I cannot believe that it has already been 3 months since I came to Champaign as a 1-year exchange student from Japan. I still vividly remember the first day in Champaign as if it were yesterday. I arrived at Willard Airport with lots of excitement and anxiety about my entirely new life in the U.S. on the 16th of August. I was supposed to be picked up by OISA to go to Cosmo. I waited and waited to meet them, but I could not make it anyhow. There were two other exchange students from Korea and China who were in the same situation. All of us were really nervous because we were neither used to living in the U.S. nor using English. Anyway, we talked and discussed together what to do with a lot of difficulty in an unaccustomed language, and all of us managed to find our way to go to our houses in Champaign. They are the first people I got to know in Champaign.
This unexpected happening made me imagine the difficulty of living in a foreign country and the happiness to meet new people who have different backgrounds. And my expectation was certainly right. I made lots of good friends at Cosmo, in classrooms, in table tennis club, and so forth, during these 3 months, while I had a bit of a tough experience at the emergency room at Carle with my boyfriend. In this short essay, let me tell you about my new experiences in Champaign and what I have been thinking recently.
First of all, I really would like to thank Ms. Andrea Shields, who is the Executive Director of the Cosmopolitan Club, for giving me such a wonderful chance to live in Cosmo and to meet many active, intelligent, and excellent people here. Studying abroad has been one of my dreams since I was a high school student, but my life at Cosmo is more than what I expected! Not only can I talk and hang out with my housemates, which are good opportunities to practice speaking English, but I can also understand the cultural differences through cooking, eating, and discussing some topics together. I feel proud of being one of the residents of Cosmo, surrounded by many open-minded and warmhearted people. The following is just an example.
When my boyfriend visited me from Japan last month with a high fever (unfortunately), many of the residents helped us in various ways: proposing many ways to recover, giving us a ride to go to a hospital at midnight, and so on. Because we were not familiar with medicine and hospitals in the U.S, their suggestions were really helpful and encouraging. (Thank you so much for all of your kindness.) Furthermore, this experience gave me a chance to think about the universality among us. In other words, all of us have the same feelings what to do in hard situations. It does not matter where we are from or who you are.
I also have made many good friends at other places. I especially would like to talk about the table tennis club a little bit. Before talking about it in detail, let me explain why I belong to a table tennis club here. Actually, I have been practicing table tennis for 7 years in Japan. I really wanted to keep on playing it in the U.S. to retain my skills and to compare the differences of play and manners. When I took part in a tournament as a member of the U of I table tennis team the other day, I found many differences during the tournament.
In Japan, we wear uniforms, sing our school songs, call members’ names in turn, and make a circle yelling out together to cheer ourselves up before the tournament starts. It takes about 20 minutes to finish them before games, which makes players nervous and excited. Here, on the other hand, I did not need to wear uniforms nor have anything to do before games. I do not mean which is right or wrong, but I just felt that the Japanese put emphasis on unity and ceremony more than Americans. Thus, table tennis here seemed quite an individual sport to me, but actually it was not. Once the games started, many of our team members gave me a lot of advice and cheered me up during the games. I was really surprised and moved. Although there are some differences in the way we start our games, we have the same feelings on cheering team members and working together to win.
During these 3 months, I got to know that there are some universal thoughts and feelings in the world even though people have different cultural and social backgrounds. I would like to keep on experiencing as many things as I can until next May and would like to widen my view by understanding some differences and universality among people. I believe that we need to know and respect the differences among people to live a cooperative life. Then, we will be able to find some similarities and universality among the differences, which make us feel more comfortable to live together.
Sayuri Koda is a one-year exchange student from Japan.
