GAiGO Students' Voices

I participated in the Kagoshima International Youth Exchange Programme between Kagoshima and Hong Kong and Singapore from 31st Oct to 11th Nov as one of the Kagoshima delegates. This programme is organised by Kagoshima Prefecture and has a long history.
For the first part of the journey we visited Hong Kong, where I met my friends from HK who had visited Kagoshima last summer as HK delegates. I was very happy to see them all again. And I was very excited about what was going on in HK.
Talking about Hong Kong, it was too crowded, dirty and air-polluted, though the islands were very attractive, maybe, because of business of the streets and that all the people I met in HK were fairly nice. HK was a colony of the UK, however, I was surprised that the region was more China-like than I expected.
As part of the programme I visited one of the HK delegates’ house. There I learnt what a home in HK is like. He lived in an apartment owned by the government and the rooms were not so large, because HK is a small and populated region. I was surprised that his parents didn’t speak English at all! I thought all people in HK can speak English well. Therefore, sadly, I couldn’t talk with them.
I was very happy to have a wonderful time in HK. I was going to miss them very much, only the time to leave had come. With a warm farewell, we left the place with many memories. Then we headed to Singapore.
To tell the truth I was uneasy, for I didn’t know anyone in Singapore, comparing that I had some friends in HK and some of the Kagoshima delegates actually seemed tired. As I expected, we didn’t communicate with people in Singapore so much as the ones in HK. One reason was, I think, their pronunciation. It was quite difficult to understand for me. I barely communicated with some of them. Yet I made friends with a woman, one of the delegates from Singapore in 2005. I asked her many times about the food of Singapore.
We had a home stay programme there and spent almost half of the time in the Fine City. My host was a fire fighter, who got married but his wife is working in Tokyo. He took me to various places like Sentosa, a resort island, China town and so on. I talked relatively a lot with the man about Singapore. He was a very kind, nice person, so I had a good time there, although now the very long substantial trip is over.
The best thing about the programme for me was that I met many people and made friends with them again. I will keep in touch with them and I’d like to visit the countries to see my friends some day. I will never forget this great tour. Finally I’d like to thank all the people who were involved in this programme.