Troop 955 Girl Scout World Thinking Day

To celebrate World Thinking Day, Troop 955 hosted Judy Kemp, Vice President of the Ames International Partner Cities Association. She came to talk with us about Ames' two "sister" cities: Enzan City, Japan and Frydek-Mistek, Czech Republic.

>> Information about Ames' International Partner Cities (PDF)

Since Judy actually lived in Japan for a period of time (and takes Ames school kids back to Japan and hosts Japanese kids who come to Ames), we concentrated on that country.  Judy showed parts of a video that was made during her last visit to Japan in June 2009.  We got to see Japanese students (elementary, middle school and high school) during their day.  Can you believe they practice on unicycles during recess?  And they learn martial arts kendo stick fighting in gym class?

Judy taught the girls how to use chop sticks and they learned that it's easier to pick up popcorn thatna grain of rice!  The girls also tried their hands at Japanese brush writing using Kanji and Kana scripts... not sure if the results are actually legible, but it sure looked cool!  And finally, the girls got to experiment with oragami (paper folding) and kiragami (paper cutting).