Joe Frost

While we greatly cut back the in-person events due to Covid-19, we managed to have regular social events and even in-bound and out-bound exchanges this year. Here’s a quick recap of what The Friendship Force of Greater Seattle did in 2021. There may have been more events, but these are the majority.

• We started the year by officially changing our name from Seattle-Tacoma Friendship Force to something a bit more accurate.
• We welcomed the New Year sharing a movie over Zoom timed to allow club members to follow the dropping of the ball in Times Square.
• Our January 1st, 2021 newsletter was 17 pages!
• We toured the Wing Luke Museum virtually on January 10^th, with a special emphasis on Bruce Lee and his connections to the Seattle Asian community.
• For February, we started the month with a movie night. We shared Groundhog Day over our computer screens and as Joyce said, “With trivia, prizes, and spring/winter attire, it was a night to remember (over and over and over).”
• Mengwei (Crystal) Chen, a student at the UW and our February general meeting speaker, came to us over Zoom to share her experiences as a child experiencing a new country, new culture, and new language.
• The newsletter in March was 18 pages!
• Our March general meeting speaker was Debra McCauslin, an author and historian who told us about the Underground Railroad in the region of Pennsylvania that we were scheduled to visit later in the year.
• We celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with another Zoom movie night, watching Darby O’Gill and the Little People.
• We tried out social distanced outdoor events by meeting at the Triple X hamburger restaurant in Issaquah in March and at the South Seattle Community College campus for the Peony Festival on May 1^st.
• Friendship Force of Columbia/Cascades (FFCC) reciprocated our November virtual exchange by giving us a virtual tour of the art and architecture of their region on May 2^nd.
• Karen Bush, a member of the Friendship Force of Sarasota, spoke at our May Zoom general meeting about her experiences touring Cambodia and Vietnam.
• The May newsletter was 14 pages.
• Several members of the club traveled with an outbound exchange to the Sun Coast of Florida in early June, our first in-person travel since the pandemic started. They recapped their experiences for the general meeting in July.
• In June, fourteen members of the club gathered at Golden Gardens for a sunny walk along the beach to Carkeek Park, a journey that can be done dry-shod at particularly low tides.
• Many of us joined with FFCC for a presentation by Corinne and Larry about their last trip to Vietnam.
• Karen presented a recap of our exchange to Thailand as a joint event with FFCC in July.
• We successfully held our annual picnic at Brian and Judy’s house in August. This was especially sweet because it was the first FFGS event since the start of the pandemic for several of the members.
• We hosted the Long Island club at the end of August for our first inbound in-person event since the start of the pandemic.
• Our July newsletter was 15 pages long, the September edition was 16, and October’s was 14.
• For our September general meeting, we enjoyed a presentation from three members of the Florida Suncoast club about their Habitat for Humanity trip to Romania.
• Our first in-person outbound exchanges were to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and the National Capitol area in October.
• Bob Francescone, an inveterate traveler to Africa, presented his tips and photographs of touring Africa over many years to the club during our November general meeting.
• We shared a movie night in November, watching Grumpy Old Men
• We will end the year with one more movie night, watching New Year’s Eve together on New Year’s Eve.
• For a second year, we substituted “elf deliveries” for the in-person Christmas party. This year’s deliveries included a travel-related White Elephant gift. Sad to say, the Christmas Tree Pickle ornament was not one of the items that found its way into the elf packs.