It motivated me to study abroad that the experience I had accepted a lot of foreign students as a member of the host-family. My mother is working in the international association, and she has had interests about being host-family, so many foreigners have stayed in my house since my childhood. It was enjoyable for me to talk with them about their home countries or mother languages. It does not take so long time to get interests about foreign countries and having conversation internationally. After knowing the exchange program, studying abroad while in university has been one of the biggest aims for me. Now, I am very happy to have made this come true and feeling motivated to improve my English skills as much as possible before departure.
There are two big aims for studying abroad: improving my language skills and finding a new me. The first one is improving my language skills. I have learned English for almost ten years but still now I cannot speak and listen to it well. I think that is because I have studied it as a subject not as a communication tool. I want to use English as a tool for daily conversation. I think the most effective way to get command of this language is living in the foreign country, so I applied for being an exchange student to go abroad. Now, I have already taken the online English conversation lessons for more than half a year as the preparation.
The second aim in studying abroad is finding a new me. This means I want to brush myself up and find new values by living in the unknown environment and communicating with various people. This is the most important aim for me in studying abroad. “Is it correct that the image of the foreigners I have?” “What is living abroad like?” “What is the real charm of Japan I have never found?”. To answer those questions, I want to watch the world by my eyes and feel it by my skin. In this global society, I guess in the future I will get more and more chance to go abroad and meet a lot of foreigners. In those situations, the experience like living in foreign countries or finding new values will be helpful to understand other people’s feelings and their backgrounds. I am sure that this experience will give me a lot of stimulation positively and be fruitful for my future.

It has been four months since I came here. I often feel that everyone has grown up in different cultures and that all of us have various and unique values. I knew I would encounter some gaps between Japan and Australia or other countries, but these differences are much larger than I expected. Sometimes I struggle to overcome them, and it takes much longer than usual, but I still enjoy experiencing brand new cultures and exposing myself to them.
I am living in student accommodation in front of the university, and every student here is studying their major so hard, which is impressive to me. I feel that I am spending my time much better than just earning a degree. So far, my experience as an exchange student has been much greater than I expected.

Through this exchange program, I found out that I should enjoy my life more optimistically and I can keep my own pace without getting distracted by others. Now I am 22 years old, but had never spent time in diversity where everyone is from different culture or everyone has their own unique perspectives, before going to Australia. It felt like everything was fresh and new, and I got much time for looking back about myself.
Last year, I was always caring about other people’s opinion or their eyesight, and comparing myself with them, which made me feel disappointed and negative. I had no idea what I wanted to do in my future.
When I just started my exchange program in UWA, soon I realized that there are so many different people there who have different background and study different major of course, but they have a common feature: having their own core belief and always focus on that. They looked respecting and understanding others and accepted then loved themselves as well. Comparing with others too much, I could not focus on and accept myself at that time, so being in such environment where everyone focuses on themselves made me notice that how I can accept the difference between them and me and understand everyone is so special and don’t have to be compared.
Also, I learned that it is not always right that the productivity is the most important and we should get thing done as soon as possible. In Japan, not all but in most cases, it feels like time is money, so we shouldn’t take time for everything, or we should always try to do the same thing with shorter time. This can be true depends on contexts, but if we do that too much, we might lose the core value of things, increase the mental burden, and can’t enjoy the moment fully. In Perth, I faced lots of scenes that people were just enjoying their coffee, sitting down on the beach side, or smiling at each other. Those people looked happy, optimistic and have positive energy for their future. By seeing those people, I noticed I had overlooked small happinesses in my daily life. I had believed that being busy or keeping growth without stopping for a while is the fulfillment, but it is not always like that. This was the big lesson that I learned by living in Perth.
This 9 months-exchange-program was not just for my degree. It gave me the huge positive impact and made my life from now on changed. I appreciate that I had such a precious time this year.