Neepawa welcomes the world at annual event

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Published on Thursday, October 6, 2016

Photos by Tony Eu. The Saturday evening banquet included some student-led entertainment, some of which even included participation from Neepawa Rotary and Inner Wheel members.

By Tony Eu

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

This past weekend, Neepawa was host to 21 people from all over the world.

As part of the Rotary Youth Exchange Program, exchange students in Rotary District 5550, which encompasses Saskatchewan, Manitoba and northern Ontario, came to Neepawa for a weekend orientation, hosted by Inner Wheel.

What is Inner Wheel? “We’re the auxiliary attachment to Rotary. We’re the spouses,” answered members of the Neepawa district. 

“This is the 39th year Inner Wheel has been hosting this weekend,” said Myra Bennet, a spokesperson for Inner Wheel. The weekend, which is a compulsory event for Rotary exchange students, is the first of four orientation weekends that students attend. The weekend events take place throughout the Rotary District, allowing the students to see different parts of Canada, as well as meet up with each other.

Neepawa has historically been and will continue to be, for the foreseeable future, the location of this first orientation, as it’s located at the centre of District 5550. 

While in Neepawa, the exchange students, who are between 16 and 18 years old, are billeted in Rotary and Inner Wheel members houses.

During the barbeque at Rotary Park, the exchange students gathered for a group photo, as well as a chance to visit with the bird sanctuary’s residents. 

This year, the district is host to students from 15 different countries across Europe, South America and Asia. Their first impressions of Canada were very positive.

“The people are very nice, helpful and so welcoming,” one student mentioned. “I really enjoy it, the cultural diversity. The people are really nice and friendly,” another chimed in. A third added, “I like the nature, especially now in the fall, when you have the leaves. Where I live, it’s all flats and flats and city, it’s really difficult to find trees and nature like you have here.”

As for what struck them the most about Canada, their answers varied wildly. One student answered with, “the Canadian way of welcoming.” He went on to say, “I came to the airport and my host family met me and they hugged me right off. Then we went to have pizza for supper and my host dad, he just talked to everyone. He didn’t even know them, but that’s just how you do it in Canada. It was so unfamiliar to me since I’m from Sweden. You don’t talk to strangers at all.”

Others commented on the size of our roads and the space between towns, one noted the number of lakes we have and some of them even commented on how much artificial light we have in our homes.

The students arrived in Neepawa Friday evening, where they met the other exchange students for the first time, as well as their host families for the weekend. On Saturday, the students attended an orienteering session in the morning, followed by a wiener roast at Rotary Park, where the the bird sanctuary is located. As well as the wiener roast, the students got some free time and played games in the park. 

At this point, the students hadn’t seen much of Neepawa, but what they had they seemed to like.

The bird sanctuary’s two emus, Jake and Jill, were popular among the exchange students visiting Neepawa.

When asked what they thought of Neepawa, the student from Taiwan replied, “[There’s] a lot of geese.” The common consensus though, was, “It’s beautiful.” One student made a comparison between Neepawa and smaller towns in Germany, saying, “It’s funny that you have a Tim Hortons. In Germany, in small cities, we only have [grocery stores].”

That evening, Inner Wheel hosted a banquet for the students, where they performed entertainment based on their home country. Some of them sang, some of them danced and some tried to teach the crowd to dance, to name a few of the performances.

At the end of the night, the students went home to stay one more night in Neepawa with their host families. Sunday morning, the students packed up and headed off, back to their home communities for the rest of the year.

Most of what the students are excited to see over the rest of their trip involves winter.

“I really want to see snow, I’ve never seen snow,” one of the exchange students from Brazil said. “I’m looking forward to the cold winter, because it seems so exotic that it’s [so] cold and how excited people are for hockey, actually,” another said.

Two of the students are staying in our area. Agi Nagy is spending her year right here in Neepawa. She’s the first Rotary exchange student from Slovakia that Rotary District 5550 has ever had.

The other student is Kosuke Yoshioka, from Japan. Yoshioka is spending his year in Minnedosa.