Rotary Youth Exchange
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This past Tuesday we heard from Andreas Lybecker Larsen, a Rotary Exchange student from Copenhagen, Denmark. Andreas is one of four Rotary exchange students in the Edmonton area and one of thirteen in our Rotary District. He is being hosted by the Edmonton Downtown Rotary club. Andreas is sixteen years old and is currently attending grade ten at McNally High School. He is also keeping very busy with many different Rotary related activities. He regularly attends the Edmonton Downtown club meetings and the Victoria School of Fine Arts Interact club meetings. He arrived in Edmonton in mid August and will be living with four different Rotary host families over the course of his exchange year.
He has had the chance to travel, see and do many different things in his past few months in Alberta and told us about some of them. He gave am interesting presentation complemented by many pictures of the places and things he has done so far, and people he has met. His first truly Canadian experience was the trip here with Air Canada. His flight from Copenhagen to San Francisco, and overnite stay there went smoothly, but getting from there to Edmonton required him to spend many long hours in airports waiting for multiple delayed flights, resulting in having to rebook missed connections three times, and then was capped off with a long delay at Customs in Calgary. He feels that he is now a pro at dealing with Air Canada booking agents.
His has spent time with his host family at their lake lot and has also been on trips to Banff and Lake Louise to go skiing and snowboarding, attended an Eskimos Football game, an Oilers Hockey game, several concerts, experienced West Ed Mall Galaxyland, and done lots of walking around Edmonton. He even got to try out playing hockey. His school life has been busy as he is playing school volleyball whenever he can. He also has made many visits to Tim Hortons, and says he has bought something there forty two times already this year.
With the Rotary exchange students group he has been to the District Conference in Ft McMurray, a high light of which was a helicopter ride over the oil sands. The group also went canoeing down the North Saskatchewan river near Edmonton, where he quickly found out it was not possible to paddle upstream. He and his canoe partner had to climb out into the rocks and water to carry their canoe upstream. The exchange student group also helped to package food for Rise Against Hunger, helped out with building homes for Habitat for Humanity and worked at the Edmonton Food Bank.
His goal for this exchange was to experience as many new things as possible. He has already surpassed his bucket list, and is looking forward to many more new adventures and opportunities.
Andreas Lybecker Larsen