Visalia Breakfast Rotary - Visalia Breakfast Rotary News

This morning we had Officer Jason Feierbach and his partner, "Timber", visiting from the Visalia Police Department's K-9 Unit.

Jason was joined by Police Chaplain, Patrick Lozano, who also works very closely with the K-9 unit. Great program and very interesting.

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February 11th

Regular Club Meeting

Todd Martin, Membership Chair, inducts our newest member, Christian Anderson. Christian is a professor at COS and was sponsored by Brian Rouch.

Brian Rouch also gets a special "Sponsor" pin for bringing in a new member. Great job!

Kevin Daniel gets inducted into the Aviators Club this morning. Kevin is a big Jeff Gordon and NASCAR fan, which came as a big surprise. His call sign is "Rainbow Warrior" after his hero Jeff.

Our program this morning was from the Visalia Times-Delta. Linda Green, the Executive Editor, talks to the club about current business changes happening within the paper including Facebook and Twitter.

Paul Hurley, the Opinions Page editor, also spoke to the club about the future of local media. His opinion was that there would always be a need for local printed media, but that it would carry a premium cost.

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February 18th, 2010

Regular Club Meeting

Mike Sheltzer introduces our newest member, Erin Brooks. Erin is an attorney with the Public Defender's office.

Let's all welcome Erin Brooks to the club. Mike Sheltzer is her sponsor. Great job Mike!

Reggie Johnson performed a craft talk for the crowd today. Reggie spends his weekdays in Visalia and Friday through Monday with his wife in Arroyo Grande.

Paul O'Donnell is inducted into the Aviators Club as "McCool" Paul didn't send in a story, but is just a laid back guy, and Irish!

Paul Vortmann is also inducted into the Aviators Club. On a date with the "prettiest girl in school" back in high school, Paul encoutered a zipper "issue" which ruined the entire date for him. His call sign: "FlyBoy".

President Matt was our fill-in program today because of a last minute cancellation. Matt presented his trip to the Rotary International Conference in Birmingham England in June 2009. Also included were side trips that he took with his family to Spain and London.

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February 25th

Regular Club Meeting

One of our newest members, Erin Brooks, gives her craft talk. Erin is an attorney at the Tulare County Public Defenders office.
	Dennis Johnson gets inducted into the Aviators Club. Dennis has a good friend from college who is serving life in prison for being an international spy. Dennis' call sign: "DeepThroat".
Anthony Wicks also got inducted into the Aviators Club this morning. After dating his girlfriend for a year, Anthony went to her parents home, with wine and flowers in hand, introduced himelf to her parents and visited with them for over 1/2 hour. Finally, he asked where she was only to discover that he went to the wrong house, he should have been next door. His call sign: "Focker", after the Meet The Parents movie character.
	Our program for the day was Terry Manning from Tulare County Citizens for Responsible Growth. Terry updated the club on growth problems within Tulare county and fielded some great question.

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Update from Zoe Kirkpatrick - Outbound Exchange student in Ecuador

Amazon rainforest = AMAZING! I had such a wonderful time, and I miss it already! I would love to go back and volunteer or work there someday. It was absolutely beautiful. It was also lots of fun to be on a trip with other exchange students again. We have such good times together. We stayed at a place called Yachana Lodge (you can look it up online if you're interested). "Yachana" is Kichua for "a place for learning." Yachana also has a school campus where we got to go and help out and make friends with the students and such. The school is really cool and they have a lot of volunteers who go there from all over the world. At the school we got to play soccer and volleyball with the students, learned how to make bracelets out of hemp and seeds, and helped clear a field of plants and trees with machetes so they could plant it. The last one was probably the most fun, though it was the most work too. Hayley and I pretended that we were killing zombies, and everyone else joined in. It made the job more fun, because it was pretty hard. It was ridiculously hot outside, and it was pouring rain- not to mention the thousands of bugs that were attacking us. But, we definitely made it enjoyable. We are now pretty much professionals when it comes to chopping zombies with machetes. Haha. Other than the stuff we did at the school, we also did a lot of hiking, ate bugs (actually pretty tasty!), swam in the river lots, and went life-vest floating down the river. I was very surprised to learn that our tour guide, Fabio, was only 18 years old. He seemed so much more mature than any other 18-year-old I'd met in Ecuador, and he knew so much about the rainforest. He was also super nice, and he dubbed Hayley and I "las dos chicas mas felices del grupo" (the two happiest girls of the group). We pretty much became best friends. Haha. Over all, it was an incredibly lovely trip- heat, humidity, and bug bites included. I just wished it could have lasted longer! I was so not ready to come back to this giant, grey city, Quito. I miss the trees!!!