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Event Description
Holy Trinity School Visit
Our good old Holy Trinity school's 3rd grade class is back again lead by new teacher, Ms. Jodi Adam, after Mrs. Yurkovic was retired last year. Since our 4 programs, including Origami, Calligraphy, Kimono wearing and Kamishibai paper theatre, were always very popular before and they were perfect for the 3rd grades, we decided to continue. For Calligraphy desk, we had kid's names in Katakana prepared by Akiko-san to go with Spring in either Kanji or Hiragana. For Origami, there was a time in the past we had students challenged to make a Cube but we sensed it may have been a little too hard for the 3rd grade kids, at least for some of them. So we brought the popular jumping frog game back to the class. We got extra volunteers this time for Kimono wearing, hoping it'd allow us to put Kimono and Obi on kids more carefully so they wouldn't fall down during photo. We brought a pretty Kimono for Jodi-sensei for her first try. She did look very nice indeed. While kids were waiting for the next program, Rosemarie was telling them about Japan and I'm sure they would remember the special moment for a long time. Kids accept without question that Rosemarie who certainly doesn't look like a Japanese and speaks perfect English is one of our representatives, and I think that is very important part of our program it is simply a natural thing that anyone could love Japanese culture and adopt them in your life. Because we were told we'd have to let kids leave on time, we rushed from the beginning. As a result, there was almost a half an hour left before leaving time after I finished reading Hanasaka Jii-san the Kamishibai, so we had added Q&A time. Obviously, they studied about Japan beforehand as some asked us about Basho the poet. That certainly challenged our (my) intelligence and academic level& Thanks to my staff, as I confirmed they must have done well at school, who helped me with the appropriate answers. Who knew 3rd grade kids would ask us about Basho&? It reminded me that we should prepare for some intelligent questions at the next visit.
12 days after our visit, I received email from Jodi-sensei in which she informed me kids are still talking about their experience of that day. That means, I trust that we have created another bridge, an invisible but very strong and invincible bridge in their heart. That's what we do. To our very reliable and trusty volunteers who again showed great teamwork I thank you all for your excellent job. With our teamwork, we can do a lot more good things to the community, especially to kids, in the future.
Midori Shinye
Project Leader
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