As a part of the Hawaii-Nanzan Short Exchange Program, we home stayed at our Hawaiian buddy’s house in Hilo. It was a great opportunity for us to get to know more about each other. It was also good for me to learn what student life there was like.My buddy, Tiphani served me some Hawaiian dishes which I never had before. I really liked LauLau which was something like Japanese “Chimaki”. As we were having that great dinner together, we talked about our dreams and life in Hawaii and Japan for hours. We found a lot of cultural differences and learned from each other. I felt great about having someone like her as my friend and actually communicating with each other only in English. The one thing that I was really surprised at was her life style. When I got to her house for the first time, I met a lot of people who were Tiphani’s friends and friends of Tiphani’s friends. Tiphani was sharing a house with her friends and a lot of people were visiting at that time. Some people were working on their school work together and others were just having fun chatting. She told me that a lot of students there are either living in dormitories or sharing houses like she does. I was shocked that it was normal for university students there to move out from their home and live by themselves. I thought it was amazing how they learn to be responsible and be independent and to have some fun with friends at the same time through their university life. At first, I thought “communicating with each other” was difficult thing and even the language barrier made it more difficult. However, during my stay in Hilo, I was communicating with my Hawaiian friends only in English and sharing our cultural backgrounds and thoughts. I think it’s great that I actually did it without even thinking about it. This experience made me more interested in meeting a lot of people all over the world and communicating with them.

by Kayo N.