Blog

It has been an exciting year for our club, with many activities occurring in all avenues of service and within the club itself. My first year as PR director has been a challenging and exciting one, with much learning taking place, getting runs on the board and slowly but surely building a PR case for the club that I am very proud to say I can pick up and run with into next year, as I retain my current position.
I have to say I have been supported strongly by some members of the club, almost to the point of them taking over my role! My weekly Hub report was on many occasions submitted before I put finger to keyboard. Rtn. Adrian Hallett is a one-man publicity machine, carting behind him - as he does to every event - a trailer packed with signage and paraphernalia promoting the club. This was particularly helpful as many weekends I am called to duty in my business. Thank you Adrian for all your support! I have had some discussions with him, and we have some big plans for that trailer and all it contains.
On the media front, I have begun learning the ropes. We have had one or two nice articles in the paper, and I have placed the obligatory accompanying advert on one occasion to ensure a nice placement. The Hub is a central tool in the PR arsenal, and my weekly reports have hopefully provided mirth and merriment, as well as informative insights into the caliber of our guests and the high quality of our regular meetings. The district’s “Humanity in Motion” magazine is a splendid publication, in which I was proud to have contributed a wonderful two-page spread that is now popping up all over our community.
Since I took on the role of PR director, I have been maintaining an interim Website, in preparation for the imminent launch of our brand new Website. The interim site has been a source of information for anyone searching for the club, and we have had numerous members of the public approach us directly as a result of finding us in Google. The new site is a big undertaking, and I am very much looking forward to completing it. It is fully branded to Rotary International style guidelines, and is designed to grow with every activity that we undertake. It also has a newsletter mailing list facility for both members and the general public, so that we can send out two different e-news publications. The Website is taking a while to produce, because it is a huge project – and I do need some help – but it will be launching within the next month or so – ready for the new board to marvel over… and take credit for!
Recently, I participated in MUNA as video and audio producer. The audio version of the entire event is complete and is of huge benefit to all participants, past, present and future. The promotional video will highlight just how much fun and how rewarding the event is. It will be a good vehicle to promote MUNA and our club, setting a good standard for future publicity. I have already set up a YouTube site for Ryde Rotary, in readiness for the video’s completion.
Thank you to everyone who has mentored and supported me all year. I am looking forward very much to the year ahead, as I consolidate a lot of the ground work I have laid down these past 12 months.

My dearest Aussies
It’s a long time since I let you know last that I’m still alive. Well, I am alive, and life has been pretty good. Now I have definitely arrived back home in Switzerland, physically and with my thoughts as well. My brain thinks in German, like it did the first 16 years of my life and I have the feeling, my English already became a bit worse.
School started three weeks ago and since then it kept me busy. Today I had my first Physics test, which isn’t my favourite subject, and it went so/so. Over all it isn’t too hard to follow the lessons. Though I already had some sessions after school, when some friends explained to me everything I did not understand. And it helped. I just would like to take school seriously from now on. I always had my homework done even before the date it was due, hehe, I am a bit proud of myself. Luckily I don’t have to attend all the English lessons, so I get to sleep in on Tuesday mornings. So nice!
My new class is great. I found friends really fast and we all get on with each other really well; it’s a pleasure to sit in class together. May be the fact, that we are 11 girls and only 3 boys, makes it special. From the 21st to the 26th of September we’ll be on school camp in Tuscany (It) and we will visit Pisa and Florence. I’m so excited.  Because since I’m back, I feel a bit restless and I want to travel all the time. It doesn’t matter to where I’m travelling; I just want to go somewhere.
This Saturday I’ll have my first concert with my orchestra, after just four rehearsals! I’m the only French horn now, so I have to play ‘forte’ all the time. But I’m used to all the jealous trumpet players who have to make silly comments, hehe, they wish their instrument would sound as nice as mine does! Yesterday we had our first rehearsal with the flute ensemble, which I founded two years ago with two friends. We have lots of fun to just play together and we also play at competitions.
On Wednesdays I coach a girls soccer team. It makes fun; we already had three games and got four points out of them. My dad gave me an early birthday present and bought me a special folder for soccer coaches. It has a magnetic field on the inside, on which I can show our strategy to the team and so on. It’s really cool! Of course, I still play soccer myself; it keeps the balance.
One of my big projects for the next few months is to organise the stay of the Barker College chamber orchestra and choir here in my town. My mum and I are organising host families for the few days they will spend in Switzerland, here in Lucerne. It’s quiet a bit of work, though I so excited about it, I don’t care! My school is helping as well to organise a concert or two, so it will be fantastic.
My family is well. Three weeks after his hip operation, my dad is walking again, slowly, but his progress is good. Manuel, my older brother is still in the army, becoming an army nurse (?). And the little ones are just being annoying… as usual. No, just joking, they are working and going to school, as usual. Mum is working hard, as usual. So everything is normal!
Lots of love, I miss you all!!!
Andrea 

My dear Aussies, Exchange Students and other friends

It’s been a month since I arrived back home in Switzerland. And it has been a busy month. Lots of Welcome parties, meeting friends and relatives, going out, playing soccer and earning money.

Over all it took me about a week, may be even less, to get used to Switzerland. I never expected that it would be that easy. Not much changed, and I kept myself busy.
By now I have been working for 3 weeks.  I have a job in a Restaurant as waitress. It is soo stressful, I just crashed into my bed in the evenings and I had to set two alarm clocks in the morning to wake myself up. But at the same time I also wanted to have a life. So I gave up some hours of sleep to have time to cook dinner with my friends, to go to the Blue Balls Festival in Lucerne at night or to watch Movies with my brothers. I found out, it’s not very healthy to sleep less than 6 hours a few days in a row…

Last week I took a break from work and went to soccer camp with my Soccer club. For the first time I was a coach and had to teach the 7-8 years old boys how to pass a ball properly. It was sooo much fun! I was the only female coach on camp, how lucky! ;P
Being coach was so good, that I agreed to become coach for a girls team for the next year. Now I’m hoping to be able to attend some classes so I’ll know what to do…
That means I’ll be even busier in the future.
I dropped the idea of joining the local orchestra, too much hobbies. Though I still play in my youth wind band, we’ll start rehearsing in two weeks and I still haven’t got a French horn!

I went to ‘the city’ Lucerne a few times in the past few weeks… it is amazing how small and cute it is! It seems to be a little suburb. Yesterday I drove through Berne, the capitol of Switzerland, and on the highway it said ‘21km to Berne’. Guess what! We were still driving past plains with little farms and cows (with bells) on it! How funny! In Sydney one would be in the middle of suburbs!

Lots of people always ask how it was, my year overseas! And each time I feel so bad when I say ‘it was great, awesome, amazing and just unbelievable’. Because how would they know how it really was? How should I put one year in one sentence? Then I just say ‘If I could, I would go again right now’!

Last Friday I also got my English results back. I passed with the grade B and I’m very happy about it! So all the studying was worth it. YAY

So yeah, all together I would say I’m very well. Live goes on, there is always something happening and soon when school starts it’ll be even worse. I thing of you all a lot, there is no day passing without it and I miss each one of you! Take care, I hope to hear from you sometime!

Love and hugs
Andrea