My Japanese Little Sister!
So I have been e-mailing back and forth with the girl who stayed at my house last summer. I'm now "Crazy American Big Sister" and she's "Crazy Japanese Little Sister"! ^_^ Anyway, she's going to be participating in an English speech competition and she sent me her speech so I could look at it. That speech ABSOLUTELY made my day!
My dream
Aya Hayasaki
Do you know "City of Salinas"? It's Kushikino's sister city, in California in America. I stayed there for fifteen days as a student from Kushikino with seven other students and two protectors last summer. I learned many things there. Now, I'm going to talk about it. Please listen to me.
We arrived in Salinas, the first three days, I stayed with Japanese family who lived in Kushikino before. And from the fourth day, I stayed at American's home. I liked to writing in English, but was not so good at speaking in English. So, I was a little nervous. I missed my family and friends in Japan a little.
But the people of the host family were very kind to me. There were host mother Ellen, a daughter Julia, two dogs and a cat in the Caron's. One of the family, Julia was seventeen years old. She has visited Kushikino once. She studied Japanese in her high school, and her dream was to teach English in Kushikino. I was surprised to hear about it. Because I wanted to be a teacher, too! Then, about each country, culture, thinking, and dream, we really enjoyed talking in English and a few Japanese. At first, I couldn't understand what they wanted to say well and we used dictionaries each other. But finally, my host mother said to me, "We can understand without these dictionaries." I was very glad to hear that. And I liked English better than before!!
Through this home stay, what was I impressed the most? Many places I visited were all interesting. And many food we ate were wonderful. But, I felt kindness of many people the best. Now I am happy to be able to feel happy. I have my dream, I am wishing the dream will come true stronger than before. I want to become an English teacher in the future! After this experience, though we are from different countries, I find we can understand each other if we try to have a communication with languages or without them. I'd like to tell about the importance of it to more and more people. From this spring, I'm going to study English harder in high school. I couldn't have these dreams without my parents, my friends, people of the sister city association and my host family. I know many people who don't know what they want to be yet and why they study. I would like to tell them, "I think, to find your dreams, you should challenge to anything. If you feel nervous, someone will help you. Through your lots of experience, you can find your own joy and have your goal. I hope that these people increase more because we all have in the future." At last, I'll send this words to all people I met. "Thank you very much!"
That's all.
My font won't change back to how it was, so this will have to do... Anyways! Did you read it? You know what I find most amazing about it? Tomorrow at the Kushikino-Salinas Sister City Association dinner, I was planning on advising the students who will be going to Kushikino this summer to put out a big effort to communicate with their host families. And then I read that Aya feels the same way about it as I do, so now it means even more. It's amazing how we have almost the same story- we both went to eachother's city and were changed for life because of it. I think that's the best thing.
My font changed again. Ah well. I hope this entry means something to you... it does to me!
-Julia