(c) Shawn L Bird. Free use within Rotary, but please give credit, and identify in the comments below, the name of your club and the date you used it.
I was just writing a note to a person on an exchange student forum, and I thought I would share my thoughts with you. We were discussing how some areas of the world don’t understand the purpose of Rotary Youth Exchange, and therefore, don’t do anything to support the student.
Year after year our club has fantastic, interesting, and delightful exchange students. How do I know? Because we integrate our students into our club and get to know them. Students chosen for this program tend to be talented, fascinating kids who are travelling to broaden their experiences and to prepare to make a difference in the world. We send fantastic kids abroad to share them with another part of the world. I am sad when I hear about clubs who miss the opportunity to know the amazing kids that they have under their noses, so here is my advice to Rotary Clubs all over the world, prefaced by my core belief that when a club agrees to host a student, EACH member of the club has an obligation to that student.
Each member of the club should make an effort to,
1. make them welcome to the country, city, and club
get to know who they are, greet them on the street, and invite them to attend club meetings, projects, and events, and personal activities.
2. include them in club activities
that means when exchange students are at a club event, you integrate them by having them sit with members, you speak to them, you encourage them to participate in the program somehow. Listen.
3. show interest in them, their experience, their home country
Ask them about their hobbies and interests, and how things are similar and different in their home area. Your way isn’t the only way. Your students have experiences to share with you, just like you have experiences to share with them. Listen.
4. welcome them into your home and family activities if you can.
Even if you are not able to host a student in your home, you can include them into your activities. When you know your students’ hobbies and interests, you can more easily identify opportunities to include them. The student likes sports? You can invite them to a local game- even free ones played by your grandkids. Your student plays an instrument? You can invite them to attend a recital or concert. Your student loves history? Take them to a local site you know well. If you know what your student hasn’t experienced, you can invite them along on simple family events. One of my more memorable experiences in Finland was foraging for mushrooms in the woods with a family!
5. share in their local experiences.
Consider yourselves the students’ family. If they are participating in a concert, a sporting match, or speeches, go along to cheer and celebrate.
These inclusions are fantastic for everyone involved. Your club learns more about the world, and more about your country by seeing it through the eyes of another perspective. You will improve your club’s experience with your students, and your students will have a more memorable, and more valuable exchange year by having the opportunity to know you all. You will feel blessed by experience.
Don’t waste your exchange students. Celebrate them!
I just started reading Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregine’s Home for Peculiar Children. I love the title. I also love the first line, which is
“I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen.”
I’ve been feeling just that way for the last couple of years. 🙂 I wonder what it means for this narrator? Stay tuned!
So, following on the videos of sites from Grace Awakening Power, I thought I should probably include some videos of sites from Grace Awakening Dreams, which is set in Calgary. So here is Fish Creek Park, where Ben and Grace picnicked and he played her a special tune:
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and here is the Calgary Tower(enjoy the saucy music!). I’m sad to report that they no longer have the informative recording in the elevator!
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and here’s the C train, Light Right Transit. This video starts at Chinook station, which is approximately where Grace has the encounter with the knife. She’s off the train by 39th Street with the police.
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When we moved to the Shuswap, my first job was in Enderby, a small town twenty minutes south of Salmon Arm. In Grace Awakening Power, Grace and Marco hike up to the top of the Enderby Cliffs. This Enderby tourism video gives you a good sense of the area, and the views from the cliffs. Quite spectacular, eh? (Watch for sudden storms!)
My Drama 9 class hovered with fascination over a rotary phone in our prop box last week. I heard, “How do you work one of these?” I watched fingers fumble with the dial and chuckled to myself at the anguished, “It would take *forever* to call my house this way!”
We had the time then, I guess.
Here’s a nice video that shows you some of the scenery in Salmon Arm, the setting for Grace Awakening Power (and where we live, coincidentally). How many places do you recognise from the book?
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It’s gratifying to go back through a manuscript completed ages ago, and find yourself giggling at scenes you’d completely forgotten about. As I’m editing Grace Awakening Myth this evening, I came across this scene, and I thought you might enjoy it, too.
Please note that this is a draft version, I can already see several things to fine tune! 🙂
Ben is backstage, preparing for a band concert. One of his friends took dance to meet a girl he likes, and he’s about to perform in a quartet dance number as part of the concert. Ben is narrating.
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I could sense Grace in the audience as we set up the stage for the band concert. She must have come early with Christie. The tenuous ribbons of connection between us floated invisibly in the air, but I could feel them. She had been ignoring me at school, but her mind had been busy thinking about me. She was opening possibility, and the awareness made my heart soar.
Her presence was calling to the music in me. Surely, the other players would be captivated by it as well. The concert was going to be a good one.
Ryan was shivering in a corner.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“It’s just nerves,” I said. “You’ve played concerts plenty of times. It’s always fine.”
He stared at me like I was a moron. “I’m wearing a spandex unitard under this band uniform.”
I laughed, and as the picture seered my brain, I laughed harder.
He sent me a withering look and the tears started. They stung my eyes and rolled down my cheeks, but I couldn’t stop laughing.
Paul came over. “What’s so funny?”
“Ryan,” I sputtered. “Spandex.”
Paul wrinkled his nose. “Ooh, nasty. Nothing is worth that, Bro. What were you thinking? On the other hand,” he glanced to the wings, “Georgia is looking mighty fine this evening.”
She was. Her hair tumbled loosely in waves almost to her waist. She was wearing a beige unitard that disappeared at a distance. Her curves were magnificent.
Ryan sighed. “It is sooooo worth it. Excuse me,” he muttered to us, and went to stand with her.
Her smile lit her face as he came near. It made my heart warm.
Paul looked around for Tanis, and saw her standing off to the side watching Ryan and Georgia. “Do you think she’s jealous?”
I shrugged, “Maybe a little. Don’t let it worry you. Have you seen J-Roy yet?”
He looked around, “There he is, at the back in black. Oh my. Is that the same thing Ryan is wearing?” He started to snicker.
I sucked back the guffaw that started to explode out of me. J-Roy was clad in a black unitard. A hood covered his trademark lion’s mane of tawny hair. The only skin that showed was on his hands, feet, and face. J-Roy is athletic. He stood tall, his body rippled with muscular definition. He looked fantastic. “Oh, poor Ryan,” I groaned.
Ryan’s slightly paunchy belly and sloped shoulders were not the optimal build for a unitard.
Paul smirked at me, “Maybe Ryan hopes the black will be slimming?”
I started to shake, pursing my lips tightly.
Misty floated by in a glowing euphoria, with frequent glances over to J-Roy. “Doesn’t he look like some kind of Greek god?” she murmured to me.
I pondered a lecture on over-generalization, but with another look to J-Roy I had to acknowledge that he did, in fact, bear a strong resemblance to some of my relatives.
I recently noticed that I have several hundred new followers, and I’m sure that many of you are writers with your own blogs.
Please take a moment and introduce yourself and your blog in the comment section below ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ so I can check out your blog, too! It’s nice to follow back other bloggers and share the love, but if you don’t comment, I never know you’re here.
I look forward to meeting you! 🙂
Shawn L. Bird 
HELP! Which start is your favourite? October 7, 2012
Tags: amwriting, beginning, first line, Grace Awakening Myth, help, poll, start, writing
I’m unhappy with the opening to Grace Awakening Myth. I need something strong , intriguing and compelling.
I’m brainstorming, and would appreciate some feedback from you! Here are six versions of the first 100 words or so. Version one is the original. Which do you think is the strongest option? Can you identify why it appeals to you? Would you mix components of a couple of the options? Please leave your observations in the comment section below. (Though I see many of you are using Facebook, and that’s all right as well). Thanks for your help!
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Version 6:
Aphrodite’s words exploded in my head like a missile shot from a catapult, leaving me dizzy and stunned.
I stared at her as the words ricocheted through my head, smashing through my consciousness, crushing my hopes, and destroying my future.
Finally, I sputtered, “What did you say?” It couldn’t be true. She couldn’t have said what I heard.
Aphrodite stood, her back to the temple columns, watching me solemnly. “Oh, Orpheus,” she sighed. “I said, ‘This is that girl’s last life time in the Earthly Realm. If you are to have her for eternity, she must choose you this time.’”
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Version 5:
Aphrodite’s words exploded in my head like the sound of crashing swords, leaving me dizzy and stunned.
Finally, I gasped, “What did you say?”
Aphrodite stood, her back to the templecolumns, watching me solemnly. “Oh, Orpheus,” she sighed. “I said, ‘This is that girl’s last life time in the Earthly Realm. If you are to have her for eternity, she must choose you this time.’”
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Version 4:
Aphrodite was watching me with a solemnly pitying expression as I came over the hill. She leaned languidly against a pillar, golden hair flowing around her in waves, waiting.
She made me nervous. I bowed low. “You wished to speak to me?”
She nodded, stepping forward and straightening into a formal posture. “I am to inform you, that this is the girl’s last life time in the Earthly Realm. If you are to have her for eternity, she must choose you this time.”
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Version 3.
Aphrodite leaned against the temple column and watched me warily. “Did you hear what I said, Orpheus?”
I bowed respectfully, shaking my head. I had heard, but I wished fervently that I hadn’t.
“I said, this is that girl’s last life time in the Earthly Realm. If you are to have her for eternity, she must choose you this time.”
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Version 2:
Aphrodite’s words sliced into me like a sword and I wheezed, feeling the blood rush from my face as the pain of them slashed through me. “What did you say?”
Aphrodite stood, her back to the templecolumns, watching me solemnly. “Oh, Orpheus,” she sighed. “I said, ‘This is that girl’s last life time in the Earthly Realm. If you are to have her for eternity, she must choose you this time.’”
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Version 1:
“Orpheus! Come here. I need to talk to you.” Aphrodite stood, her back to the templecolumns, watching me solemnly.
I didn’t like the expression on her face. I bowed respectfully, “Yes?”
“This is that girl’s last life time in the Earthly Realm. If you are to have her for eternity, she must choose you this time.”
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(FYI- this is what follows the above…)
That girl. She tossed the words like Grace was of no consequence. The girl I had followed through time, the girl who made my life complete, and gave me music. The girl who could save all that was good in the world. The girl I was waiting for. My heart started to pound. “Where is she?”
She shook her head. “I’m not allowed to say; you know that.”
“I was told Canada. In Calgary.”
Her eyes widened and she tilted her head, but she made no comment.
The eyes were enough confirmation. At least I didn’t have to scan the entire population of the planet. I only needed to find Grace among the million or so residents of Calgary. I’d come to the city a couple of years before on a tip, and had settled myself into high school there. My informant had assured me that Grace would show up there eventually, but I had reached my final year in high school without any sign of her. I’d begun to doubt, but Aphrodite’s alarmed surprise was enough evidence that I was in the right place. I would try to be patient.
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