{"id":26315,"date":"2012-07-20T21:37:01","date_gmt":"2012-07-21T01:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=26315"},"modified":"2012-07-20T21:37:01","modified_gmt":"2012-07-21T01:37:01","slug":"hibari-sensei-coming-full-circle-with-sister-cities-and-jet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2012\/07\/20\/hibari-sensei-coming-full-circle-with-sister-cities-and-jet\/","title":{"rendered":"Hibari-sensei: Coming Full Circle with Sister Cities and JET"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jen Wang (Miyagi, 2008-09)<\/strong> is a lab tech in Dallas and a staff writer for the Japanese music website <\/em>Purple SKY<\/a>.\u00a0 Her love of cosplay and her junior high school students inspired the name for her own Japanese pop culture blog, <\/em>Hibari-sensei\u2019s Classroom<\/a>.<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

This past March, I had a very rare opportunity: a couple of my former students were going to visit my hometown through the Sister Cities exchange program.\u00a0 I had been waiting for this since I ended my JET career, and because the last two student trips were canceled, I was extremely excited.\u00a0 Not only did I get to see how my students had grown and (hopefully) become more proficient in English, but the tables were now turned.\u00a0 I got to show them my home and my life.\u00a0 Without the Sister Cities program, I would have never become interested in being a JET and so I felt like in helping my family host a student, I had taken another step in my journey of cultural exchange.\u00a0 It’s been an adventure going from exchange student to assistant English teacher to host sister.<\/p>\n

My first trip to Japan (real trip and not an overnight layover) happened through the Southlake Sister Cities Youth Ambassador Program. Although 19 made me technically too old to be considered a “youth”, my parents managed to convince the organization to tag along with my brother and the other high schoolers. I was nervous because it would be the first time I’d be out of contact with my family for more than a couple of days. On top of that, my finger had gotten a horrible infection before the trip. It felt as though I was going to be on my own. That turned out to be not true at all.<\/p>\n

My host family, as well as the individuals overseeing our trip, made me feel at home. I fell in love with Tome, which was large enough to have different things to do (like shop, learn kendo, listen to music at a pub) but small enough to experience the peaceful solitude of the countryside. One of the days I met an American woman who was an assistant English teacher. She encouraged the high schoolers who were eating lunch with us to speak English. I remembered that she came to Tome through the JET Programme, and I saw that as my ticket to return to Japan.<\/p>\n

Click here to read the rest of this post<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jen Wang (Miyagi, 2008-09) is a lab tech in Dallas and a staff writer for the Japanese music website Purple SKY.\u00a0 Her love of cosplay and her junior high school students inspired the name for her own Japanese pop culture blog, Hibari-sensei\u2019s Classroom. This past March, I had a very rare opportunity: a couple of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[42,7],"tags":[647,697,696],"class_list":["post-26315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdote-article","category-blogs","tag-exchange-programs","tag-hibari-sensei","tag-sister-cities"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t