Azabu High School visit

Shawnigan is looking forward to welcoming another group of exchange students from Tokyo's Azabu High School in April.

 

In the meantime, here is a look back at a trip our students made to visit their counterparts in the fall.

 

 

This fall, I was fortunate to take part in an exchange program at Azabu High School in Tokyo, Japan. It was an amazing and eye-opening experience that I learned a lot from and will always remember. We had immense amounts of fun not only with our own group, but with our host families as well. I will never forget the smiles on everybody's faces whenever we were together.

 

The exchange itself was based on the expectations that we "shadowed" our Azabu host brothers while they went about their regular schedules in school. However, it was so much more than that. I can definitely speak on behalf of all my fellow exchange-mates that we all felt extremely welcomed and a genuine part of the school, even if we couldn’t understand what we were learning half of the time. We took part in most of their core classes, which were surprisingly similar to ours, if not exactly the same. They are required to take literature and grammar in both Japanese and English, which is like how our students take English as well as a mandatory second language. During their lunch breaks, they are allowed to roam on and off of their campus, which is entirely different from our School and is almost completely alien for us. All the students in every class were so accepting, friendly and very, very loud. It was refreshing to see such a different relationship between various teachers and the students. We left school with new friends every day.

 

If you were to ask every student who had ever gone on the Azabu exchange trip: “What was your favourite part about this exchange?” I can almost guarantee that they would all say that the time spent with their host families was the highlight. I can at least guarantee that for our group. We stayed with our host families for the majority of trip, and I will admit that I was absolutely terrified to stay with an unfamiliar family for most of the week. However, I now wonder why I was so scared in the first place. My family treated and took care of me as if I was their own from the moment we first met. They cooked delicious food, kept a tidy home and always made sure I was healthy and comfortable. My host brother and sister are definitely now some of the closest friends that I will keep, and they always made sure I had something to do. I encourage anyone thinking about taking the exchange, but nervous about the billeting, to leave those nerves in Canada!

 

As a true group of Shawnigan students and staff, we began and ended the trip together with a ramen meal. From the moment we had our first meeting, we all knew that we had to stick together and get to know each other or risk an awkwardly, unfriendly trip. But surprisingly, we all got along really well for a group of 10 extremely different people. In a way, we were respectful and looked out for each other like family, though we also got pretty rowdy and amusing, as a bunch of teenagers with only two adult chaperones will do. (We did well though, right Mr. and Mrs. Lam?) All in all, we became pretty close friends despite never really knowing each other before this trip. It brought us together. From the tiring experience of hiking Mt. Fuji, to exploring the wonders of Akihabara, to almost getting lost in Shibuya, we stuck together (or at least tried to) at all times.

 

The exchange trip to Japan is most definitely one of the best experiences of my entire Shawnigan career. On behalf of all the students who took part in this trip, I would like to thank our school, Mr. and Mrs. Lam, and everyone else involved in allowing us to have this wonderful experience. Arigatou gozaimasu!

 

– Amica P.