The Rotary Club welcomed Katarina Braess, our visiting New Generations Service Exchange student to the podium, who provided a summary of herself and of her community.
She began her presentation by thanking everyone for providing her with this opportunity, she is having a wonderful time and learning a great deal about her chosen profession.
Katarina began by speaking about her hometown, Regensburg which is in Southwestern Germany in Bavaria. She believes that Bavaria has the most distinctly German culture of any of the area's of Germany. The City means "Castle at the Rain" and has a population of 150,000. It has history dating back to the Roman Empire, and the medieval inner city is a UNESCO world heritage site. She is sponsored for her exchange by Rotary Millenium Regensburg.
Katarina is almost 19, has graduated from high school and is taking a gap year before entering university. Her high school was founded in 1505 and her description of high school sounds like a lot more school and a lot less sports than in North America. She also described her previous participation in the Short Term Exchange program and their family had a Long Term Exchange student from Brazil stay with them.
In her gap year she has taken a French language course in Paris, spent time in Morocco doing social service work and has done legal internships in Regensburg and Munich. Definitely not an idle year, that's for sure. She will be returning home in late August, with intentions to attend university close to home.
We wish her all the best in her future endeavours.