Aus dem Mitteilungsblatt von Belleville Sister Cities Inc.

May 2006

Grußworte der Präsidenten

President's Message

By the time you read this, six members will have attended the Illinois State Sister City Conference, held in Springfield April 28 & 29th. It promises to be a special event, held in our State Capitol, celebrating, 50 years of Citizen Diplomacy. A reception will be held at the Old State Capitol with all our state elected officials invited. The Illinois SCI will present a peace pole to the State in memory of three deceased SCI board member, one of them being Vera Kohlmeier of Waterloo.

A lot of work went into preparing for the conference by our board. Since the SCI of Southern Illinois will be hosts to the 2007 State Conference at our Lady of Snows, we prepared a promotional display, to entice the northern members to venture south to meet for the first time.

We also prepared a display featuring the programs of our Belleville SCI. When all of our projects, donations, exchanges, and events are noted, it is a pretty impressive program that we carry out. We have reason to be proud. I thank Doris Roach and Theresa Fritz for assisting me with the displays.

The plans for the youths taking part in the summer Paderborn exchange programs are set, and we look forward to exciting reports at our August meeting. Separate article with details.

Also take note of the article about the visit of the Paderborn artist.

We were disappointed that our three-day Southern Indiana trip did not have enough people by deadline to make it a go. I know the very short notice was a drawback, but after going through the year’s calendar, the April 21st date was the best option to avoid graduations, heat, crowds etc. Theresa Fritz and I worked many hours, with lots of phone calls to get a fabulous trip arranged, so we were disappointed for you, and for us.

We’ve had a couple lively Stammtisches this spring. Steve and Hilda Koluch award a prize by drawing, to one of the guests who made advance reservations. A nice attempt to get us to follow instructions. Read and make note of the schedule.

I hope to see many of you at the May 5th Fruhlingstanz at the Elks, our general meeting on May l8th and at our Membership Appreciation party on June 22nd. Separate article, but note date change to 4th Thursday.

Thanks to a very active Membership Chairman, Larry Schaltenbrand, our organization has gained 36 new family/individual and 2 corporate members. We are happy to welcome them all. We hope that they, along with our old members, will attend the quarterly meetings, to know what their organization is doing, get involved and make friends among members. We are actually an interesting group. You must come and see for yourself. I’ll hope to see you at the May 18th meeting.

President Norma Bergkoetter

News from Paderborn

Dear Friends in Belleville and Around:

Finally spring has come. For many years we haven’t had such a long winter all over Germany and with so much snow in the mountain regions.

We congratulate BSC on its being present on Belleville’s homepage www.belleville.net.

We are looking forward to several exchanges between Belleville and Paderborn.

The Paderborn artist Andreas Kopp will show his works of art in Belleville at “Art on the Square”. His series of paintings (mostly lacquer, rust, oil paint, gold leaf on lacquered metal sheet) have the title: "Ten short stories from Old Europe". Go and have a look!

Three high school students will come here for the period of June 4th thru July 19th. Lisa Lang will be hosted by Maren Fastrich, Allison Schaeffer’s host will be Gesa Hage, Jon Laux will be host of Felix Jonas. The families are looking forward to their visitors. The three Paderborn high school students have wonderful memories of their 90 days stay in Belleville last year.

The Belleville youths will attend school here until the beginning of the summer break on June 26th. Linda Driesner who organized the high school exchange last year will accompany them to Duesseldorf airport from where the host families will take the guests to Paderborn. Our thanks go to Linda and to Joerg Erdmann who is responsible on our side for this exchange. It would be great if this program could be continued next year.

Eleven youths from Belleville and around, 9 girls and 2 boys, will stay in Paderborn from July 14th thru August 3rd. They are part of a wonderful exchange that has been going on since the beginning of our sister city relationship! Norman Hansmeyer and Eva Reike of the Youth Department of the City of Paderborn have set up an interesting program for this stay. The Belleville chaperons will be Katie McDowell and Jamie Stephens; Katie will be accompanied by her husband Ryan. Mayor Paus will officially receive this group and the three high schools students in the City Hall. The German-American Friendship Society will invite to a get-to-gether.

Joerg Erdmann has been active to organize another program with perspectives: a teacher exchange. Kathleen Ashby Ontiveros of O’Fallon High School will be the first teacher to be welcomed here on this exchange (June 5th thru 13th.06). Three teachers of Goerdeler Gymnasium Paderborn will go to Belleville in October and will be hosted by Kathleen, by Patrick Hasenstab and Alan Elfrink. We very much thank Joerg and Linda Driesner for their help and especially the principal of O’Fallon High School for his initiative and support. We all know that organizing and the keeping going of all these exchanges need a lot of energy and enthusiasm on all sides, they are well worth the effort since these are the cornerstones of the bridges of friendship between our two cities and beyond.

Paderborn is preparing for another great historical exhibition. We remember the one in 1999. Now an exhibition called “Canossa” will illuminate an important period of European history in the Middle Ages, homepage www.canossa2006.de It will be opened by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Horst Koehler, on the eve of the Libori festival on July 21st.

This exhibition could be an incentive to visit Paderborn, it lasts thru November 5th. Welcome to Paderborn!

Sincerely,

Bernd Broer
President

Dr. Otmar Allendorf
Secretary