Rotary exchange student trades Warsaw for Campbellford for a year
Rotary exchange student trades Warsaw for Campbellford for a year
Malwi Lukawczyk is busy trying to experience everything this area offers
For the last six months Malwi Lukawczyk’s life has included eating Beavertails on the Rideau Canal, attending a Toronto Maple Leafs game (which they won), plunging into the freezing Trent River, camping and canoeing in Algonquin Park, and enjoying food at a Taco Bell for the first time.
All normal events for many Canadian teenagers. The difference for Malwi, who just turned 17, is that she’s an exchange student from Poland, sponsored by the Rotary Club of Campbellford, and those activities have been due to efforts by local hosts to show her what life in rural Ontario is really like.
Chatting with her, it’s clear she’s an intelligent and focused young woman who has a mature outlook on life, one that she says is the norm among her friends in Warsaw who are planning their futures and making what they expect to be life-long friendships.
“People in Poland are more focused on their future and that I have to do well because I'm going to university,” she says.
The culture here and at Campbellford District High School is more relaxed and easy going.
“I’m not good at small talk,” she says. But that’s a personality trait, not a language barrier. Her English is excellent with only a trace of an accent. She has made friends here at school and after we talked, she left to get ready for a school dance.
At home, Malwi attends a high school focused on the arts, about an hour commute from her house in another part of Warsaw. She’s taking several related classes here, but they won’t count towards her high school record in Poland. When she returns home, she’ll have two more years of high school and her current plan is to attend university to study psychology with the intention of getting a PhD.
Like many European countries, Poland offers citizens tuition-free university for a first undergraduate degree. Malwi says she may take advantage of that or seek a scholarship elsewhere, leaving no doubt that getting the marks needed would not be a barrier.
“I'm thinking more about doing a scholarship in a different country, but Poland is very good option too,” she says.
Since arriving, Malwi has plunged into Campbellford life – quite literally since she did the Campbellford Memorial Hospital Auxiliary’s Polar Plunge on Jan. 27 with another exchange student who is staying in Brighton, raising almost $3,000.
“It wasn’t bad, I’d do it again,” she says with a smile. “My mother wants to do a plunge in Poland.”
Malwi’s mother Agnieszka is head of operations in Poland for DHL Express and she’s fluent in English, although her teenage daughter says she has an accent. I was a Rotarian for a decade and observed that most students who came here were from well-off families with parents who were professionals or business executives.
Malwi is the latest exchange student hosted by the Rotary Club of Campbellford, which for the last 46 years has welcomed a student to the community and showed them bright lights of Campbellford and many parts of Canada.
In return, many years a Campbellford student gets to spend a school year overseas. For example, Shay Meier is currently in Brazil and Piper Godden has been selected to spend next year in Denmark.
The program relies on volunteers to host the students. Malwi said her family has hosted about eight students over the years and she expects she and her mother will have visitors again next year. One of Malwi’s three older brothers did a Rotary exchange to Mexico 11 years ago and two cousins have also taken part, so she grew up expecting to make a journey somewhere.
Since Malwi arrived she has spent time living with Rob and Anne Pope in their home on Burnbrae Rd., with Colin and Melissa Burton on Centre St., and is now living with Campbellford Rotary Club president Julie Andras and her husband John at their place outside Hastings. Then, she’ll be moving in with Ashley Townsend and Joe Heenan before heading home in early July.
The Pope’s took Malwi to Ottawa during Winterlude where she got to skate on the Rideau Canal, although the ice was rough this year. And, most importantly, to try a Beavertail.
“I enjoyed it,” she says.
Malwi says she’s been surprised by the popularity of rugby and golf among young people she’s met here, since they aren’t as popular at home. The interest level in hockey is different here too, but not so unexpected.
“I attended my first big hockey game,” she says. She didn’t mention it, but the Leafs won. Let’s hope she doesn’t catch the lifelong love of the Maple Leafs that causes so much angst every spring.
After six months in Canada, Malwi has come to realize just how much she loves Poland.
“I appreciate my country more than I did and I love Poland. I think it's a great place to live.”
It’s not that she’s homesick, she’s just come to appreciate what her home country offers and how it differs from Canada, at least this part of Canada. For example, she lives in a suburb of Warsaw that is served by excellent public transit and rail service, making it quick and easy to get around the city, or around Europe.
Since arriving here in mid-August, she’s learned that public transit doesn’t exist in this community and most every time you need to go somewhere it means getting in a car. In fact, she finds the car culture, or more accurately the truck culture, quite a change since most people jump in their vehicle for any trip, no matter how short.
“It was interesting for me that people here tend to not walk a lot,” she says. “They just stick in car even if it's very small distance, that was surprising for me.”
Malwi says English is a mandatory subject in Poland. She also understands Spanish, took a French course in the fall and is currently taking private French lessons. “When I was in Ottawa watching question period, I could understand half of the things they said, so that was awesome,” she says.
She’s also studying Russian and says it took only two days to master the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.