We had our meeting on Zoom.
 
Recap from the January 11, 2021 club meeting:
 
Invocation:  video by Paul Fitzpatrick
 
Visitors:  Gretchen Nollman from Rotary Club of West Liberty.  Lynne and Haluk Sasmazer - parents of our program speaker.  
 
Happy News/Announcement:  Frank Iliff is taking courses to help out Rebuilding Together in Nashville, TN.  Bobbie Holliday is turning 50 on the 12th, she is not very excited.  Mike Ruby let us know that he is happy that his daughter is turning 40 this week.  Jessica Wittman let us all know that she is turning 38 on Thursday.  Lots of Birthday wishes.  
 
Program:  Our program was Evren Sasmazer from West Liberty, he was a Rotary Youth Exchange Student to Japan.  He is now a student at the University of Iowa majoring in English Literature and Japanese with a minor in Religious Studies.  Evren was an exchange student to Japan in 2018-2019.  He shared photos with us as well as an overview of the program, history, key experiences and his takeaways from the program.  To prepare to go to Japan, Evren attended many Rotary seminars and meetings the year before to learn etiquette and culture.  He was on the northwest coast of Japan in Toyama.  He lived with 6 different host families in the year he was there.  He attended high school - uniforms are required and it is more formal than in the United States.  The curriculum was structured towards students that plan to seek careers in business or bookkeeping.  Students stayed in the same classroom all day and the teachers rotated and came to them.  Students always showed respect to the teachers, no joking around. Extra curricular activities are highly encouraged - Evren was in the calligraphy club.    Thank you for sharing with us.  
 
Reminders:  The Rotary Board will be meeting after the meeting today.  There will not be Rotary on January 18th in observance of Martin Luther King Day.  On January 25 our speaker will be George Belitsos - helping to end human trafficking.  
 
Have a good week!