Exchange Student Hans Lubeck's Intro Speech
Introduced by Ron Sedgley, our Rotary exchange student Hans gave an exceptional address. He gave a clear picture of what he was going to say and then kept us informed and entertained with his presentation.
In Denmark Hans lives with his parents and two sisters in a relatively small town of 5000 people.
Hans shared that New Zealand is a most sought after destination amongst exchange students because it is seen to be a safe, scenic country where the language is predominately English.
Hans learnt English in school from the age of ten and found that watching programmes on his computer helped immensely.
So far Hans has been on a trip to Hanmer which he found more mountainous compared to Denmark, and has enjoyed life at Papanui High which has 70 international students.
He initially attended an orientation time near Dunedin without Internet availability and thought that there would be little cultural difference between New Zealand and Denmark.
He was surprised to find how very polite New Zealanders are. In Denmark a greeting might be “Hi’.” In NZ we might say “How are you? How has your day been?”
This caused quite a hold-up for the queue at the check-out counter as he proceeded to give kiwis a more detailed account of his day!
Also the word ‘please’ is not used so much in Denmark.
High school is optional in Denmark, so there is a higher motivation amongst the students there, many of whom will go on to university.
Hans has listed the following goals to achieve while he is in NZ:
- See more NZ nature
- Skiing
- Mountain biking
- Rugby-watching (it’s brutal) and maybe playing.
- Get more involved in the life of our Rotary club.
We look forward to continuing to get to know Hans better during his time with us.