New Youth Exchange Student
Our inbound student this fall has supplied us with an introductory video, which was shown at a recent Rotary meeting. If you would like to show the video to members of your family in anticipation of her visit the link is as follows: Nele Kalkoff.
Click the Read More to get updates on the previous Youth Exchange Students.
Martin Tesink (Exchange Student 2006-2007)
Martin lives in the Netherlands where he runs a web design company. To see what he is up to go to www.tk-webdesign.nl/ There is an option to translate the page. He actually started doing web design when he was a student here and continued throughout his university career.
Bjorn Ljungberg:
The last few years have been very eventful for Bjorn. He was back in Canada in 2014 and visited the Rotary club and a number of Rotarians at that time. Since then, he’s done a fair bit of travelling.
In the summer 2015 Bjorn went to Hangzhou in China on a school project in nanophotonics (like electronics but with light instead of electricity, on a nano scale). In October of the same year he moved in with his girlfriend Felicia. They live in an apartment in Stockholm. He hopes to bring her to Canada at some point, so that he can show her Calgary, and what his life was like here, because he feels that it is still a very important part of his life.
Both Bjorn and Felicia were accepted to go on exchange to South Korea in the spring 2016. The university there is called KAIST and is one of the most famous and prestigious universities in Asia. They were very honored to do the last semester of their Bachelors in Engineering Physics there and also learn the Korean language and culture. Since they were in the area, they decided to do some travelling. Prior to the exchange semester, they went to Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. After the exchange, the took the boat to Japan and spent two and a half weeks there travelling around by train. They then took a ship to Vladivostok, where they got on the train and went all the way back to Sweden, and arrived just in time for Bjorn’s brother Henrik’s wedding in the end of July.
Before starting their Master programs, Bjorn and Felicia wanted to take some time to pursue other interests. They worked the entire fall and winter last year to save up some money for the spring. Bjorn worked in his dad’s hydraulics workshop, where he built and designed machines.
Felicia has just finished 3 months of dancing at the Broadway Dance Center in NYC. While she was doing that, Bjorn went to the Caribbean to improve his French (which he started studying in Calgary). He studied for four weeks on Guadeloupe and four weeks on Martinique, and also took some time to visit other islands in the Caribbean. From there he went to join Felicia for two weeks before heading back to Europe. He will spend a month in Freiburg, Germany to improve his German and then will travel around France and visit friends from his exchanges in Canada and Korea.
In September they will both resume their studies. Felicia will do a master in nanophysics, and he will do two master programs at the same time, one in theoretical physics and one in fusion plasma physics. What they will do after that, they don’t know, but they have been talking about pursuing PhD’s in their respective fields.
Nilobon o’Saithai:
Nilobon lives in Bangkok, where she is just graduating from university. She has completed her classes and will get her degree at the convocation ceremonies in December. She has obtained a job at Suwanabumi International airport(BKK). She says that if anyone is going there and needs any help, or just wants to meet, please contact her. She would love to help everyone enjoy the “taste of Thailand”. She sends her love to “our beloved club”. She thanks the club and everyone who taught her so much. She turned out to be the very first one of her class to get hired!
Simon Peer:
Having completed his military service (in ambulance work) Simon is now at university in Vienna. He finished the first of four years of law school in March and has already started the second year.
He says that most of the club will probably be glad to hear that he’s on the district board of the local young conservative party (or at least what would be the equivalent to the Canadian PC).
In addition he was just voted in as vice president of his local red cross ambulance station, where he is now in charge of approximately 140 fellow Paramedics. Since February he is also a member of the Rotaract Club Salzkammergut.
He is hoping he can visit for Stampede in 2018!
Barbara Young, June 2017