President Samantha Maruzzelli brought the meeting to order at 12:15 PM at Purkey’s Pink Apple with Don Streby reciting the 4-Way Test and leading the Pledge of Allegiance and George Gay giving the Invocation.

 

 

Dana Kuffa – 2016-2017 Exchange student to Chile
Jill & Dave Kuffa – parents of Dana Kuffa
Sisile Maruzzelli, Taylor Gardella and Jason & Chris Linden – guests of Samantha Maruzzelli
Marjorie Krause – guest of Wayne Krause
Vito and Nico – exchange students

 

 

 

District Rotary Membership Chair inducted our newest member, Mary Tempest into Rotary. Mary’s sponsor was Norm Kelly.  Please join us in welcoming Mary into Rotary.

 

Norm Kelly (left), Mary Tempest, Ron Furman and Pres. Samantha Maruzzelli

 

 

The Spring road side pickup will be the Saturday after Easter.

 

 

Past President Ann Way presented a check for $1,500 to Rich Seaberg, Security Officer for TASD, to pay for t-shirts and an essay prize for the 5^th graders in the TASD, who are participating in the DARE program.  Rich invited everyone to attend the DARE graduation in the Spring.  Exact info will be provided closer to the event.

 

Ann Way (left), Rich Seaberg and Pres. Samantha Maruzzelli

 

Ann then presented Rich with a check for $2,000 to continue Max, a community service dog’s training with Designing Dogs. Rich commented that Max was invited by the Roslyn 4^th graders to escort 70 4^th graders to the Dietrich last week.  Max and Rich are trained for drug, explosive and firearms detection and for search and rescue.

 

Ann Way (left), Rich Seaberg and Pres. Samantha Maruzzelli

 

 

Wayne reported that the sign posts are painted and the caps for the tops. Once the weather clears, the signs will go up.

 

 

Newsletter went out yesterday and website and Facebook have been updated. 

 

 

Post Holiday Social – last chance to sign up today.  You can pay at the door or in advance.

 

 

Ann met with their representative and they have dates in Jan or Feb for a group event with reduced ticket price and our club name flashed on the message board.  It could be a family event for our club. Ann asked for a show of hands for this event. Since there was interest, she will pursue and get some possible dates.

 

 

Pres. Sam reminded everyone that Thursday, Jan 11 is “Bring a prospective member” event. Both the host and the prospective member will get a free lunch.

 

 

Anne will be going to Quakertown this weekend where outbounds will find out where they are going next year of the 3 countries they originally selected, although sometimes there is a surprise.

 

Next weekend, she goes to King of Prussia for meeting with Essex for latest on Exchange program.

 

For 2018-2019, we will have one long term outbound exchange student & 1 potential long term student plus 2 short terms exchangers going out. Possible we may have another one.

 

 

Nico will switch familiies last weekend of Jan. and Vito will also switch soon. Both had a great Xmas although different from their home countries.  Vito also got a chance to go to NJ over the break.

 

Jason Linden, who was our outbound 2014-2015 exchange student in Guadalajara Mexico provided an update on his time since his exchange.  He came back and did one year in college in the US and then went back to Mexico where he is now in law school.  He is also doing work as a paralegal.  He remarked that US law is based on the British system whereas the Mexican law is based on the Spanish legal system, do there are some differences between law in the US and Mexico.

 

Dana Kuffa (left), Pres. Samantha Maruzzelli and Jason Linden

 

The first planning meeting for the Oct 2018 Harvest & Wine Festival will be at the beginning of Feb.

Our next Meeting will be Thursday, Jan 11. Our guest speaker will be Haley Tosczko, our 2016-2017 exchange student to Slovakia.

 

 

Dana was in Santiago, Chile and therefore had lots of resources.She was with her first host family for ½ of the year. They had a daughter who was one year younger than Dana who went to Idaho on exchange.

 

During her first weekend, the 60 exchange students went to a weekend event to meet each other. 

 

She went to an all-girls Catholic school. Kindergarten to grade 12 in one school. It was cold in school and she froze since there was no heat in the school. She took up cheerleading in Chile, which was performance cheering since it was an all girls school.

 

With the exchange students, she went to the beach and got to touch the Pacific Ocean.  She got to see a lots of landmarks that were close to where she was living.

 

The second trip with Rotary was to Easter Island. The Rapa Nui’s did a traditional dance for them. She received Club banners from her host club and from the Easter Island Rotary.

 

 

They also went to Patagonia and had a lamb roast. Got to see glaciers and penguins on an island.  They spent a lot of time on boats and it was very cold, especially on the boats.

 

She talked about the food and really liked the clams with cheese on top. She had to adjust to the meals in Chile. Breakfast is just coffee and bread.  Lunch was the big meal. Dinner was just bread and jam. So, she gained 25 lbs on exchange.

 

The 3^rd Rotary trip was to the north of Chile in Atacama Desert. There is lots of salt in the desert and they export it from there. There were lots of alpaca everywhere.

 

Dana had 2 other host families, who took her on trips to parts of Chile she had not seen on the Rotary trips.

 

She said there were beautiful sunsets in Chile and great parks in Santiago. She had a makeshift Thanksgiving dinner with fellow American exchange students. She also ended up in a Facebook ad for bottled water.

 

Dana now takes Spanish at Temple University, but is undeclared as to her major at this time.

 

Dana Kuffa giving her presentation on her exchange year in Chile