone despite your differences
We are all amazing, but are not meant to be best friends with everyone
She loves travelling!
We would like to thank Celina for her words of wisdom and we wish her well in whatever future endeavors she undertakes.
.png)
"The Friendly Club"
Edmonton, AB T6L 6B6
Canada