Imagine being 16 and getting a change to spend a year of your life in a Swedish town famous for its ski hills, the Whistler or Vale of that country. That is the opportunity Jessica Stuart had as a Rotary Exchange student.
 
Each year that the Dryden Rotary Club agrees to host a Rotary “long term” youth exchange student from another country, the they get to send a local Dryden student to a foreign destination.
 
In reporting her experiences to the club Jesse took those in attendance on a picture tour of her time in Sweden.
 

 

 
Location of Are
 
(Top) Jessica & John Carlucci
​(Bottom) Ski Runs at Are
 
Stuart lived in the town of Åre, the leading Scandinavian ski resort in Sweden with 1,417 inhabitants
 
Her host, the Åre Rotary Club bought her a ski pass and she learned to ski and often skied 4 days a week from November to May.

ICEHOTEL is the world’s first and largest hotel built

of snow and ice and it is situated in Jukkasjärvi,

 a small village in Northern Sweden with

1,100 residents and 1,000 dogs.

Jessica also showed pictures of her visit to the “Ice Hotel”, her trip to Lapland in the north and of her host families.
 
She also went on a Eurotour with other exchange students and visited 12 countries in 20 days.
 
Although she is now fluent in Swedish, it took a while to learn because most young Swedes can speak English so that made it a little more difficult to learn the language.
 
Jessica thanked Rotary for the opportunity to go on this exchange and is already looking at going back and possibly doing university there.