Nina Oliveira (centre) was guest speaker at the Rotary Club of Osoyoos on Thursday where she talked about her experience as an “outbound” exchange student in France. At right is “inbound” exchange student Carlo Geat, from Trento, Italy. At left is Brian Rawlings, president of the Rotary Club of Osoyoos. (Richard McGuire photo)
When Nina Oliveira first arrived in France on a Rotary Club of Canada exchange program at the end of August 2015, she found the French language, different culture and tougher school routine difficult to adjust to.
When she returned to Canada in July, nearly a year later, she was virtually fluent in French, but she experienced a bit of cultural shock returning home.
The 17-year-old student from Oliver was guest speaker last Thursday at the lunch meeting of the Rotary Club of Osoyoos, who sponsored her through the Rotary Youth Exchange program.
She had become used to the small European cars and the long, sociable French sit-down lunches, so it was a bit of a shock to return home and see people driving around in big pickup trucks and eating solitary meals on the fly.
Even at school in Villefrache-de-Rouergue, a city of 12,000 in the south of France, students would take an hour and a half for lunch, sometimes dining on first-class meals prepared by students from the school’s hospitality program.
And then there was the cheek kissing ritual greeting that is common in France, but not very common in Canada outside Quebec.
After her return, Oliveira caught herself several times leaning to kiss someone in greeting.
“I was leaning in and hugging and I said ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do that,’” she said in an interview after her talk.
Under the Rotary Youth Exchange program, the club sends an “outbound” student abroad to live and attend school in another country for nearly a year.
At the same time, they sponsor an “inbound” student to come to Osoyoos. That student this year is Carlo Geat, from the northern Italian city of Trento. Geat came with Oliveira to last week’s Rotary meeting.
It’s been difficult for the Rotary Club of Osoyoos to find suitable local students able to participate in the program, which is why they sponsored Oliveira, a student from Southern Okanagan Secondary School (SOSS) last year. And it’s why their current outbound student is Sylvia Mott from Summerland, who is now in Germany.
For Oliveira, some of the best moments of her experience were meeting other Rotary exchange students from around the world.
Periodically they held a “Rotex” where exchange students from all over France met to do activities together in different host communities.
On one of these, they travelled to the iconic Mont Saint-Michel on the Normandy coast of northern France and they bonded by walking together through the mud flats by this island that’s crowned with ancient fortifications and a monastery.
For another “Rotex,” Oliveira’s adopted city of Villefrache-de-Rouergue played host and she helped with organizing events.
But the highlight for her was a bus trip throughout Europe with fellow exchange students that saw them reach such cities as Strasbourg, Munich, Prague and others.
It was sometimes a quick blur with little time to savour each city, but Oliveira said she’d love to go back to all of them.
During much of the year though, she attended school and she found her private French high school much more difficult than schooling here – longer hours, more formality and without the kind of student-teacher interaction she’s used to at SOSS.
The language barrier didn’t make it easier, she said, adding that she spoke only basic high school French when she first arrived.
The teachers cut her some slack as a result, and she took some classes at a lower grade, but it was tough at first.
“It was hard, but about three months in, I found myself really immersing in the language and almost becoming fluent,” she said. “It just clicked, and after that I kept improving and soon I was speaking French.”
Adding to her long school days, her first of four billet homes was 30 kilometres from her school out in the country and she had to take two buses each way.
“I’d leave for school at 6:45 and get to the school at 7:30 and school started at 8 a.m.,” she said. “Then to go home, the bus would leave at 6:15 and sometimes it would take a little bit longer to get home because it had to drop off students, so I arrived home at 7 or 7:15 p.m.”
Ironically, Oliveira, who is of Portuguese descent, found that the extended family who hosted her at her first couple of billet homes was also of Portuguese background.
That meant she travelled with them 12 hours by car to spend Christmas near Porto in the north of Portugal. And yes, she answered in response to a Rotarian’s question, she did sample the Port for cultural reasons.
The exchange program is intended to promote world peace by raising international awareness, one Rotarian reminded her before asking her what she’ll do to promote peace.
Oliveira responded that she had already been thinking about a career in international relations and this experience strengthened that interest.
The international friendships were so strong among the exchange students, who remain in touch afterwards, that on the night of the U.S. election, friends in Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan and Thailand offered new homes to those American students disappointed by the election results.
The exchange program experience helped Oliveira to mature and learn more about what she can do.
“It made me realize more who I am,” she said.
Richard McGuire
Osoyoos Times
