My name is Alexis. I will be 17 years old in January and I’m almost through with my AA at Shasta College. My sponsor club is Redding East Rotary and my host club is Tokyo Yamanote Rotary (東京山の手ロータリー). Both my sponsor and host clubs have been very kind and generous towards me and I am eternally grateful for all that they’ve made possible for me. My host high school is Shibuya Kyouiku Gakuen (渋谷教育学園). It is 10 stories high and has a few thousand students. I attended Mercy High School in Red Bluff which only had about 100 students and was only one small story so it’s been a very big change. People are much more serious about high school in Japan and it is around the same level as the general education that I was taking at Shasta so I’m learning a lot. Also, having a uniform that we wear even outside of school a lot of the time is a new experience.

I have loved both of the host families that I’ve had so far and I’ve learned so much from them and made lifelong friends. They are also very generous and treat me like a real part of the family. When I first came to Japan it was everything that I thought it would be and more. However, there were a few surprising things that I didn’t know about and had to learn the hard way. In Japan, the hand signal that seems like “Go Away” to Westerners means “Come here” in Japan. That was an interesting experience…

I have found the Japanese people to be very welcoming people and the level of respect that they have for others is unprecedented by any other peoples that I have come in contact with. My perception of Japan has not changed as much as my perception of the whole human race has. This experience has helped further my understanding of just how similar all the peoples of the world are in our thoughts and hopes no matter which language we express them in or what type of clothing we wear while thinking them. I also know that the Japanese people (and other fellow foreigners that I’ve met) have learned something from me, as I have been told be a few, they previously thought that all Americans had blonde hair and blue eyes. They had no idea of the cultural diversity of the United States and were surprised to learn that a Mexican-American like me is not an uncommon sight in California. I believe the Rotary Youth Exchange Program is a wonderful thing for furthering international understanding and I hope I can continue to further that understanding as an ambassador of the United States. Thank you to all who have made this possible for me.