We were lucky enough to be able to host a summer exchange student from Japan last month. We’ve always wanted to do something like that, but don’t think we can take on a full year student. Each year our little town hosts students from Niigata, Japan for a couple weeks. For some reason this year it was cut to 10 days, but we still had a blast.
Meet Mari, a 14 year old from Niigata, Japan.
Each day the students spend 8 hours with the entire group, doing various English learning activities and field trips.
While here they did a walking tour of our town (a very small town of less than 1,000 people), visiting the local fire station, bank, post office, florist shop & convenience store:
Toured our state capitol:
Visited the local nature center, did a “Green” project (planted flowers & trees) at the school, took a shopping trip to a neighboring town, at spent the day at both the elementary & high schools.
We also did various things with her after her group outing. We tried hard to introduce her to a lot of American culture activities. We took her canoeing, cooked s’mores, waded in the river, played Wii (which she rocked on the drums), had a family bbq, and introduced her to many American meals (Subway sandwiches, BLTs, chili dogs, fried chicken, etc..) She also introduced us to some of her foods, as she cooked some sort of rice dish for us one night. It was very good.
The last night here we all (host families & students) got together for a nice picnic lunch and some swimming in their lake. The kids had a blast riding in the canoe & paddleboat, and then put on a little show for us at the end.
It was a great time, and we all learned a little about Japan. We’re definitely planning on doing it again next year.
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