The weekend’s torrential downpours could only delay a busload of
Japanese junior high school students in their journey to City Hall
Saturday morning; a little rain wasn’t about to stop them.
Hollister – The weekend’s torrential downpours could only delay a busload of Japanese junior high school students in their journey to City Hall Saturday morning; a little rain wasn’t about to stop them.
After all, these kids from Takino, Japan had already traveled halfway around the world on a whirl-wind visit just to see what life is like in their sister city of Hollister, California.
But they got more than your average bus tour – they got a once-in-a-lifetime lesson on how small the world really is.
Mayor Pauline Valdivia was present to greet the 13 students as the bus pulled up to City Hall in the pouring rain Saturday along with a dozen local families ready to meet their house guests for the next few days.
It’s living with American families, even if it’s only for a few days, that makes this exchange program so worthwhile for both the Takino kids and their Hollister hosts, according to Ruth Erickson, who helps coordinate the cultural exchange program between Takino and Hollister every two years.
“The kids have to learn about each other from each other,” said Erickson. “They can’t just learn it by reading, by watching it on TV, or by looking on the Internet. They have to learn it from being with each other. You know, you have kids who come over here thinking life in America is like it is on Beverly Hills 90210.”
Over the next few days, the kids from Takino and their American hosts quickly overcame the stereotypes, and learned cultural differences and language barriers aren’t insurmountable if everyone gets involved.
Erickson said she was particularly impressed to see how well the kids from Hollister and Takino got along when the group of 13 visited Rancho San Justo Junior High School on Monday.
“What was nice to see was that the Rancho kids and the Takino kids were cooperating, laughing, doing things together,” Erickson said. “So I think that really broke down the boundaries of being too shy to say something in English (which the Takino kids are just beginning to learn).”
The 13 lucky Takino students were chosen through a lottery system to represent their junior high school in a cultural exchange that takes place every two years, according to Hollister City Clerk Geri Johnson. During their four days in America, the Japanese students also sat in on Rancho classes in leadership, wood shop and art. And while the Takino kids were shy around their American counterparts at first, all it took was a little goodwill to get the ball rolling.
“What you have to do is literally get an American student to say ‘Come on! Let’s go!'” Erickson explained. “They had a water balloon toss during lunchtime at Rancho, and as each student got splashed with a balloon, there would be more laughter. Once they saw how much fun it was, the rest of the kids were eager to join in.”
Many of the Takino kids also got to experience the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a private concert with the Rancho band and that most American of traditions, lunch at the neighborhood pizzeria.
Though the Japanese students left for home early Tuesday morning, Erickson and Johnson said they’ve already received lots of positive feedback from host families eager to bring another Takino student into their homes during the next exchange in two years.
“This morning on our way to drop (our student) off (to go to the airport), the one thing we were talking about having learned was that when you do go to another country, you have to remember to be polite, but you have to take the risk of trying,” said Heidi Henderson, who hosted 14-year-old Tomomi Serifu over the weekend. “By the end of her visit, Tomomi realized she didn’t have to be so shy. She spoke three full sentences in English this morning, which is more than I think she’d spoken all weekend. She told us ‘I had a very good time at your home. All of you were very kind to me. I am going to study English very hard, and I hope to come back.'”
“That’s why these kinds of programs are so good; these and any programs where you have students from different countries together,” said Erickson. “You realize that kids are kids anywhere. When you get kids together, they’ll play basketball, they’ll put together a puzzle, they’ll play video games. It makes no difference how old a student is or where they’re from; kids will get together and start doing things.”
Jessica Quandt covers politics for the Free Lance. Reach her at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or at jq*****@fr***********.com.
