1980 School Magazine

HITOMI ISHIKAWA Japanese Rotary Exchange Student Visiting Australia: March 1979 - March '1980 Extracts from letters received since she leJt Australia. 30.3.80 "When I arrived in Tokyo next morning, the temp. was -2 deg. I was very cold ! I We drived back home to Seto. We took 7 hours to get home because the traffic was bad that day. When I got home, I met our dogs. There were 3 new dogs, and 2 dead." "On Wednesday, I met my best f riend - Mari. We had a good talk and I showed her a Iot of photos which I took in Australia, and I told her how much I enjoyed my year in Australia. " "l'm going to start school on the Sth April. I hope lwill be able to understand the studies. Today I received one of my parcels. There are 5 books about Australia and school magazine. I've just showed them to my family. My sister is very in- terested and is enjoying to look at." 21.7.BO "lt is almost 3 months since I came back to Japan! We have just finished our end oJ semester exams last week and have started the summer holidays today, so I am happy because I have a lot of times to write letters and to have a rest and enjoying my hobbies and so on. I have been trying hard to catch up on the work I missed. At first I couldn't understand the chemistry lesson and the Japanese lesson. But now I can understand them better. The weather is very hot in Japan and it was the end of the rainy season yesterday, so we will not have much rain any more. The rainy season usually lasts for 1 month and during the rainy season we have rain almost every day. This year the rainy season was little longer than usual, so I was happy to here that the rainy season has ended, because I don't like rain very much. A couple of weeks ago, my teacher asked me to write an essay about Australia for the school news paper which we get every two months. So I wrote a lot of things about Australia - like what is the school like, and what I did in Australia, and how happy I was in Australia. Many friends of mine want to go to Australia. They often ask me about Australia. I have been speaking English with the people who like English. We have a teacher who can speak English very well, and we go to his house three times a week. I still sometimes feel sad when I think of you all. I was very sad to leave Australia." 44

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