Hosting Swedish Rotarians in Leuven

A few months ago Jan got into a conversation with a regional Rotarian who was organizing a Rotary Friendship exchange. It is a sort of exchange between Rotarians in 2 districts that get hosted for a couple of days in a Rotarian host family.  We thought that sounded like fun so volunteered right away to host a Swedish couple in our house at the end of May. 

It was a good opportunity to give our house a thorough clean-up activity in the days before, and it was awesome that our new lamps had miraculously arrived. 

At Saturday noon, we met with all the Swedish guests and their hosts at the Park Abbey for a lunch.  It was quite handy that the program was just taking place "in our backyard" as I dare to say so I could simply hop back home with the boys after lunch and skip the guided tour of the abbey that we know so well. 

After we welcomed our guests in our home and everyone took some much needed rest, we joined for a dinner hosted by a courageous Rotarian that hosted the group of 30 people in his home for dinner.  It was a pleasant evening with Belgian - Swedish exchanges, presentations of all the Rotary clubs involved, the typical exchange of Rotary flags and we got treated to some traditional Swedish songs by the guests. 

We felt that the guests were clearly tired after an overloaded program they had already done on this exchange in Limburg before so we just chilled at home most of the time on Sunday morning.  Some time to talk and get to know each other without the bigger exchange group around us. 

On Sunday afternoon we joined the guided tour of (the KU) Leuven, which brought us also to some new spots such as the top level of the rectoraat with good view above Leuven.  We concluded with some much needed drinks after the tour, which was also the goodbye of the group in its entirety. The rest of the program was split in smaller groups of host families. 

We hosted a dinner for our guests and an additional family at home.  After some busy days with a packed program in bigger group, it was very pleasant to be just cosy at home with much fewer obligations. It became a very pleasant evening, with a lot of wine tasting and a late night again that hurt the next day... I was the only one that had to respect office hours in the group. Ouch, that was not a funny Monday. 

A goodbye with very tired little eyes on Monday morning with our new Swedish friends.  

Everyone but me rested a bit more and then Jan showed several Swedish couples around at the Leuven beguinage because their flight was only in late afternoon. 

Well that was a fun but tiring experience to take part in this Rotary friend exchange program.