Feature Profiles
8 January, 2026
SUMMER READING: Charmaine's best decision
Rheola teenager Charmaine Soulsby is back on home soil after her year as a Rotary exchange student. Here she shares memories of an experience that was ...
GOING on exchange to the Czech Republic was the best decision I have ever made.
The friends and experiences I made along the way will stay with me for the rest of my life.
It wasn’t without its ups and downs but now I can look back on them and laugh.
I travelled to so many countries in Europe like Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the Vatican City as well as travelled around The Czech Republic near where I lived in Ceský Krumlov.
I went on exchange with the Rotary Youth Exchange program (with District 9800, my host club was the Bendigo Rotary Club), so I met lots of friends through them and the many events we had over the year.
I had opportunities to go on a ski trip for a week in Slovakia going snowboarding with my fellow exchange friends and it was so fun learning how to snowboard in good conditions with awesome snow, when I’d only ever been tobogganing on Mt Bulla in Australia.
I also had the opportunity to go on a Euro Tour with the Czech Rotary where we travelled to France, Spain and Italy and saw many of the wonderous sights like the Eiffel tower, the Colosseum, Pompeii and many, many more places.
Two weeks and three countries to explore doesn’t seem like enough time but somehow it was and wasn’t.
I met so many new friends through school and Rotary. Friends that I’ll keep for life and friends I still talk to after getting back in January.
They have become some of my closest friends and I will hold them with me forever. My friends from school made it so much easier to navigate school life because the school was really big and there were stairs everywhere. It took me most of the year to finally grasp where I was going.
My first friend I made messaged me on Instagram before I even started school because they knew they were getting an exchange student in their class and said that we could meet up and help me get around, if it wasn’t for her, I would have never gotten to my classes the first few days.
The friends I made through Rotary made the events we went to so much better and it was nice that we all had something in common; people who are on the other side of the world from their home countries and in a new place that they have never been to before.
I met people from Germany, Finland, Taiwan, America, Canada, Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Italy, France and many more countries so not only did I learn about the Czech traditions, but I learnt about all these new traditions from my peers, heard their language and picked up words and phrases. Things I never would pick up in Australia.
There were so many opportunities offered by my host families. I got to go to Croatia with my host dad and some of my host siblings to go scuba diving, travelled around the Czech Republic for summer camps and small trips where I made even more friends and got to learn about them.
As well as learning about new cultures and traditions I also got to talk about the Australian culture and traditions we have, and it was nearly one of my favourite things getting to teach people about my home country and see them genuinely interested.
As us Australians like to do, I often exaggerated things about Australia, whether it was our accent, how big the spiders are or how scary the snakes are, and it was quite fun to pull their legs and see them genuinely terrified of where I live, thinking that it was like full blown carnage when in reality we are all quite happy and content and perfectly safe.
There were some downs throughout my exchange which is to be expected and one of the biggest downs I had was nearly not being allowed on my plane home because it was overbooked. I went to get my boarding pass at the Doha airport after flying there from Prague and they said they could not let me on the flight because they had overbooked it.
I was tired, and ready to be home. In the end, they did get me on the flight thanks to a man who upgraded his seat, and it was such a relief because I did not want to wait for the next flight.
As I’ve already said going on exchange was the best decision I ever made, and I highly recommend it to everyone! I’m really grateful for the experience, thank you to the Bendigo Rotary Club for making my exchange possible.