Miyu

Hey guys! How have you been? For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Miyu  and I go to Central Hawks Bay College with my great partner, Hitomi   It’s getting very hot here during the daytime but still cold in the morning and the night. Spring has finally arrived! I’m so excited since I’ve been sick of those freezing days. I never expected that I would be snuggling up with a hot water bottle every single night. Without further ado, let’s get onto the subject. 

 

I’m living with my host father, mother, and little brother. They are from Chile but they have lived here in New Zealand for over 20 years. There is also a kiwi girl living with us. She doesn’t go to my college but she still helps me a lot. To be honest, I used to have complains about my host family because they are non-native English speakers. I found my situation very complicated at that time. My host parents need to speak Spanish to get their son immersed in a Spanish environment so that he’ll be able to speak both English and Spanish. What’s more, my host sister studies Spanish very hard and tries to talk in Spanish as well. I’d thought I was the only one who wanted to speak English in this family and felt as though I was excluded from them when they talked in Spanish. However, as time went by, I got used to living with them, which made me think over my situation.  Nothing had changed in our relationship those few weeks, and I realized, ‘What am I waiting for?’ I had no idea how to answer to this question. I’d been waiting for ‘something’ that can change my life but the ‘something’ did not even exist, so what was the point to wait for nothing? This was when I literally admitted that I was wrong. It was always “my own action” that could change my life. Then I started to think positively about my environment and tried to look for their good points. In fact, once I disregarded thinking negatively, loads of interesting experiences came up constantly. 

 

We are, what is called, a multi-cultural family and each of us has different language, culture, and even common sense. We often ask each other how we say some words in our own language and we also make each other our traditional foods for dinner. We can expand one topic into three different views from Chile, Japan, and New Zealand. Although there are heaps more that I could talk about, I’ll stop here as it’s countless. All I can say is that I’m really enjoying staying with them now and I think they are the “best” host family for me. I’m so blessed that I could have this precious opportunity. I could never experience such a global life without them.

 

Next, I’ll be talking about my school life. We’re allowed to take 6 classes and I do ESOL, Geography, Math, Drama, PE, and FNT(Food Nutrition Technology).  Most of my friends say Drama is a fun class but it is absolutely difficult for exchange students like me. This class is basically different from the ‘class’ we have in Japan. There’s no desk nor chair to sit at because what we do in this class is ‘performing’ which includes speaking and listening. I used to hate Drama. You know how you feel when you have no idea what’s going on in the class and then you’re suddenly put in front of everyone. Yes, I was humiliated by this situation so many times. Some activities don’t even let us have any scripts and instead we have to quickly create a short story, practice how we move, what we say and then act it out to the class straight after. Surprisingly we have to do this within 20 minutes. At first, I didn’t understand what the story my friends made was like and what to say during the acting.  I was such a troublemaker in the activity… Despite this hard work, however, I still recommend you to take Drama because it brings you a number of opportunities to grow up markedly. You can learn the skills of listening, negotiating, communicating, and you would get your self-esteem and confidence.