Grüezi – Guten Tag – Buongiorno – Bonjour – Hello - ¡Hola! – Konnichiwa – Aloha - Goede Dag – God Dag – Selamat Pagi
Dear Members of District 7080,
As we begin a new Rotary year with our DG Sohail leading our district, I would like to thank him and the entire District Leadership team for selecting me and guiding me to be the DGE for the next twelve months. I would not be here today without the encouragement and support of so many members of my club, my cluster and the entire district. And of course, I could not be doing what I love to do without my husband Richard and my mother Gabi who both have my back, always. Thank you all for being here for me.
As the title mentions, I would like for you to get to know me a bit better. I cannot put a lifetime in a few paragraphs, but I can give you some highlights and as time goes by, many of you will find out even more about me, some expected things and, believe me, some very unexpected things. As you saw above, I said hello in many different languages. These languages come in the order of how I learned them, I am not fluent in all of them, but I am practicing most of these languages every day. I challenge you to name all these languages and send me an email with eleven languages and the first 10 people to send me and email with the correct answer will get a little prize. (Hint: the last one I just learned a few weeks ago!)
You may already know that I was born in Lucerne, Switzerland and lived in the same house in the neighbouring town of Kriens (apart from one year when I lived in Tokyo) until I moved away to the United States in the year 2000. Both my parents studied Textile Engineering in Germany and together took over and led the family business in Lucerne.
Although I like sciences, I always loved languages and language studies. And my desire to learn Japanese and then live in Japan stems from meeting many Japanese tourists at the station of the gondola going up to Mt. Pilatus. I must be on thousands of photos that the tourists took, most likely because I looked like “Heidi” when I was a child. I love the area in and around Lucerne and I remember fondly that in the winter my friends and I went skiing down from Mt. Pilatus straight to our town, something that has not been possible in probably almost thirty years.
I always enjoyed traveling and discovering new places. I lived in places that could not be any more different from each other, places like Shibuya, Tokyo, 10 minutes away from Shibuya crossing the busiest crosswalk in the world; Oxford, Mississippi, where the Ole Miss Football Stadium has a capacity of 64,000; Honolulu, Hawaii, where the next closest land mass is about five hours by air; and Miami, Florida, where North and South America “meet”. I learned to adapt to all these places and I was always sad to move away.
And then, in 2006 I moved to Canada, to Orangeville to be exact, to be with my husband Richard. Again, a new place, new people and new things to learn. For two years, until I obtained my Landed Immigrant status, I was trying to meet people and make friends, and thanks to the Rotary Club of Orangeville whose President invited me to come to a meeting in summer of 2007, I finally got to meet people in the community and I got more and more involved. I am forever grateful to all the club members, many of them have since passed, for welcoming me to the family of Rotary, for making Canada not just another place to live, but for making it my home.
There is so much more I could tell you all about me, but over time you will find out more. I cannot give away everything just yet, I have two more years of contributions to the newsletter ahead of me. If there is something you would like me to write about, please send me a message and ask away. There may be something that I can use for an upcoming story.
Have a wonderful month of July, and for those clubs with Ribfests or other events I wish you great weather and successful days ahead. Let me know if you are short a volunteer, I may be able to come out for a few hours and help out. And as always, thank you all for everything you do for Rotary and your communities.
A’ohe hana nui ka alu’ia
No task is too big when done together (Hawaiian proverb)