Day In The Life With the Sophia Students
Instantly I was excited to finally get to see the Sophia University students again as being away from them felt similar to being away from your long lost sibling or one of your best friends being on the opposite side of the world away from you. Although I was tired from volunteering at the Special Games all day today seeing them immediately lifted my spirits and filled me with an enormous amount of energy. As soon as they got off the bus there was a mutual excitement that was like no other as shown in figure 1. I was super excited to show them around the campus I call home (Loyola Marymount University). As we walked around the University they were instantly satisfied with this new world they had never seen before that was away from theirs. Some of the main differences that they pointed out were our eating places and variety as well as how nice but small in height our building was. Even though we were from opposite sides of the world and had a slight language barrier we could communicate something perfectly which was the feeling of happiness.
Figure 1: Sophia Students first arrive getting off of the bus.
One of the funniest moments was the performance that my classmates wanted me to perform because they witnessed me sing during our time in Japan at karaoke. I performed “Love Again” by one of my favorite artists and everyone got to enjoy it, we all tapped our feet and had a day full of laughter and fun. We also received gifts from the students which I enjoyed, because
they were snacks from Japan which I surprisingly really enjoyed considering how picky of an eater I am. Also, we got to bond over other music as we shared our favorite artists, and listened to them with one another. We also bonded over food, one of the students cut a taco with a knife and my classmates compared it to my use of chopsticks which we found extremely funny(I am working on my chopstick skills). We were then able to go out on the bluff where we enjoyed the fantastic views of Los Angeles for the first time with each other and watched them take a lot of different pictures. Seeing their smiles provided me with a feeling of happiness and thankfulness that I get to see this view every day at school which reminded me to continue to be thankful.
Figure 2: Meeting with Sophia students at the Mbongi Spot
Lastly, we got to bring the Sophia students to the festival where they got to engage with the rest of the LMU community while with the rest of the Tomodachi student groups as shown inFigure 3. They were able to play games with us and watch different shows that we all were able to enjoy as an extremely fun group. They also were able to ask us questions if they had any about different foods or drink, e.t.c. I wish we could seethe students again and who knows one day it may happen. Stay tuned!
Figure 3: Celebration with Sophia students and LMU community
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