This last weekend was the CSRYE Conference at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI and I figured rather than writing one really long blog post attempting to cover all that happened, I would divide it into two posts to make it a reasonable length.
Friday, July 13:
I woke up at around 5am to start packing. I been too busy working on last-minute pins the night before, so I was stuck with doing everything else, including packing, the morning of the conference. Fiona, an outbound to France, came to pick my mom and I up around 9:15 and we drove for a little over 2 hours before arriving at Calvin College. We first got our name tags, meal cards, and dorm building assignments. My mom and I got a bit lost, but eventually found our rooms and headed to lunch.
The first presentation was called "The Wonders of Rotary Youth Exchange" which is pretty self-explanatory. The speaker was Pauline Perreault, from Edmonton, AB, Canada. Edmonton was the city I had lived in when I lived in Canada, so that was surprising. I think the next event was for students in groups based on host-country. All inbounds, outbounds, rebounds, and Rotex from/to France, Italy, Belgium, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkey were at my meeting. There were too many French students, so we got moved outside the building to the lawn. We started by introducing ourselves and answering some common questions. We then split up and talked in smaller groups where I met Langley, a Rotex who had gone to the same district as me in southern France. She was super nice and enthusiastically told me about how my district planned monthly events and trips for their students, which was great to hear. While we were all talking, the sprinklers turned on and everyone sprinted off the grass, ending our session.
Although I'm not positive about the order of events because we did a lot over the weekend and I don't have the schedule with me, I think there was a district meeting next. It could have been another general meeting or a Tzell Travel talk, but the district meeting was great because I finally got to see all the other outbounds, inbounds, and newly-returned rebounds. The other presentations during the day were interesting too, but that would be a bit too much to cover.
After dinner, we split up into rooms with the other outbounds going to our countries. Fiona and I went down to the room for French outbounds and met a lot of new people. I mainly spent time with Brice, Carolina, and Lauryn. We had all been part of a large France group chat that we all left after getting tired of some drama going on within it. We talked about this while rehearsing for the Flag Ceremony, which was about to start. This was my favorite part of the day.
After some free time spent catching up with some of my inbound and outbound friends, we went to the "pizza party" in the athletic building. I saw Danielle, an outbound to Brazil, Stephanie, an outbound to the Netherlands, Alisa and Poppy, inbounds from Thailand, Autumn, an outbound to Taiwan, and the Japanese inbounds, outbounds, and rebounds. I stopped by the dance in the gym, but Momono and I decided to chat outside the gym instead. Momono is an inbound from Japan, and considering it was around midnight, we were kind of tired and just chatted in Japanese.
Saturday, July 14:
I'm sure my Saturday events will be chronologically incorrect but I'll try my best to recall what happened to accurately to describe the day. I woke up at around 6am because there were four of us sharing one bathroom, and I thought that waking up earlier would ensure time for me to take a shower. I was then one of the first people to breakfast, where I found some friends to talk with.
From there we had a lot of meetings, and then I went to watch the "Brazil vs the World" soccer game. It didn't seem too organized but it was basically small teams put together by students, who then competed. I went with Kim and Fiona, and met a couple exchange students. Next was the pin exchange. For people who are unfamiliar with this, Rotary students wear blazers covered in pins we trade with each other. I had heard a lot about the Calvin conference pin exchange, and it was exactly like what I had heard about it. A small group of students exchanging pins quickly turned into a giant crowd of exchange students. It was kind of frantic and I ran out of all my pins, but even after I ran out, people were still nice enough to give me pins and business cards.
For dinner I sat outside on the lawn with Kim, Autumn, Noe, Sarah, and some others. Now that I think about it, that could've been the dinner the night before but either way, it happened at some point. After dinner was what I was most looking forward to: the talent show. The two things I heard most about from exchange students who had already gone to the CSRYE conference were the pin exchange and talent show. There were some amazing acts and it was a fun experience. I was sitting with Poppy, Alisa, Autumn, Kim, and some Japanese inbounds.
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