Two Rotary exchange students are sharing their experiences from different ends of the program.
Mariah Siminoff has returned to her hometown after spending a year in Norrköping, Sweden and is back at Brooks Secondary School for grade 12.
Currently sharing her home is Claire Vandame from Annecy, France, near Switzerland. Vandame arrived in Powell River at the end of August and is enrolled at Brooks. She enjoys being near the ocean and playing rugby centre with Otago Rugby Club. In France she plays on a boys’ team.
“It’s very different here,” said Claire, adding that while she misses her family, including two younger brothers, “I’m not homesick yet, so that’s good.”
She also misses pear jam, which she used to make herself.
At school Claire’s courses are cooking, business computer applications, Spanish and English.
Claire learned about the exchange program from the counsellor at her school. “I was told that Rotary is the best organization for student exchange.”
She arrived in Powell River on August 25 and will stay with three different families until she leaves in July, 2012.
When she returns to France, Claire will attend school for a year before graduating and moving on to university where she plans to study astronomy.
While the majority of Claire’s exchange lies ahead of her, Mariah’s is in the recent past. She’s now adjusting to a return to her pre-exchange life but with a different outlook.
At a presentation to the Rotary Club of Powell River last week, Mariah held up a handwritten note she had framed and placed beside her bed where she looks at it every morning and night. It was addressed to her father and was written just before one of her interviews with the Rotary district committee that would approve her application and determine where she would be going. “Hey, Daddy,” the note reads. “I want this more than anything.” Now it reminds her daily what it’s like to “want something so bad and know you can get there. I remember how it felt then to push me to work for my goals.”
She also told a story about her mother, Sandy, who was asked at an interview why she wanted her daughter to do the exchange. “I don’t,” Sandy responded and the person, whose child had been on an exchange, laughed. “Me either.”
Sandy realized how important the exchange was to Mariah and visited during her year in Sweden.
The city where Mariah lived was two hours by train from Stockholm and had a population of 130,000. “It is a mill town with textile and paper mills.” Some of her five host families had summer homes on the ocean, which was just an hour away. Another had a summer home on a lake, “and when we drove up to it, they said ‘this is our lake.’”
Each day, Mariah walked to school along a riverbank. “It was so beautiful I took everyone who visited there
to see it.”
One of the things she loved best about Sweden was the old buildings which retained their original architecture on the outside but were “totally new and modern inside.” One of her host fathers was an architect who specialized in restoring old buildings. Many of the buildings are red and yellow, nicknamed ketchup and mustard houses.
Mariah, who went cross-country skiing with one of her families, also became used to the snow everywhere she went. “It was a lot of work to walk around in it.”
One of her most memorable times was watching swans swimming on the Baltic Sea at sunset. Another was skating on the ocean. She also visited Santa’s village and went for a sleigh ride with the way lit by candles. “I can tell children there is a Santa because I met him and visited his village.”
She became addicted to cycling classes at a local gym, “a good thing because Swedish desserts are so tasty.”
Mariah made many friends, including exchange students from other countries and her Swedish peers. One of the first things she was involved in when she arrived was an orientation with other exchange students where they had Swedish classes all day. It was held at a centre celebrating Astrid Lingren, author of the famous children’s story Pippi Longstocking. It was there that she met an exchange student from Texas. “We hated each other at first but eventually became best friends.” On American Thanksgiving, the two girls cooked a traditional turkey dinner. They thought it was going to be for five people but the host family invited guests and there ended up being 12 at the table.
Mariah said she learned the language mostly from her first host brother. “He made all his friends come and meet me. When I started school, I already knew a lot of people which helped a lot.”
After she was selected as Powell River’s outgoing exchange student, Mariah attended weekly meetings to learn more about Rotary in general and her sponsoring club in particular. She noted a difference in the community activity and involvement level between here and Sweden. “They don’t do anything like the amount of things you do,” adding that her club was very good to her. Once a week, one of the members did something with her. The day after her “graduation” celebration, the Rotary club members and guests rose at 6:30 am for a 45-minute hike to a nearby lake. “I was so tired.”
Her farewell gift was a bracelet with her name and year of her exchange engraved on it.
More information about the exchange program is available online.
Powell River’s youth exchange coordinator is Rotarian Frieda Hamoline. She and other committee members will hold an information meeting at Brooks on Thursday, October 20. It will take place at noon in the counselling room. Any students who are interested in being a participant in the program for 2012-2013 are invited to attend.
