Play time educational, beneficial for all sides

Over here, Yusuke Ogura and Kohei Watanabe are playing air hockey with Sarah Quade.

Over here, Daji Fujimoto is playing pool with Michael Cruz.

In another spot, a Japanese student is playing hackeysack with a young boy, although they aren't having very much luck keeping it up in the air.

In the art room, a group of girls sits clustered together over a scattered pile of homemade flash cards as while another Japanese student calls out questions as his friends watch.

These and many other scenes of this kind played out Thursday afternoon, as members of the Boys and Girls Club at 4306 Arnold Drive, bid farewell to students in Big Bend Community College's Japanese agricultural training program.

The trainees have been participating the Boys and Girls Club during the past month, teaching about Japanese culture.

"They made rice balls with the kids, they've done origami with the kids, they did a slideshow of some pictures from Japan, they performed a karate demonstration, lots of different things," said Boys and Girls Club staff member Danielle Johnson.

Susan Blackwell, English instructor for the training program, said that the trainees arrived in the area at the end of June to study English, and will depart this week to stay on farms for three months. Then they will return to Moses Lake for another six weeks. After that, they will stay on farms related to their specific course for a longer period of time.

"It's good for the trainees to interact with the kids because they can hear normal spoken English and it's easy for them to relate to the children," Blackwell said.

"It's great for our kids too, just to have an older person come and just play with them, show them things and just tell them about their culture," Johnson said. "It's really been great."

Blackwell said that the kids are patient, will repeat and change different words in order to be understood. She said that the trainees have hung out after their programs and played games, had snacks and participated in water gun fights, and hopes that they return to the Club when they return to the fall.

"We've done all kinds of things with them — the water fight, they had so much fun," said Michele Rodriguez, art room staff member with the Boys and Girls Club. "They've come in here and done the art projects with us, and everything; played the pool games with the kids and had fun playing in the sandbox with them."

The trainees have been coming over to the Boys and Girls Club for about five years, Blackwell said, although this is the first time it's been organized with a cultural education program at the club.

"It's so great for (the trainees) because they're just learning English and they can communicate really well with each other because kids can communicate with anybody," Rodriguez said.