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Javier Garcia

Senior of the Month

Adam Jaffe with

John Congemi

YOUTH EXCHANGE and

SENIOR OF THE MONTH

The attendees at the meeting today brought the average age for the day down a few notches as we were loaded with youth.  The festivities started with the monthly visit from Douglas High Assistant Principal John Congemi who presented this month's Senior of the Month, Adam Jaffe.  Adam is hooked on science and hopes to get into medicine after studying at Duke University.

Today was Youth Exchange day, for sure, and introduced were last year's student from Germany Charly Kleint, who was back for a week's visit. Charly's sister will be coming here next year and will be hosted by this club - our 15th consecutive year hosting a student!  Also here was Jillian Flon who we will be sponsoring next academic year in Finland. We didn't have to ask Andrea Mastio to speak - he did it anyway.  He is our Inbound student this year from Italy and recently participated on the winning team in the Coral Springs Youth Basketball league.

The main speaker today was Javier Garcia.  Space does not permit recounting his adventures in Taiwan last year, living in the farm town of Shulee and struggling to learn Taiwanese, Chinese and the local dialect.  All this while going to cooking school - having never cooked before.  He told of the great times he had surfing, breaking all the rules, and becoming almost adopted by his host family, and when his host grandmother died he was treated as if he was a true family member.  The year has changed his life and he thanked all for the opportunity.