Yesterday I was scheduled to speak at my local Rotary club. I'm the only exchange student in the South Bend Rotary Club, and they didn't participate in exchange last year. We don't have any inbounds in our club either. My club has meetings every Wednesday at around noon, which I used to go to frequently during the school year. Since school ended, I haven't been to any of the meetings. I actually heard on Tuesday that I would be presenting on Wednesday (yesterday) so I had to prepare things to talk about somewhat last-minute.
My mom and I went to the meeting at noon after saying bye to Poppy at the airport before she got on her first flight to Detroit. I met her host-family at the airport again, and they were really nice. I texted her last night when she had a layover in Korea. My Rotary club wanted me to bring my parents, so my mom came with me to the meeting (my dad is in Portugal). I was told to speak towards the end of the meeting, after I was introduced.
I spoke about myself, how I got into Rotary, my background, family, my exchange, and more. While I had met a lot of the Rotarians before, they didn't know too much about me except that I was their exchange student to France. The South Bend Rotary club is very large too, so there were also a lot of people who I'd never met. After I finished talking, the woman to my right presented me with a $500 check on behalf of the South Bend club to help me with my fundraising to cover Rotary expenses. This was greatly, greatly appreciated and to SB Rotary, thank you so much!! At the beginning of the year I was discussing ways to fundraise and there were Rotarians within the club that helped me a lot with getting a time for me to present, helping me with talks, and just being supportive and interested in my exchange.
I mentioned towards the end of my talk that I probably wouldn't be able to make it to any future meetings until next year because of my plans until I leave, but my local club has been very supportive of me and my exchange and I'm excited to share all about my exchange when I return next year.
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