Frank Burns then introduced Andrea Barr, who spoke to us about her year in Denmark. As Frank noted, Rotary Youth Exchange is an amazing experience that continues to promote goodwill between nations and understanding of different cultures.

These young people have a once in a lifetime experience to learn the cultures of, not just the country they visit, but also touring other countries nearby and meeting and befriending new people and youth from around the world also on the exchange. Since it was started in the 1970s, over 10,000 young people have participated in this program.

Andrea's presentation reiterated this very well. She learned a great deal about other cultures, Danish, as well as other places she visited and from the other exchange students. She left Calgary on July 31, 2010, and returned July 1, 2011.

She was impressed with all she saw and learned and very pleased with her counsellor, Suzanne, who was amazing to her. Suzanne became a counsellor, a mentor and friend.

She spoke of the four host families she lived with. They were all quite different, including a farm family, small town families and also a downtown Copenhagen family. She was very excited that some of the families had girls, so she was lucky to experience life with a sister which she liked.

Winter in Denmark she discovered meant sundown at about 3 pm and sunrise at 9 am. Quite a bit shorter light day than we are used to! She learned that drinking was something quite more open (on the streets) and not a focus on adults. She was quite surprised to learn the dances were no "dry dances" at high school as they are back home.

But she knew the rules and lived by them. She developed her close friendships and ties with the other exchange students. Her closest friend was from Boston. She was wowed by the travel and experiences she was able to partake in. These included a trip to Istanbul, as well as an 18-day, 85-youth, bus tour across Europe for all the exchange students from Norway.

Other areas of fascination for Andrea were the dependency on bicycles versus cars and the open face sandwiches, chocolate on bread in the mornings, the train system and the salted candy (versus sweet candy like at home). Her toughest experience was school.

With no understanding of Danish upon arrival, school was quite difficult. One of her biggest accomplishments though was the ability to stick with it and come out successful at the end of the school year.

Andrea loved her trip and was most appreciative to the club for making it happen.

Next up was Knut Buene, our inbound student for this year. Knut made a very good presentation as well.

As he noted, he comes from a city of about 47,000 people. He noted that much like in Canada where most of us live close to the 49th parallel, in Norway the masses live close to the coastline as he does.

The total population of Norway is about four to five million people and the largest city is Oslo at about 600,000 people, so smaller than Canada. While Andrea had to get used to moving from a large city (Calgary) to smaller communities in Denmark, Knut has had to adjust from a city smaller than Lethbridge (about 2/3 the size actually) to a city the size of Calgary.

As Knut noted, Norway is over 400 years old compared to our almost 150. Much of the history and heritage and folklore comes from the stories of Vikings. The coastline is rugged but pretty with all the fjords.

Like we often joke about, Americans have a lack on knowledge about Canada, Knut recognized that many (including some Canadians he has met in his two months here in Calgary) are quite uninformed about Norway. He has had to point out that Scandinavia is an area including the countries of Norway, Sweden and Denmark, not a country on its own and that the country of Norway is not the capital city of Sweden.

Knut's father is an EMT specialist doctor, as well as a Rotarian, and his mother is a psychiatrist. He has one brother (three years older) who also did an exchange - his was to Australia. He is an avid skier, loves sports such as soccer, sailing and volleyball as well. Knut also played in a band and loves to play the guitar.

His presentation was summed up by a video he produced of his time here in the first two months.

Bernie Ward then thanked both speakers and President Grant closed the meeting.

reported by Brent Barootes