ポートランド留学のM.K.さんが、コロナのために突然の帰国の時のことを含めて、留学生活を振り返ってくれました。以下はホームステイを中心記してくれています。

My study abroad life was finished suddenly. This happened into me deep sad because I was going to community college but I couldn’t. This is my final goal in my study abroad life. I never gave up when I got hard situations. This is because I really wanted to go there and learn with native speakers. However, I was able to learn a lot of things from this experience.

Homestay has many good points but also some bad point. My host family based on four members, mother, two daughters and daughter’s friend. Older sister lives in California so I met her just twice. So, actually I lived with three girls. I was the same age as one of the daughters and her friend and they like Japanese anime. Unfortunately, I’m not interested in anime so I couldn’t understand what they said but they really know Japan so we talked about Japan almost all night. Mother is really nice person and her cooking skill is so nice. I was always looking forward to dinner time. Also, she invited me to many events such as Halloween, Thanks giving day and Christmas. I went to her friend’s house and ate dinner with their friends at the events. My host is Jewish so we didn’t celebrate on Christmas but we celebrated Hanukkah. They celebrated the eight days and lit up a candle each day. I’d never heard this name so it was so impressive.

Moreover, she showed around the town in her car and we walked with her dog together. When some of my friends told me about their host family stories, I thought I was lucky because I stayed with very nice host family. Mostly, homestay is really nice experience. (K.M.)