Home > Homestay Stories > Catching up with past students in Japan

Catching up with past students in Japan,

One of our host families hosted a Japanese girl called Mayuko during her study tour in South Australia. This is what host mother, Brigitta, had to say during her time with Mayuko:

“I just wanted you to know what a wonderful girl Mayuko is. She is soooo lovely, I can’t even tell you how great it is to have her with my family. She is friendly, helpful, respectful, funny and so kind. She helps me with cooking, she has big chats about everything and her English is great. She wants to make her English as good as she can and she works hard on it. She barely uses translating machines etc. Amazing young girl and we are very grateful of these two weeks we get to spend with her and learn all different things about Japan from her. She fitted into our family like we have always known her and the children love her too – she plays with them all lot. Very sweet girl. We feel very comfortable around her. She is an absolute gem!”

Later in the year, Brigitta and her family (including 3 children) went on a trip to Japan. As part of their trip, they caught up with Mayuko and her mother. They had a great time seeing where Mayuko lives and learning more about the Japanese culture.

“We would like to say a big thank you to this program you are running. Thanks to this I think we have made some lifelong friends. We just got back from Japan a week ago and while we were there we caught up with our last student, Mayuko, and her mum from Kyoto. It was lovely and without this program our children wouldn’t be able to make special friendships like this. So, thank you to all the International Student Program workers for all these lovely experiences and memories. It was lovely catching up and an incredible experience for our kids to see where our students come from and how they live….”

“Japan… what an incredible place. We have travelled a lot around the world but have never seen anything like Japan and Japanese people. We have done two-full weeks of travelling around the country to see as much as we can and we truly fell in love with it. Now we are even more excited about hosting international students in the future, so that we can understand their culture and how they live. Very grateful for this international program.”