http://www.sister-cities.org/interactive-city-directory
This is a link to the directory of sister cities for the United States and will allow you to search for your sister cities around the world. It is a national program that wasa started at the urging of President Eisenhower and has become a very good way to connect with real people from East Asia. You might be surprised that your community already has some ties to Asia that you can leverage in your classroom! If your hometown city did not have a program, what a great project for you and your class to work on. What if your younger students all wrote persuasive letters to a public official discussing the benefits of getting your city a sister city in EA? Older students might be assigned to research which EA cities would make good sister cities for your community and then write well reasoned arguments for which potential sister cities would be the best fits for your cities. If you already have a sister city, there are probably opportunities already set up that would allow you to bring EA into your class-room.
I am from Bakersfield and I knew we had a sister city in Japan but I was very pleased to find out what that we also had sister cities in China and Korea. I plan to leverage these connections more in my class, starting with inviting the president of our sister-city project coming in and giving us a bit of an introduction from his travels to these places. Very excited about these opportunities!
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