April 2: New Students Arrive!
A new group of 59 students arrived on Saturday on 2 planes - one from NRT and one from KIX. (7 students from HTC Tokyo, 19 from HTC Osaka, 32 from Japan Hotel School, and 1 from Keisen Hokkaido Kanko College.) From Sea-Tac Airport they transferred by bus to Edmonds Community College where their new host families were waiting. After greetings and some information from the Seattle school staff, the students met their new families and all headed off separately to their new homes. Many host families greeted their new members with flower bouquets, balloons, or colorful posters.
April 4-7: Orientation Week
Over 4 days, for a few hours each day, we conducted our new student orientation, including a campus tour, and brief "getting-to-know-you" interviews with student advisers. The La Nina pattern of cool, rainy weather, which has been plaguing us since last fall, continued through Orientation Week, making the students turn up their collars against the cold and open their umbrellas for their first commute to school on Monday, and on the campus tour.Aside from HTC teachers, we had the leaders of the Talk Time programs, scuba diving teachers, tennis team coach, and Japan Culture Club president come to orientation to introduce their activities and invite HTC students to join.
April 8: Seattle Tour
In a stroke of luck, we had clear skies for our city tour. Actually, at the first place we stopped - the Kerry Park view point - the Seattle skyline was still backed by a gray sky, but by the next stop - Pike Place Market - the warm rays of the morning sun felt good. We also visited Seattle Center, West Seattle (across the bay from the Seattle Waterfront), the Team Store of the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field, and Broadway Avenue - Seattle's Mecca of grunge and punk fashion.
April 15: SCC Japan Club welcomes HTC
Every spring, the Japan Culture Club at Shoreline Community College throws a welcome party for the new HTC students.As the Japan Culture Club has few Japanese members and is comprised of mostly American Japanophiles, the members are eager to practice Japanese and get the latest scoop from Japan from the newly-arrived HTC students. Hopefully, some strong friendships will develop between members of the two groups.
April 20: Baseball Game, Mariners vs. Tigers
Every year in Spring Quarter, HTC students from both Edmonds and Shoreline go as a class to watch the Mariners play at Safeco Field, with tickets provided by the colleges. Normally we would go to a Sunday game, but this spring the only available Sunday home games were on either Easter or Mother's Day, and we wanted the students to spend these holidays with their host families, so we chose a mid-day game on a Wednesday and canceled classes for the afternoon. The Mariners played against the Detroit Tigers. Once again the Mariners lost, but it was a sunny day, and the students really enjoyed the feeling of an American Major League baseball game - hot dogs, garlic fries, cotton candy, Cracker Jacks. They went all out rooting for Ichiro, and everybody was ecstatic when they saw themselves on the stadium's big screen a few times.
April 25: Safeco Field Stadium Tour
With last week's baseball game still fresh in their memories, the Shoreline students went on a field trip to Safeco Field for a tour of the stadium's facilities. They toured the locker room, club house, broadcaster seating, press conference room, and also got to sit in the Mariners dugout and walk on the field - though just in the dirt, not on the grass.
April 29: Tulip Festival in Skagit Valley
Because of the cool weather this spring, the famous tulips of Washington's Skagit Valley were late to bloom, and were just at the peak of their color this last weekend of April. With camera shutters clicking away, we walked around vast fields of pink, purple, red, yellow tulips separated by color. It was a warm, sunny day, but due to the abundant rain throughout April, the fields had many muddy areas, and if you didn't watch your step you'd sink up to your ankles.
Neal Colodner (Seattle, USA)
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