Here’s Alyssa’s impressions. We’d love to hear from others who hosted Myojo students.  Please leave your comments below!

Over the last 9 days I have had a Japanese  student staying at my house. Her name is Satoko. Satoko was visiting Woodend as an exchange student from Myojo School in Tokyo, Japan. She was here with 22 of her school mates and 4 teachers.

Having an exchange student staying with us was a bit tricky to start with. We sometimes got a bit confused because we spoke different languages. After a little while we got really good at understanding each other. Satoko knew lots of English words and she was good at trying to work things out. She wanted to learn more English words while she was here so we helped her by showing her things and teaching her the English word for it. Her favourite new word was ‘fridge’! When we got stuck we tried key words and if that didn’t work we used Google Translate on our phones to help. We didn’t have to do that very much.

The best part of having Satoko here was becoming good friends with her. I learned that her favourite thing to do is swimming and her favourite animal is a Koala. I learned that we both like singing and both new the same song from Annie, just in different languages.

While she was here we took her to see lots of fun things. We had a picnic and a swim at the beach, we went to Granite Island to look at the view and see the penguins and we went to Urimbirra Wildlife Park to feed the kangaroos and pat the koalas. We even saw a man feed a chicken to a crocodile. It was gross. Satoko thought is was scary. We went strawberry picking and went to the Beach House. Satoko loved the waterslides.

Having an exchange student was fun and a really great experience. I am thinking about trying to go to Japan with school next year if my mum lets me.

Did you host a Myojo student at your house? What was the experience like for you?

 

Alyssa, Room 13