Los Angeles and Nagoya held an function named the “Student Exchange Software Reunion 2021” on line starting up on July 30 with above 80 folks in attendance.
The occasion was jointly sponsored by the Los Angeles-Nagoya Sister City Affiliation (LANSCA), which celebrated the 60th anniversary of the sister-city connection in 2019, and the Global Exchanges Part of the City of Nagoya. Its goal was to rekindle the ties involving former students and chaperones from the Student Exchange Software as very well as participating college officers, host households, and others.
The university student trade program has been done for the previous 60 years, with just about every sister town sending four higher college pupils and a chaperone to the other sister metropolis in alternate years for the duration of summer season family vacation. On the Los Angeles side, the trade system has been financed with funds elevated by LANSCA volunteers.
Teruko Weinberg, who designed the notion for the occasion as chairwoman of LANSCA, explained the reunion’s fundamental premise: “We had to halt the College student Exchange Program in 2020 for the reason that of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the past exchange remaining Los Angeles college students who visited Nagoya in 2019. I observed a way to defeat this split in the application by producing a digital occasion that would revive the recollections and experiences of method alumni and also become a product for a identical once-a-year occasion in the future. We made the decision to give this notion an preliminary check out and established it up with the Town of Nagoya.”
The celebration employed the World wide web to connect contributors gathered at Nagoya’s World-wide Education Centre with others joining remotely from home. It was led by two individuals as emcees: Megumi Endo of the City of Nagoya and Dickson Perey, chairman of the LANSCA Student Trade System.
At the outset Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura arrived to the International Training Center and gave his remarks in English, emphasizing the importance of the marriage of friendship between Los Angeles and Nagoya.
He was adopted by online video messages from Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Nina Hachigian and Akira Muto, consul basic of Japan in Los Angeles.
Next on the plan were alumni of the software, which includes previous chaperones who appeared on monitor just one by just one and talked about their reminiscences of the software as very well as their present lives.
Karl Lin, an trade university student from Los Angeles in 2015, recalled how his participation in the application during substantial school grew to become a turning point in his life: “I am now attending Tokyo University as a Fulbright scholar. When I was in Nagoya, I was dissatisfied that I couldn’t talk nicely with my host spouse and children simply because I spoke no Japanese. With that in thoughts, I double-majored in science and Japanese at higher education (in the U.S.) and am now pursuing publish-graduate scientific tests in Japan.”
Cindy Martinez, who was a chaperone in charge of 4 students from Los Angeles in 2019, stated, “I obtained a new Japanese family members during my remain in Nagoya. When people check with what I like most about Nagoya, I inform them it is how superb all the persons are.”
It is envisioned that the College student Exchange Method will return to its typical format in the summer months of 2022 with superior college learners from Los Angeles traveling to Nagoya.