At our Annual Welcome Home Dinners, returning Youth Exchange students have 3 - 4 minutes to share highlights of their year abroad. I remember the some of the best speeches over the past 15 years that I have been going to the dinner. One of the most memorable follows this memo.

I also remember Mary Bennett's speech in 1997 when she talked about her struggle winning the heart of her host mother in Italy, Robyn Chase in 1996 and her talk about the rollercoaster ride she went on during her year in The Netherlands, I remember Allison Ryan telling us by way of a Dr. Seuss-like peom of her year in Belgium more than 10 years ago. I remember hearing Isaac Dietz talk about living in Thailand on the beach when he was the first of our students to go to Thailand 8 years ago. I remember hearing Martha Swann talk about being in Madrid when there were bombings there last year.

Not all of these kids were great public speakers. And not all of them had perfect exchange years. But they told a story that made me feel that they had important experiences that were going to be with them for their lives. I hope you all can give that kind of speech.We are expecting something around 250 people at the dinner. In the audience will be your classmates and their parents, prospective students interested in applying in the future, members of the outbound class of 2005-06 and their parents, Rotarians who are interested in the program, Rotex members and members of the Rotary YE club and district committees who make this program run.

Some want to validate that the work they do is worth it and that you learned something. Some, like the students going out, want to hear a little about what they might experience. Still others want to know why they should apply to be an exchange student. Please keep this all in mind when you finish the preparation for tonight. Please dress appropriately. If you have a costume from your host country, please feel free to wear it. You should be in your blazer unless it is not going to go with your kimono or dirndl. We will be taking a picture of the class after the dinner so plan accordingly.

by Scott J. Wisner, Chairman, Rotary District 7150 Youth Exchange Committee
Proud to be the USA/Canada Youth Exchange Network
Outstanding Rotary District Youth Exchange Program
North America 2004

Thai-Dyed
by Emily Buhl, 2000-01

The best way for me to tell you about one of the experiences I had in Thailand is to briefly tell you about myself before I left. When I was five and a half months old I was adopted from Seoul, South Korea. I have lived every minute that I can remember in a white community where I was and still am ¼ the entire Asian population and I have never gone back to Asia. My parents are both Caucasian, so I didn’t have Asian American parents influencing my life either. While I never had to deal with any racism or any unfair treatment from the people of my town, I grew up a white American girl and completely ignorant of my heritage.

Jump to July 14th, 1999 and stepping off a plane in Bangkok, Thailand. For the first time in my entire life, everyone looked like me. I saw black hair like mine, skin like mine, eyes like mine. And while some of you may have experienced the same thing getting off the plane, I have never been completely surrounded by people who looked like me. The normalcy in looking somewhat like your friends and family was completely new to me. And it’s a strange experience to actually look like your parents for the first time in your life when you’re 17 years old. And to add insult to injury, to look more like the strangers you pass on the street then any member of your family. It was unnerving and exciting. Arriving in a place where all of a sudden you go from being a serious minority to an overwhelming majority is truly a weird feeling.

Now imagine being the new kid at school. You feel out of place, but eventually you make friends. It’s not quite the same as being a foreign exchange student, where you don’t even understand the language, so at first it can be heard to make, let alone speak, to your friends. But you aren’t so much of celebrity or a novelty, you’re just the new kid, sometimes ignored or immediately accepted. That’s the way I was treated when I first arrived. I wasn’t an exchange student, but the new girl. People didn’t stare at me the first day because I looked so different, but because I didn’t have a uniform on. I was brushed off at first glance, while the other exchange student was given a lot of unwanted attention. I was automatically assumed to be Thai. People would try and talk to me and they wouldn’t understand until I opened my mouth that I wasn’t Thai.

The rest of the year went like that. I wouldn’t get the stares my Caucasian friends would get. I didn’t have people shouting at me in English. I didn’t get random people asking to take photographs with me. People wouldn’t assume that I couldn’t speak Thai but that I spoke English incredibly well. While my friends and I were all going through similar experiences, I had an easier time because I was Asian. No matter how well they could speak Thai or act Thai, if they left their towns, they would have to deal with the same stereotypes all over again. It’s amazing how our senses break down some of our early defenses against people and how we feel more comfortable if the person looks like us; how our assumptions will most of the time be more positive. Even when people first met me and heard me talk, they still had a hard time I was American because I was Asian.

Although Thailand is not the country of my birth, it still is Asian and it bears some resemblance to South Korea. It helped me find a side of myself that’s so apparent to the world, yet very difficult for me to grasp. And now I stand before you, not white, not Korean, and not Thai. I am a little Caucasian, a little Korean, and Thai-Dyed as we like to call it. I haven’t gotten it all figured out yet and I will continue to struggle to find myself, but I believe Rotary and Thailand pushed me into my first step of a life long process of self-discovery.

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