Good point, Noddy. I hadn't thought of it that way. You're right, that DOES sound like SonofEva.
Whew, the boy's back.
The advice you have received on this thread is all extremely helpful. Too bad I haven't had a2kers at hand when I've had strange problems to deal with.
It's funny how relieved I feel that you all are back together again.
Hooray for son of Eva!
Diane wrote:...It's funny how relieved I feel that you all are back together again...
Yeah. Imagine how I feel!
Catching up this thread.
Eva wrote:CJ, I didn't realize this was more common in Europe.
Usually - that's of course related to the distance and less costs or travelling - exchange students from twin town stay a bit longer then ten days. And mostly, they've "twin schools" there as well = go to school there a couple of days. (My old grammar school and a college in France - twin town- exchange students twice yearly .... at least.)
The twin town of your place in Germany, Eva, is twinned with Tavistock in England as well - exchanging about 20 students twice per year (both ways).
Same happens with someothers of their twin towns.
I've never heard the term "twin town," Walter. Is that the same as "sister city"?
BTW, Tulsa has eight sister cities. Lots of cultural exchange stuff going on, but I don't know how many student exchanges they sponsor:
San Luis Potosi, Mexico
Zelenograd, Russia
Celle, Germany
Amiens, France
Tiberias, Israel
Beihai, China
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Utsunomiya, Japan
Oops, yes. It's an English term, I think >
Town twinning.
(And I was referring to Celle - the Celle<>Tulsa relationship seems to be a bit onesided, what I could find out.)
Hmm. There's not much on the Tulsa website. As far as cultural exchanges, it looks like there have been a couple of groups of firefighters that traveled here from Celle, and two small groups of Tulsans (one of firefighters and the other comprised of our mayor along with city officials) that traveled to Celle. The website also says..."A variety of cultural, educational and business exchanges are currently in the works under the auspices of the Tulsa Celle Committee. It includes several athletic exchanges, equestrian cooperation, tourism development and Tulsa's assistance with the establishment of an American-style university in Celle." I have no idea if all that is just p.r. or if it's actually occurring.
PHOTOS!!!
This was taken at Nikko, the largest park in Japan. It is also the traditional burial place of the shoguns. It's just a few miles outside Utsunomiya, the city where SonofEva stayed. He visited Nikko twice, once with the student group and once with his host family. He says it was spectacular.
I just uploaded the photos, so it may take a little while for them to show up here.
I just went through the whole album, gorgeous!!
The stairs in the last pic are really interesting, I never would have thought of that. I like the idea!
(urls have to end in "jpg" or "gif" or whatever to work with the image tags I think... at any rate, MSN groups made a change at some point that makes it really hard to link to photos there, littlek and dag figured it out though I think.)
Aha! Yes, it used to have the .jpg file extension. Ah well, people can cut & paste one of the links into their browser and see about 12 photos.
The stair photo was cool, soz. It's the main staircase in the middle school SonofEva attended for two days. He thought it was a cool idea, too.
I use ImageShack. I think MSN tries to encode the photos in a secure way that A2K can't decipher.
Joe(sonOFeva has a very good eye)Nation
Thanks, Joe! I didn't know about the MSN problems. Shows how long it's been since I've tried to post any personal photos here.
BTW, that photo of the red arch and gold statue was my favorite of his 250+ photos. It thought it would make a great magazine cover. I'm going to enlarge & frame it for his room.
(Send me an e-mail with instructions for ImageShack, would you? Penny, the A2K hamster, just arrived from Walter's house in Germany. I plan to take some photos of her in Tulsa tomorrow and post them on the other thread.)
I just wish to inform you of three things about Nikko.
It was built by Tokunaga, the longest reigning shogunate in Japan for 300 years.
The architecture of Nikko is Chinese.
The carving of the monkey is on the stable with the famous "hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil" sculpture.
See what happens when you get your information from a 13 year old boy?!
How old are the buildings at Nikko? And why is the architecture Chinese?
