A Student Exchange Program Produces Memorable Experiences

By Jeffrey M. Bowen

 

We experienced pangs of anxiety as our son Seth boarded a plane for Tokyo, Japan in the late summer of 1991.  He would be gone for his entire junior year in high school.

 

A few months before he had attended an after-school meeting sponsored by the local Rotary, and had come home with the startling idea of going to Japan.  We had no idea he wanted this much adventure.  

 

 Rotary sponsors interviewed Seth to be sure he was mature enough to understand the rules and his responsibilities.  Then we as parents were asked to an interview.   They wanted assurance we knew what we were getting into, and they asked if we would support our son throughout the year.   We gulped and said yes of course.  

 

So began a remarkable experience for all of us.  We were told our son would stay with five different Rotary families over the year.  He would attend a Tokyo suburban high school.   Classes would be taught mostly in Japanese.

 

 His very first task would be to greet his classmates in Japanese at a school assembly.  What?  We rushed to find a tutor.  She tried, but at length he mastered only one simple sentence.    

 

After landing, Seth was greeted by a delegation of Rotarians who worried about whether he would eat Japanese cuisine and not lose weight.  Fortunately, he adjusted quickly to fish and seaweed dishes and even mastered an assembly greeting in the native language.   

 

The high school he attended championed most American sports, including our traditional football.  His tall height made our son a popular recruit for basketball.   The physical education curriculum required students to learn therapeutic massage.  I thought this was a wonderful idea!

 

  A photo he sent of the cafeteria’s perfectly packed and precisely measured steamed lunches in little cardboard boxes looked delicious   Once weekly, every uniformed student had to practice a tea ceremony after climbing into a small teahouse in the school front yard.  Our gangly son found this was a physical challenge.   

 

 

 Seth’s language learning gradually grew thanks to an unusual resource -- television.  After three months, he reported beginning to dream in Japanese.   Actually, he was mastering Japanese tv ads.  When he spoke with classmates using these promotional slogans, girls especially found it riotously funny. 

 

The year flew by even though we were never quite sure when Seth would call.  He shocked us by phoning from downtown Tokyo on New Year’s Eve.  With exchange student friends, he had transferred to several different trains on the way, but assured us it was absolutely safe.  Often he shared Rotary sponsored adventures, which included Disneyland and a climb up Mt. Fuji.

 

Seth’s last host family took him to northern Japan where they purchased a snowboard for him.  In return he gifted his family and their children all his clothes.  He returned to the states with nothing more than that board and the clothes on his back.  He had grown five inches taller, but immeasurably more in maturity and confidence. As a bonus, he even got credit for his entire junior year.

 

I cannot say enough positive things about carefully organized and monitored student exchange programs like those of the Rotary Youth Exchange.  Theirs has been around since 1927, with the year-long program established in 1958.  Rotary clubs annually sponsor about 9,000 students, aged15-19, for exchanges with 80 different countries.   

 

Commitments usually involve not just sending your child to another country, but a child from abroad returning to stay with your family.  Our inbound visitor for three months   was a bubbly young Japanese girl who loved our son’s jokes and enthusiastically shared household cooking chores and country hikes.  

 

More details can be accessed at the Rotary International web site.   Every American student and their parents can gain an entirely new perspective from this kind of eye-opening, culturally enriching experience.    

 

2/27/20