As the school year is now officially in full gear, only true highlights of our summer experiences remain. For me, that experience was High School Diplomats, a 10 day program at Princeton University designed for American students to interact and forge friendships with Japanese students. The program launches from Marshall High School, and for the last several years, Marshall has been fortunate enough to send more than one student to participate on an all expenses paid basis.
Prior to HSD, I was concerned about what it would mean to hang out with kids from a different country, as well as about the loss of time with my friends and inability to access my phone; however, all that changed as soon as the bus dropped us off at Princeton. For nine of the ten days, Soichiro and I spent every waking moment participating in classes, activities and games designed to enhance cultural exchange between us Americans, who came from all over the United States, and our new Japanese friends.
While all the Japanese students were amazing, the true value of the program was revealed to me when I met and made lifelong friends with Soichiro Yamada, the Japanese student I was paired with and who spent a weekend at my house before we left for Princeton.
Although Soichiro and I came from different cultures, spoke different languages and didn’t seem to have much in common, he was so anxious to embrace our culture, eat our food and listen to our music. We exchanged a lot of ideas and information in our time together, but mostly we made the connection that any two kids who simply enjoy just hanging out together make.
There were too many individual experiences to recount in order to fully depict why this experience was so amazing, but to go into something expecting a struggle, and then come out with knowledge, memories and a lifelong friend, comes pretty close to summing it up.