Jack Cheshire page
South Carolina Youth Exchange 2016 – By Jack Cheshire
Hello! My name is Jack Cheshire and I had the great opportunity to visit the South Carolina Camp in the USA for a total of 4 weeks! I first found out about this scheme through my school assemblies and was amazed from the first day. I signed up as soon as I got home that day and could not wait to go. After I found out that I had been accepted into the South Carolina camp, I headed straight to the travel agent to book my flights!
After I had finished my AS Exams, my flight was only a few weeks away and could not contain my excitement for the amazing trip I had ahead of me. I arrived at Heathrow Terminal 3 on Saturday 9th July 2016 heading for Charlotte Airport in North Carolina. After a great flight and eventually getting through customs and immigration I caught my second flight direct to Columbia Metropolitan Airport in South Carolina. I was greeted by lots of Lions Members at the airport and also my host family. I found out that I was staying with another youth exchange student who was from Germany. After a 3-hour drive to our Host Family house we settled in and got some sleep!
Over the next 2 weeks with my great host, we visited 7 waterfalls in one day, went to a baseball game, learnt how to Water-ski and so many more amazing experiences. My host families mission was “To Create memories that would last a lifetime”, I can successfully say to him that he did exactly that! I won’t ever forget all of the great things that we did over the 2 weeks I was there and would love to go back there in the future to visit! Also when we were there we went to a Lions Club meeting in Clemson which was the closest meeting. This was a great opportunity to meet lots of other Lions members who were all so kind and polite to us and made us feel really at home. I would love to take this opportunity to say a huge thanks to Earl for having me and Chris for 2 weeks and that we won’t ever forget you.
After 2 weeks with my host family we moved to the Youth Camp in South Carolina where we met all of the other students and their host families. After a great opening ceremony and getting to know everyone else we had a great visit to a local Walmart to buy lots of food! In total there were 16 students from 14 different countries including Austria, Hungary and even Mongolia! We all bonded so quickly and became fast friends. Over the first few days we did so many amazing activities like Cliff Jumping, White Water Rafting and a huge theme park and even did some shopping which seemed to please the girls! Like the host family we went to Lions Club meetings where they catered us and were all very kind towards us. What I thought was good was that we didn’t stay in one place for the whole 2 weeks, we travelled all around the state and got to stay in lots of different types of accommodation like Universities, hotels and schools. I would also like to take this opportunity to say huge thank you to Jim, Ned, Linda and everyone else for their hospitality and organisation of everything over the 2-week period. We all had such a great time and will stay lifelong friends.
Finally, a huge thank you to Ringwood and Fordingbridge Lions club for making my dream a reality in the first place. I could not have done it without you all for sorting out all of the documents and making everything possible.
