Exchange students to head to Yonezawa, Japan

MOSES LAKE — The exchange is on again.

The Moses Lake-Yonezawa Sister City Student Exchange, which has been on hiatus since 2020, will resume this month as three Moses Lake students visit Yonezawa, Japan. Ambassadors Keziah Roman Panlaqui, Emmanuel Zepeda Lopez and Ethan Ramsey will leave July 25, accompanied by chaperone Amador Castro, to spend 10 days in Moses Lake’s sister city. While in Japan, they’ll stay with three Yonezawa students and their families, and Aug. 7, those Japanese students will return the visit and spend 10 days in Moses Lake.

Moses Lake and Yonezawa have been sister cities since 1981, according to the program’s website, and the student exchange was organized shortly thereafter. The program was originally suspended because of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Terry Moore, treasurer for the Moses Lake-Yonezawa Exchange Program, but the publisher of the Yonezawa Shimbun newspaper, which handled the exchange from the Japanese end, passed away soon after, and the exchange was mothballed indefinitely. Until April, when a group called the Yonezawa International Relations Association reached out through a translator who had assisted the newspaper in the past.

“They contacted us and said ‘Yes, we want to take it over. We want to keep it alive,’” Moore said. “And we were thinking, we’ll get all the details worked out for next year. And they said “Yeah, we plan on  the exchange this summer.’”

Exchange program officials immediately started looking for ambassadors to send, and selected the three in May, along with alternate Jessica Sheer. Once they arrive in Yonezawa, they’ll stay with a host family there and visit City Hall, the local fire department and other places of interest, as well as take a leap into local culture with things like noodle-making. They even get to visit Tengendai Resort and a hot spring nearby, Moore said.

The students in Yonezawa are in school year-round, Moore said, so the Moses Lake visitors will get to accompany them not only to classes but also to clubs and other activities.

Then in August, those students whose families hosted Moses Lake students will return the visit, spending 10 days in Moses Lake. In the past, they’ve gone to see Grand Coulee Dam and some of the manufacturing facilities that drive Moses Lake, as well as fun things like the Cowboy Breakfast and the Grant County Fair.

“We try to schedule it so they can spend time at the fair or the demo derby or the rodeo because they can’t normally see those kinds of things,” Moore said.

But it’s not all activities. The point is to let students see how ordinary people live in America, so organizers make sure to build in lots of family time.

“We encourage (families to) invite Grandma and Grandpa over and have a barbecue,” Moore said. “They love to go boating, tubing, stuff like that. That's always a big hit with the kids. Basically, they get to do little things that are everyday occurrences for us, or things that we see every day.”

The exchange program is holding a fundraiser dinner and auction July 10, to raise money to continue the program. Dinner will be catered by Tacos El Rey, and there will be live and silent auctions. Doors open at 5:30 at the Columbia Basin Technical Skills Center, 900 E. Yonezawa Blvd. (Appropriately, there’s also a Moses Lake Boulevard in Yonezawa, Moore said.)

The relationships that are forged through the exchange can be lifelong, Moore said. Her daughter was an ambassador in  2002, and Moore is still in contact with the Japanese student who stayed with them that summer.

“We’ve had … over 200 students who have gone to Japan,” she said. “A lot of families have been touched. It’s a life-changing experience.”

Joel Martin may be reached at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.

Yonezawa Sister City Fundraiser dinner and auction

5:30 p.m. July 10 at CBTECH, 900 E. Yonezawa Blvd.

$35 for individual tickets or $250 for a table of eight

To purchase tickets or donate, contact Terry Moore at 509-989-2287 or tmoore98837@gmail.com

    Exchange students from Yonezawa get up close and personal with firefighting equipment during a tour of the Moses Lake Fire Department in 2018.