Goodbye - for now

Early to rise - gads, it really is early! The Japanese have a flight that leaves at 8:05 AM, so we meet them at the hotel at 6:00 AM. Everything gets loaded into the cars, and we head for Lambert Saint Louis International Airport.

Check-in is not too bad, except that two of the partners have overweight luggage. One suitcase is only about 4 lbs over, so a little redistributing seems to take care of it, but the other bag is seriously overweight - 15 lbs! The overweight charge is dreadful, but my partner opts to pay it. (Note to self - bring an extra suitcase to the airport next time! It would have been a lot cheaper to check another bag.)

Theckla's group arrives while our partners are checking in, so after her group finishes, we get everyone together for some group pictures. Then we head downstairs to the security checkpoint.

Here we visit for a few more minutes, but as the line moves towards the "no-pass" zone, we finally say goodbye, and move off in opposite directions, the Japanese to a long plane flight home and the Americans to church and home activities here.

It's hard to believe that a little more than a week ago, none of us knew more about each other than names and faces. We already have a shared set of memories from the Washington, D.C., meetings and our sightseeing and school visits during the past week, with many more activities and experiences yet to come. I look forward to our Spring BUGS count and the return visit this summer when I head for Japan.

A Bit More Sightseeing and Shopping!

Saturday morning dawns; we have all agreed that today will be a later start, so we meet our partners around 10:00 AM. Our first stop will be in downtown Saint Charles again; one of our partners has asked for more information about the City of Saint Charles, which is readily available at the Visitors Center. We find several interesting brochures for everyone to take, and head back outside.

Frontier Park adjoins the Missouri River, just one block away from the downtown area, so we walk over to get a closer view of the river. This is a typical small-town "city park": we have a large bandstand (used for the Municipal Band concerts in the summer and other events and presentations all through the year), walking paths, the old MKT "Katy Line" railroad depot building (no longer used for railroad activities, but available for private meetings and gatherings), and (the latest addition) a large statue of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, placed in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore and map the lands gained by the Louisiana Purchase. It's a nice park, a pleasant place to walk and enjoy the outdoors, even on a cold and windy day.

Then it's off to the main event - shopping at Saint Louis Mills, the newest outlet mall shopping center in the region. While some people do not see shopping as a tourist activity, it can be a very good model of the "Great American Dream" - lots of specialty stores, entertainment venues (cinema, skating park, indoor paintball maze and outdoor mini-car racing, etc.), and a food court that offers examples of many kinds of American-style "fast foods".

Our partners enjoy the opportunity to pick up last-minute souvenirs and specialty items to take home. Eventually, tired but happy, we head back for the hotel. Tomorrow is the flight home, and there is packing to finish (for the partners) and a very early start (for all).

Sightseeing again, Thursday and Friday

Now that we've had an opportunity to visit our schools, it's time to do some more sightseeing. The Saint Louis, Missouri, area is filled with places to go and things to see, and it is always fun to show visitors some of the special sights here.

Thursday, we spend the morning over at the Missouri Botanical Garden. This is a walled estate in the heart of South Saint Louis, once the home of Henry Shaw, a businessman and philanthropist who came to Missouri in the early 1800's and amassed a fortune which he then used to buy land and create a series of gardens for pleasure and for study. After Shaw's death, the land and much of his fortune were converted to a charitable trust, ensuring that the gardens and the study started during his lifetime would continue to be accessible to all.

While much of the outdoor area in the garden is still dormant at this time of the year, there are early bulbs beginning to bloom and some trees showing buds. The Garden is known for its Japanese garden, Seiwa-en, and the Climatron, a geodesic dome containing a tropical environment year-round, among other attractions. My partners seem to enjoy walking through the various garden areas.

Lunch is just down the street, at Rigazzi's Restaurant on The Hill. Italian immigrants settled in this part of Saint Louis in the early 1900's, and the area is known for its Italian-American cuisine. Those of us who call the Saint Louis area home have our special favorites among the restaurants, and Rigazzi's is one of the best known.

The remainder of the day is taken up with webposting, in the computer lab at Jefferson Middle School, and later at the hotel, when we realize that our joint postings need both English and Japanese text, and it is extremely difficult to enter Japanese text on standard American keyboards.

(I recall this as a problem 2 years ago, one that my then-partner and I solved with a little bit of creativity - I created an e-mail with the English text on my laptop, then sent the message to a Yahoo account that could be accessed from a hotel computer in Tokyo, one with a Japanese keyboard that my partner could use to add the Japanese text, which we then saved to CD and took over to Kinko's to have printed.)

With our initial postings uploaded, we separate to individual activities, the Japanese to dinner and the Americans to Holy Week Maundy Thursday services.

Friday is the full day of sightseeing - we head for Forest Park. There are quite literally far more things to see and do here than can be managed in a week, let alone a day, so Joy and I have decided that we will list several of the best attractions and let our partners decide which ones to visit.

Our first stop is the world-famous Saint Louis Zoo, known for many years for its association with Marlin Perkins (Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom) and currently rated as America's #1 Zoo. The morning is warm enough to encourage quite a few of the animals to venture forth from their lairs; only the true warm-climate animals stay snug inside, so we are able to see a large number of creatures of all sorts.

My partners and I decide to have lunch at the Zoo; while there, my daughter notices one of the penny-stamp machines (with Zoo motifs available) and asks if she can have some change to make souvenirs for the Japanese. I hand her my coin purse, and she asks the teachers to join her over by the machine, where she proceeds to demonstrate how it works and asks each teacher to choose a design to be stamped. They are very intrigued with both the results and the fact that such a thing can be done with actual money; I explain that, because the end result produces something that cannot be mistaken for regular coins, the process is permitted. We discuss whether a Japanese coin could be stamped in the same way, but decide not to give it a try; the only coin that is about the right size and thickness is a 1-yen piece, but it is aluminum and much lighter in weight than an American penny, so it might cause problems within the machine.

After a Zoo visit, Joy and her partners decide that they need to finish some webposting work, so they head back to the hotel. My partners and I continue on to the Saint Louis Science Center and McDonnell Planetarium; Ishii-san is an amateur astronomer and star-gazer, and I want him to get the opportunity to see one of the star shows. We get to see many of the Science Center exhibits, and also view a star show about the Spring Equinox sky, a great way to end the afternoon.

Tired, we head back to Saint Charles and the hotel. Dinner is again an individual affair for all.

Visiting our schools

Wednesday has come, and we finally get to show off our own schools. We arrive at the hotel to pick up our partners but discover that a problem has arisen: Ishii-san has been having problems with his eyes and needs to see a doctor. The traveler's insurance carrier is consulted, and they recommend a trip to the local hospital emergency room.

Since Saint Charles High School is the first stop of the morning, and Ishii-san is one of the junior high school teachers, it is decided that all but myself and Ishii-san will go over to the school, while I drive Ishii-san to the hospital. He demurs a bit, saying that he will take a taxi, but I insist that I should go with him - he is my partner, and it is important that he have someone else with him to help with any details or issues that might arise. So, we head for our various destinations.

Fortunately the nearest hospital is less than 2 miles away - there are advantages to living in a smaller town. We get in to see a doctor rather quickly (our timing was actually pretty good - just as we were finishing up, several ambulances arrive from an accident scene and the ER quickly fills up). Some special eyedrops are prescribed, and we are out in about an hour.

We make a stop at the pharmacy to fill the prescription, then go back to the hotel so that Ishii-san can change into more professional attire. Back to the car - we get to the high school in time to see a couple of the classrooms and have a short conversation with the others (who have had a complete tour already).

Then we head for downtown Saint Charles to meet the mayor. This visit goes quite well: our partners have gifts to present, and Mayor York also presents some mementos to each teacher. We take a quick tour of the City Council chamber and then go back to our cars.

Lunch today is at Golden Corral, a local all-you-care-to-eat buffet. After we manage to find lots of good things to eat, we head for Jefferson Middle School.

Students had been invited to join the tours at both schools, but only my daughter arrived for the morning high school visit. I have better luck when we get to Jefferson; 8 of my orchestra students are waiting to help with a tour. We see several of the classrooms, including most of the specialty classes, and rooms where the students pursue core studies. They also show off their lockers (which are not nearly as messy as I expected them to be - the school has new lockers, and the students really are trying to take good care of them this year), and demonstrate the favorite reading chairs in the library (rocking "Bubble" chairs) and the climbing wall installed in the gymnastics room last year.

Our partners go back to the hotel to relax for a bit, then join us for an informal dinner at Joy's parents' house. While we are there, Miki (who has worn a traditional kimono to the gathering) brings out a portable tea service, and gives a brief demonstration of the elements of the Japanese tea ceremony. Joy is presented with a special tea cup and a hanging for her school. I am delighted to see the tea ceremony performed, not only for Joy but for my daughter as well - she has heard me describe it from my past visit, but this gives her the opportunity to learn about some of the important details in the ceremony.

Home for everyone - tomorrow will be not quite as early, but we have much to see and do then.

Time to visit school

Tuesday is a "school visits" day. Since our school district is in the middle of its Spring Break, we have made arrangements to visit a neighboring district's buildings. It's also raining rather hard; I'm glad we are going to be mostly indoors today.

We start with Fort Zumwalt West Middle School, where we are greeted by the principal and the head of the guidance department. She gives us some information brochures about the school district, and shows us around; included are quick visits to the school library, a science class, and groups meeting in the Industrial Tech, FACS and art classrooms. A final stop to see some classes in the gym (playing ping-pong, and working on rotation exercise stations), then we head for the car and our next stop.

Fort Zumwalt West High School has some special activities - a short performance by the school's select choir, visits to science and math classes, and an advanced level business accounting class, and a quick view of computer drafting and some of the music classrooms. Then we head for lunch in the school cafeteria. We take our trays to the career center office, where we find a string quartet waiting to offer incidental music for our listening enjoyment (and they are quite good!).

After we eat, there is time for a question and answer session with the school principal and other staff members; we also get to talk with several students for a few minutes, to get a "feel" for what life is like in American schools. Fort Zumwalt has provided an excellent tour experience for our teacher partners, and we thank them profusely.

Our next stop is another favorite activity for the teachers - we head for Bookmark, a teacher supply store in Saint Charles. Japanese teachers have told us previously that there are no stores in Japan that carry primarily teaching materials and supplies (such as bulletin board creation materials, lesson plan reproducibles, and various charts and posters for classroom walls), and they have always been quite excited to see the array of items available for teachers in this store; today's group is no exception. An hour or two (and plenty of purchases) later, we head for the car.

Originally we had planned to go on down to Main Street for more shopping and sightseeing, but the rain is coming down harder than ever, and the temperature has dropped considerably - it's not freezing (thank goodness!), but it's very cold and not at all comfortable to be in. The group decides to head back to the hotel, where our partners will have a free evening, and Joy and I will head back to our houses.

Back home, and Sightseeing, Day 1

So, on Sunday, we fly back to Saint Louis with our partners. One group heads for the Central West End (Theckla, with the elementary school teachers), and the rest of us drive across the Missouri River to Saint Charles, where we introduce our partners to their home-away-from-home for the next week. Comfort Suites has been hosting our Japanese teacher partners for the past 3 years, and the manager has gotten quite good at helping these guests feel comfortable.

Joy and I head for our houses to unload luggage and greet our families, then we return in the evening to pick up the teachers and go to dinner; Lewis and Clark Restaurant, on Main Street, is a good place to start a week of shared activities. Theckla and her partners join us, along with our various family members and a good time is had by all.

Monday morning is cool but clear, which is good since we have a day of sightseeing planned. We start with a trip into Saint Louis, down to Pestalozzi Street, home of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery. This is a favorite tourist activity; we get to see how the world's most famous beer is made (and sample some, too!), and we even get to see the Clydesdale horses. Next stop is Busch Stadium (home of the Saint Louis Cardinals Baseball Club), to see the "old" stadium (scheduled to be demolished after the 2005 season is over) and the construction of the "new" stadium just to the south. Unfortunately, there are no tours scheduled today, so we content ourselves with a visit to the gift shop and a walk around to peek in at the gates.

Lunch is during weekday lunch time at a local fast food eatery, Wendy's, and surprisingly takes less time than we expected (an efficient lunch shift crew). Then we head for the best part of the day - a visit to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, otherwise known as the Gateway Arch. Just walking up the hill is an adventure; until you stand at the base, you cannot fully appreciate the sheer size of this thing. Getting into the underground museum and tram station takes a bit of time; one entrance is closed for renovations, and the other is doing a full TSA-style security check. But we finally get inside, and immediately head for the counter to buy our tram ride tickets. While we wait for our scheduled time, we browse through the gift shop and take a quick peek at some of the museum exhibits.

Then it's time for the ride to the top. We head down to the tram entrance and wait our turn to board the small capsules, and start our journey up the north leg of the Arch. When we arrive, we climb out and walk up the steps to the highest point.

Did I mention that it's a bit windy outside? It is - and you can feel it inside once you reach the top. Fortunately none of us seem to be inclined to mal der mer, so we spend quite a bit of time up there taking pictures both inside and peering out through the small windows. This is usually the highlight of the day for visitors to our area, and today is no exception - our partners are very impressed with the view from the top.

We finish the day with dinner at Blueberry Hill, a well-known venue for good food and music in the U City Loop.

DC, Days 3 and 4

I'm going to double up on these two days, because they were both devoted to orientation and project discussions.

Friday morning we get up a bit earlier and meet in the hotel lobby to board our buses. We travel to Bell Multicultural High School, which is a District of Columbia public school, currently housed in what was Bell Vocational HS. It was created as a charter school, and still draws its student body from all over the city. With a 90+% free/reduced lunch population, one might expect that this school would have problems with high dropout rates and low test scores, but through the hard work of administration and staff, such is not the case.

A presentation on the school's educational philosophy and curriculum development methods is given, and then the MTP teachers are taken to various classrooms to observe. This is followed by a short question and answer period with students and staff, discussing what was seen in the classroom (the short answer is a lot of innovative and interesting learning techniques). The morning provides a good opportunity for both Japanese and American teachers to see modern U.S.-styled education practices at work.

After a return to the hotel, we scatter for lunch, then meet again at JICC to learn some basics about the JFMF MTP program and its requirements for the year. I have heard most of this before; what is different is the presentation style (much more concise) and the information about a new approach to the whole journal/website reporting requirements (a forum-based blog area and a separate directory for pictures, with specific topic headings for each teacher's reports, and the ability to upload the information directly from a home or school computer). This is a distinct improvement over previous years, where teachers on both sides were required to post reports directly on their school's webpage (relatively easy on the Japanese side, but a major nightmare on the U.S. side, where access to school webservers requires something approaching an act of God or at least school board approval).

There are questions about the video conferencing as well - JFMF stopped using CUSeeMe last year, when the package was rewritten and support for Macintosh systems was dropped. Yahoo IM is now the software of choice - it works well for Windows users, but the Macintosh version doesn't handle video cameras and voice chat. Mac users wonder why AOL IM (AIM) wasn't chosen instead (school firewalls are even less tolerant of it, for one thing). I don't suppose that we will ever find a package that will satisfy everyone, but I think that Yahoo IM can be made to work.

Back to the hotel for dinner, and I discover a problem - my room lock is not working. After time spent by hotel maintenance, it is finally determined that I need to have a room change; a bellhop brings up a new key, and takes my suitcase to the new room, and I follow after packing up the odds and ends I have spread out all over the place. I get settled in and go down to meet my partners for dinner at a local Subway shop.

We get a treat for Friday night; one of the translators has a relative who is manager for an exclusive hotel directly across the street from the White House. He has invited us to come over in the evening to get a photo opportunity from their rooftop patio. We end up riding the D.C. subway (more like Tokyo's system than I thought), and getting some spectacular pictures. An interesting note - before the manager could take us to the roof, he had to contact the Secret Service office to let them know that guests would be viewing the White House from the hotel patio. Apparently, this is a requirement whenever any events take place in that facility....

Saturday morning is another early start; we head back to Bell MHS for a series of workshops explaining the overall science projects (BUGS and Soil and Fast Plants), and giving us some valuable resource information about these and other projects likely to be suggested as paired projects during the year. Again, much of the information is not new to me, but it does provide a good "refresher" course, and helps me to direct my thinking towards the "how-to's" of getting our projects done this year.

Back to the hotel for a dinner and packing; we leave tomorrow morning for my home town, where my partners will stay during the next week. We have a full list of activities planned - sightseeing, school visits, web journal work.

3-19 ADDENDUM: Late in the evening, we began to hear first news reports about a major earthquake in Japan. Four sets of teachers are in Washington from the affected area (Fukuoka), but all are able to get in touch with family members and allay fears about their safety. We will find out more once news reports come in; apparently there was a "whole lotta shakin' going on" over there.

DC, Day 2

Up in the morning hours - my body says that it is 5 AM, but the clock is certain that it's 6. Oh, well....

Meet Joy and Theckla in the lobby, and we start up the street to a collections of shops on the edge of George Washington University. The French bakery that I remembered from two years ago is still there, so we get breakfast and wander back down the street to the Japan Information & Cultural Center (JICC) for our first gathering.

More than one familiar face is here (MTP-ers from previous years) - there is Brian, and Angie, and here are Steve and Gary. And finally there is Ishitani-san, with our packets and nametags. Just as we finish passing out the paperwork, here come the Japanese teachers. With little difficulty, my partners find me, and we begin the process of getting acquainted. After a short meeting, our group heads for two tour buses to start our round of sightseeing.

We drive past the White House and make our first stop at the Jefferson Memorial. All of the planned stops highlight someone (or something) in American history that had a great deal to do with education and/or Japan. Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, the statue of Ulysses S. Grant in front of the U.S. Capitol building, and the Smithsonian are all featured on this trek. Other stops or points of interest include the Vietnam and Korean War Memorials, and an interesting modern sight - baseball greats coming out of the Capitol building after testifying before Congress about the steroids problem. Hmmm.....perhaps there is some educational value in that sight as well.

We eat lunch with our partners at the food court in Union Station, take them over to the Natural History Museum in the Smithsonian complex, explain how to find a taxi from that area, and then head for an orientation session for the American teachers. This is actually a FAQ session for new MTP teachers to ask questions of those of us who have made this trip previously; I wish we had had something like this two years ago, and am glad to pass along what I learned from my first trip.

Dinner with our partners, but before we go, I help my partner get his internet connection working again. After a discussion with Wayport tech support (I was translator for both halves of the phone conversation), we realize that Ishii-san's computer isn't handling the auto-connect that it needs for the hotel network. The technician tells us what parameters to set in the manual connection setup, we make the changes, and - he's in!

Dinner at Bertucci's - good Italian food, beer and wine available, and lots of interesting conversations. Then it's off to bed - tomorrow, we will be visiting a local high school and then holding our first joint orientation meetings.

DC, Day 1

Okay, we have "officially" started - sort of. I headed for the airport this morning with my counterpart from our high school, and met a third teacher who is representing an elementary school in our area. Several hours later, we are in Washington, D.C., preparing to embark on orientation.

Flight is relatively uneventful; I was even able to nap a bit (something I don't do well on airplanes). We were in what is usually called a "regional" aircraft, which means that any luggage bigger than a briefcase got checked at planeside, and the seating was 3 across - total. But it wasn't too bumpy and having a seat to myself is rather nice - no one to bump elbows with.

We finally get to our hotel; the first person I see when we enter the lobby is Angie (a fellow MTP-er). Greetings with hugs, and I introduce her to my traveling companions, then we check in.

Food is a top priority, so we decide to splurge and go to the expensive steakhouse restaurant in the hotel. Yes, it was pricey, and yes, it was worth it, right down to the chocolate lava cake dessert.

We waddle back upstairs and work on getting our computers hooked up to the hotel internet connection. Mine is quick and simple; the only question mark about my setup was whether the wireless card would work, since I could not test it in advance. (It does.) Joy's setup is a bit more involved but still connects within minutes.

Theckla's machine is a Mac; I am a Wintel person. She doesn't seem to be able to get to a network either through a wireless port or a plug-in port. After some head-scratching, I sit down and start digging through various system files, eventually coming across a Network folder that shows several possibilities. We finally figure out that the machine is set up to look for a dial-up connection first, so that moves to the bottom of the list. Then we determine that the machine thinks that a wireless connection should be automatically configured - okay, if you're connecting to a secure school system, but lousy for a wide-open hotel connection. More digging, and voila! There's the configuration stuff. We're in.

Sort of - this hotel has a sign-in system, using either a credit card (to pay a daily charge), or your travel points number (to get it for free). Theckla has a travel points number, but doesn't remember it. Hmmm.....

Okay, go to my room, sign on (I had my number written down), and look at the travel points login page. Yes! you can request that your number be sent to your registered e-mail address, which is accessible via the Web on my machine. Two minutes later, we have a working number and head back to her room.

We try to sign her on - it acknowledges her number, but says that it hasn't been associated with her reservation (your room number also has to be entered when you sign on - that is how they avoid having numbers passed around). A call to the front desk takes care of that problem - five minutes later, Theckla is logged in and checking mail. I believe this may be a first; all three of us hooked to the Internet in less than an hour!

On my way back to my room, I meet three Japanese teachers coming off the elevator. One of them looks familiar - it's another teacher from one of our partner schools from two years ago! More hugs and she introduces me to her traveling companions. She was aware that I was returning, but I had not yet spotted her name on the list, so that is another happy surprise.

I am headed for bed - tomorrow is a get-acquainted day with sightseeing in D.C., and it will be a long one.

Things are getting busy....

In my "day job", I teach music, specifically orchestra. March is traditionally an active month for music educators in general - it is Music in Our Schools Month, and most school performance groups do some sort of, well, performing now. I've already had short evening programs with my elementary students, and now it's time to take the older ones to Large Ensemble Festival, which means....it's field trip time!

Some people think that field trips were created so that teachers don't have to do any work - wrong.....

I've filled out all the paperwork, notified the rest of the teachers, sent out and collected the permission slips, ordered the bus, labeled and numbered the scores, checked to be certain I have enough music for all of the performers, written up lessons plans for my sub for one class...what's left? Oh - rehearsal - yep. They're ready - I think. At least today's run-throughs were staying together. We'll see what stage nerves do tomorrow morning.

Actually, I think the kids are less nervous than I am - these students have been playing for at least two years, performed in a minimum of three concerts per year, and have really worked hard on this music. And, besides, it's a field trip; a day away from normal classroom activities, and a chance to eat lunch at the food court in the mall. What's not to like?