Carlo Geat, the Rotary Youth Exchange Student from Italy, is wrapping up his year in Oliver and Osoyoos where he was sponsored by the Rotary Club of Osoyoos. He returns to Italy July 12. Pictured with him are Rotarians Marieze Tarr and John Robertson, who look after the exchange program and helped Geat get settled when he arrived in the Okanagan last August. (Richard McGuire photo)
When Carlo Geat first arrived in the Okanagan from northern Italy more than 10 months ago, he had never tasted fast food.
During the time the Rotary Exchange Student has spent since then in Oliver and Osoyoos, he’s been immersed in Canadian and American culture, and much of it he likes.
But when asked how his immersion experience may have changed his impression of fast food, he struggles to be a diplomat.
“It’s for sure a cheap, fast way to eat when you have nothing else better,” he concedes.
But when pushed, he readily admits he’d much prefer a leisurely sit-down meal as is the custom in his home city of Trento, just south of the Austrian border.
Geat was sponsored to come to the South Okanagan by the Rotary Club of Osoyoos, but he attended Southern Okanagan Secondary School (SOSS) in Oliver, making many friends in Oliver, while also getting to know Osoyoos.
He returns to Italy in mid-July.
He recently graduated from SOSS, where he impressed his schoolmates with a classical violin performance.
Back in Italy though, he plans to take another year of high school, becoming a rare student who actually graduates high school twice.
He had not even landed in Canada yet at the end of August when he began seeing differences – from his plane he noticed the grid-like road patterns and planned neighbourhoods of Canadian cities, which contrasted sharply with the random Italian street patterns built over the centuries.
His first experience of real cultural shock came when Rotarian John Robertson met him at the airport in Kelowna with a big hug.
“I wasn’t used to it, because in my region, in northern Italy, we don’t really hug,” he told the Rotarians when he gave them a wrap up of his experiences recently.
The Italian stereotype of warm, effusive, demonstrative people is probably more of a reality in the south than in his region of Trentino, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until the end of World War I.
But other aspects of Canadian and American culture were very positive for the young student, who hasn’t ruled out returning to Canada or the United States to study economics in university.
He found the people here warm and outgoing generally, but it was the festivities and gift exchanges at Christmas that impressed him the most.
“Christmas is quite different from how it is in Italy,” said Geat. “Being together with family that much, for that many days, really was one of the best parts of my exchange.”
As well as staying with Rotarians Robertson and Marieze Tarr and their spouses when he first arrived, Geat also lived with three different host families, who became like his own family.
And probably the most memorable of all his experiences was a road trip to California with the second of those host families.
“I never liked road trips,” he admits, pointing out that distances in Europe are much shorter. “So I was kind of scared with seven people in a minivan for two and a half days driving all the way to Disneyland, but it wasn’t that bad. It was a lot of fun.”
They took in San Diego and San Francisco, but it was Disneyland that he found to be “magical.”
“Even though I’m not a kid anymore, I really felt the magic,” he said. “So it was magical for sure.”
He had numerous other North American cultural experiences, including taking in a Canucks hockey game and a BC Lions football game in Vancouver.
“That was my first football game,” said Geat, though of course in Europe what they call “football” actually refers to soccer. “I didn’t know anything about football, so I didn’t really follow the game. But it was still really cool to see this huge stadium and this huge group of people screaming and yelling. It was really impressive and it was a beautiful city.”
He also had a chance to go on excursions with groups of other Rotary exchange students staying throughout the district from Central B.C. down into Washington State.
An avid skier, Geat took numerous trips to Mount Baldy, but a highlight was a trip with other exchange students to Silver Star Mountain Resort near Vernon.
The exchange students swam at Revelstoke and travelled through the B.C. Interior down to Osoyoos, Omak and on to Yakima and other points in Washington, forming friendships that were very hard to break off when they went their separate ways.
He even managed a trip to Banff and on to Lethbridge with a former exchange student friend from Taiwan.
“Banff was on my bucket list of places to see in Canada,” Geat said. “It was stunning of course. Then we went through the Rockies and to Lethbridge, which is really windy and really flat.”
He went camping in a trailer with his third host family and tried fishing, which he had never done before.
Of course much of what Rotary is about is helping others, and Geat says he was especially proud to be involved in a Rotary project called ShelterBox, which provides boxes of necessities to families who have lost their homes in natural disasters. He and others managed to raise $1,300 for the project.
“My exchange was great,” he said, crediting all the people he met. “It was awesome to be sponsored by you.”
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
