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Stories from Abroad: City sights and starless nights

My dad promised me when I was very young that he would get me to a Disney park. As time passed I was beginning to believe he had made a promise that he wouldn’t be able to keep.
Nasselquist

My dad promised me when I was very young that he would get me to a Disney park. As time passed I was beginning to believe he had made a promise that he wouldn’t be able to keep. He pushed me to do this exchange, though, and that got me to Tokyo DisneySea. Which was totally unexpected and I was beyond surprised when my host family said they wanted to take me, too.

But that wasn’t the only adventure that happened recently. There were plenty of big adventures, one being 46 floors high.

I swear you could see all of Nagoya from the top of that tower. My host family had taken me at night so you could see all the lights shining as far as my eyes could see. Sadly, I only saw three dim stars and it took so long to find them.

I can’t see the stars from my host house. Never did I think about how much I’d miss stars. When some exchange students and I met up for one of our weekends, us inbounds found a way onto the roof of the hotel we were staying at – our leaders knew our location and were not concerned. Eight of us inbounds went up onto the roof and spent time together, our own little family. Because we were on a mountain side, the stars were visible and the moon was our only source of light.

At a different meeting, we participated in a ceremony where we pulled a three ton cart. We wore special robes and walked across a traditional type of town pulling on large ropes with many other people. People that have trained for this task also work at the base of this really old cart to move it as well as do a spin of the entire cart.

After our meetings all exchange students go off to our separate schools.

My school is one of the bigger and more strict schools where I live. I do not do much in school. They have placed me in some classes like music, art, and calligraphy, where my lack of Japanese language skills do not affect my learning abilities. The hours upon hours not in those few classes are spent independently studying Japanese, occasionally with a teacher. That’s just the life of an exchange student.

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