Travel &Tours at St Ursula's College Toowoomba

2015 Sei Urusura Visit to St Ursula’s College

For ten days from late July to early August we hosted 16 Japanese students, the Principal Mr Satomura and English teacher Miss Shoko Takahashi from Sei Urusura Junior High School in Hachinohe. This is the 4^th year we have hosted groups from Sei Urusura who share our Ursuline heritage.

The group enjoyed a busy program of excursions, including joining in our Japanese classes, having English lessons, listening to a talk by our Indigenous Liaison Officer, Veronica Pegler, as well as going to a range of other classes. Our visitors found the animals at the Darling Downs Zoo very interesting and experienced their first sausage sizzle ever (they loved our sausages)! They also enjoyed making damper, learning about the olden days in Australia and trying to throw a boomerang at the Highfields Pioneer Park.

Thank you to our 16 host families who looked after our visitors so well. The long and tearful goodbye on Saturday 8^th August proved that strong bonds had been forged during the homestay. I would also like to thank the host students who were responsible for their guests every day at school.

The Sayoonara Party on Thursday 6^th August was a festive event. Our visitors expressed their thanks to their host families by writing and reading heartfelt letters, presenting performances from ballet, Odori (traditional dance), musical items and a comedy skit. Thanks to our chefs and kitchen staff we all enjoyed a delicious buffet meal.

It was clear that this homestay was a great opportunity for both our visitors and our students of Japanese here at school really benefited from the interaction and learn so much about each other. In our Year 7 classes we learnt how to use chopsticks (properly), were dressed in yukata (the summer kimono) and found out a lot about our visitors’ lives. The older classes had fun using their Japanese to learn more about our visitors as well as doing origami, and having fun with singing and clapping games.