Thank you Claire for forwarding this email from Carolin Welp, Exchange Student from Germany in 2011-2012.

Carolin continues to receive our e-Bulletins. Good luck on your exam today. Click on 'Read more' to view some pictures that she sent. It was great to hear from you.

Linda

Dear Rotarians,

Dear Friends in St.Marys, Ontario and around Canada,

The New Year is already a month old, but it’s still time to give you a vital sign and also to give you a little report about what happened in 2014. This letter was written while sitting in the car back from my parents and grandparents hometown Bielefeld, Germany to my hometown Herbolzheim, Germany. It is supposed to give you a little view in my live back home.

2014 was a very different year to those before. It is now 2 ½ years ago that I left to fly back from Toronto, Canada to Frankfurt, Germany and one year later came back to visit with my family for 4 weeks. But in 2014 I graduated from school and now I’m officially a student at the University of Freiburg studying Microsystems Engineering. This study path includes all the sciences you can possibly think of. In my first semester I had Math, experimental Physics, Chemistry as well as Technologies and Processes. In January started my "white room" practicum in addition to the other courses. On February the 9th is my first exam and exam-time will end on the 16th of March 2015.

But back to 2014… I used my free time right before and after my "Abitur" (=Graduation) to travel around. Together with my boyfriend Jan (still the same one ) I went to a Boyce Avenue concert in Munich. For those who don’t know Boyce Avenue. They are a band of three Canadian brothers who toured in Germany last year. I even caught a pick of the leading guitarist.

In April we had our "every-year-again-family-vacation" in a little town called Serneus, Switzerland. Two weeks of skiing and doing things together with my parents, my brother and my boyfriend. And my second skiing trip was to the international scout centre in Kandersteg, Switzerland. A couple of days skiing together with 17 others.

I also traveled to the Bodensee (Lake Constance) together with my grandparents. It’s the biggest lake in Germany and special about it is, it’s crossing three country boarders. We had some beautiful days in a hotel driving around to explore the towns around every day. We also visited Bregenz, Austria and saw the scenery of the Bregenz Festival (a big outdoor theatre). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Constance

My second visit of Lake Constance was right after the trip with my grandparents. Together with some Rotex people (youth of Rotary – age 17-30). We had lot’s of fun swimming, camping and having some fun in the city itself.

And this wasn’t the only lake I visited in 2014. In the summer I traveled to Italy, together with my boyfriend and his family (parents and sister). We were camping right next to the Gardasee (Lake Garda). And of course we visited Verona to see were Romeo and Julia (Shakespeare) kissed on the balcony and we visited Venice to get an impression of this old and rotten but at the same time most beautiful on the water build wooden city. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardasee

The weather in 2014 wasn’t the most brilliant. On our camping vacation with the scouts we had rain half of the time and unfortunately we had to leave the campground for one day. It was storming so strong that the camp leaders decided it is too dangerous to let over 4500 scouts sleep in their tents while a rainy storm is going over their heads. So finally we all had to leave the campground and sleep in community halls, schools, churches and other more or less large buildings for that night. The police is now using the videos they maid while the evacuation was going on to show them as teaching videos for festivals.

I turned nineteen in 2014 and that was my chance to have an awesome day at the Oktoberfest in Munich together with my parents and my boyfriend. My parents also showed us the places where they walked along with me when I was just born and of course the hospital I was born in…but this hospital isn’t existing anymore. There are

normal houses now. And I still couldn’t find anyone there eating sausage in a bun together with sauerkraut . The typical food on the Oktoberfest is hock, chicken and Bavarian veal sausage (a with sausage you can buy in Kitchner, Ontario as well).

I still had a "nineteenth-birthday-party" together with my friends and for many of them it was the last time to see me for a year. Two are on a travel and work year in New Zealand right now, one girl is in France as an au pair, one in Angola as a teacher for girls who never learned reading (they are already 15 years and older!) and two others are leaving for a travel and work year to Canada this month. If there is anyone of you in Vancouver in the next 10 months let me know. I’m sure they would be pleased to have contact to some Canadians to get to know the country a little better.

Traveling in 2014 also meant to be with my larger family in Bielefeld. We have been there in June of 2013 to celebrate my uncles marriage, this time we came back to celebrate my cousins baptism. I’m now a godmother of Marinus Valentin Welp (that’s his full name) and at the same time his cousin. In January we traveled there again to celebrate my grandfather’s 80th birthday.

For Christmas Eve my little family and I were at home alone to have a wonderful enjoyable evening together. The end of year I celebrated together with my own and my boyfriend’s family. Of course we left the house shortly before midnight to see the beautiful fireworks in town.

Still there weren’t just trips and parties. There was also a lot of studying weather for school (before graduation) or for university (since October). Now I just hope to manage my exams to be ready for the next semester that starts in April.

I hope you are all having a wonderful year 2015 and remember you are always invited to visit me. For now I want to welcome Darby Alderson, she will be visiting me in August. I was so excited to hear about that, when we skyped the last time.

Thank you for reading my report. I hope you enjoyed reading it. If you have questions or just want to let me know how your last year was, go ahead and send me an e-mail.

Best regards and big hugs from Germany

Carolin Welp,

Rotary Exchangestudent in 2011/12