Two round trips around the world and back to Southlake were completed Tuesday when the Southlake Sister Cities program recalled their experiences to city officials at the latest city council meeting.
The Southlake Sister Cities is an auxiliary organization under the Sister Cities International nonprofit that promotes cultural and social understanding by connecting cities from different countries. Southlake Sister Cities was founded 27 years ago initially with their first sister city, Tome, Japan, with Wuzhong, China later added in 2010.
“When you say ‘sister city,’ they treat you like a sister,” judge Carol Montgomery says. “It’s one I’ve only been involved with for a short time, but I was just blessed to be chosen to be a representative for Southlake to go to China. It was incredible.”
Youth ambassadors traveled to Wuzhong back in March, while ambassadors recently traveled to Tome just a few weeks ago. Sophia Leblanc was among the ambassadors who traveled to Wuzhong, and one of her favorite experiences over there was the sightseeing.
“The moment that really stood out for me was visiting the temple,” Leblanc says. “Just seeing the view from the top of that mountain, especially having been down to the caves underneath it before, was really cool.”
When Liam Snyder stayed with his host family, he recalled his host brother Rory being relatively distant and quiet.
“He was very timid when I came there,” Snyder recalls. “It’s not that he didn’t know a lot of English. He just didn’t want to talk.”
Rory took Snyder to his school the day after. When he was walking on the campus, Snyder says he was surprised at the reaction he got from the student body.
“We’d go there to the school, and there’s just like 100 students following us,” Snyder chuckles. “Right as soon as I make eye contact, they scatter. They just go into their classrooms and run out of the hallways. It’s like ‘Oh, look! It’s an American!’”
“They’ve never really seen a lot of people that were super different from them,” Leblanc expresses. “But they generally really liked us. It was really cool.”
By the end of the week, Snyder says that Rory got more comfortable around him and started talking and translating more - even at one point dedicating a Taylor Swift song to Snyder during a karaoke night.
“At the end of the week, he was like ‘When you came here, I had little to no friends,’” Snyder recalls. “‘When I met you, you were so outgoing. I started making new friends, I made three tall friends yesterday!’ I was super excited.”
Snyder says Rory’s mother told him that he’s done much better in school since Snyder’s visit. She expressed how glad she was that Snyder came for the trip, along with the rest of the ambassadors from the Southlake Sister Cities program.
* A previous version of this article incorrectly stated this was the second year Wuzhong, China was included in the Southlake Sister Cities program. Wuzhong was included in the program in 2010, not 2018.