Seattle closed out the month of July with the Torchlight Run and Parade, part of the month-long Seafair Festival. Eight HTC students ran in the Torchlight Run – five students in the 8 km race, and three students in the five km race. Hiroyuki Abe (from Osaka school) was the first HTC student ever to finish the 8 km in under 30 minutes (29:50). After the race, we moved to the parade route to watch the floats and costumes of various associations and ethnic communities of the Seattle area.
In the first week of August, six new students came through the Trajal Internship Program, to work at Hotel Pacific, the Mariners Store, YMCA, Tillicum Village, and Evergreen Escapes (a tour company). They had a week of intensive English practice and then began work at their unpaid internships.
The climax of Seafair – the Blue Angels air show and the hydroplane races on Lake Washington – was unfortunately accompanied by cool, cloudy skies with occasional rain. But the Edmonds students took a field trip to the Boeing Museum of Flight before the clouds rolled in, and they could watch the Blue Angels taking off and landing on their practice runs. On the same day, the Shoreline students visited the Asian Art Museum and the grave of renowned martial artist Bruce Lee. The final project for the Summer Quarter was short comedic plays based on themes relating to the students’ experiences in America – travel troubles, bad restaurant service, homestay situations, etc.
We held final exams in mid-August, and the following week our whole school headed north across the Canadian border to Whistler resort, about 2 hours north of Vancouver, for our annual three-night school trip. Our first night, we had a dinner/dance party, at which the students continued a tradition of converting Mr. Nojima into a pop-culture figure, which this year was of course Lady Gaga. On the suggested itinerary, I included a 5 km jog/run on each of the three mornings. The first morning, there were 18 students able to roll out of bed for the 7:30 start, but the second day there were only 4 students, and on the last morning only one student joined me. One exciting thing happened on the second morning run – we encountered a black bear on the trail! We took care to pass by slowly and quietly, but the bear was focused on getting food out of a garbage can, and showed no interest in runners and cyclers.
For daytime activities, our students played tennis and golf, paddled canoes or kayaks in a lake, took a two-hour cycling trip, tried horseback riding, and rode the gondola up Whistler Mountain for some high-altitude hiking to the summit. Nighttime activities included star-gazing, gossiping/drinking, and hopefully some sleep. The weather was very cooperative – warm and crystal-clear through the first three days. It cooled down and clouded up a bit on the final day – departure day – but we didn’t have time for activities anyway.
Now it is summer vacation, and our students are off traveling or preparing to travel here and there around America. Four students stayed at the hotel in Whistler for a four-week summer internship. This week we have 31 students visiting Edmonds Community College from the Airline studies divisions of the Osaka school. They are the last segment of the All-School Short Term Study Abroad experiment being implemented for the first time this summer.
Neal Colodner
August 24, 2010
