1) I’m aymeric, I’m eightien and live in Brussels, Belgium. My biggest pation is music, I play drums since 4 years and guitar since 3. I also draw a lot, play drama, and next year I’ll study cinema in Belgium. We can say that I’m an artist.

My host rotary club, Lamorinda Sunrise, is a really fun club, always joking, having fun, but including the job to do. It is an effective combination between recreation and work. My Rotarian Counselor is a great guy! I know that I can count on him if I’m in trouble or if I have something to share with the Rotary.

My host High School, Acalanes HS, is completely different from my High School back in Belgium. The system is different from A to Z. In High Schools in Belgium (called Secondary School), we are from grade 7 to 12. We have a different schedule for every day, and we see the same people nearly all day long, because we are in groups of approximately 20 kids from the same grade that have approximately same schedule for the week. We have the right to go out of the school at lunch. It’s to the student to take charge of himself and of his education. The parents will never be phoned because of the kid was late. It’s to the pupil to make the steps, to contact the teacher if it is needed. But most of the teachers will never be after him if he doesn’t do his homework. It’s his problem. In my school in Belgium, we learn more than here to manage ourselves and to be prepared with the life of adult, in my opinion. But something that is better here than in Belgium is that you have a lot of extracurricular activities proposed by the school: sports, clubs, … Which you will never find in Europe, where school is only to study, and not really a place of fun times.

2) My first surprising impression comming here in the USA, was that the people are not really so fat. The opinion we have of the united states in europe is very very bad, for us you’re just fat people eating fast foods, driving huge cars polluting a lot, always a gun under the pillow,… It’s sad but it is what we think about you. Hopefully, I’m very very glad to see that it is not real. So my perceptions of American has already changed, I realized that finally you aren’t really different than us. And next year, when I’ll come back home, I’ll tell everybody that we are wrong about you.

3) Next year I’ll study cinema at the IAD (Institute of Arts of Diffusions) in Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium. I want to work in the cinema industry and more specificly behind the camera. The Rotary Youth Exchange experience may help me in being able to communicate with human beings, be aware. I hope to create me a name in that industry, and rotary youth exchange experience can help me understanding the world.