About a month ago, back in early/mid-March, we gave ourselves a few weeks to prepare after learning about the upcoming friendship and knowledge exchange. An intensive week and a half preceding the arrival of the visiting Vietnamese students, I worked closely with two small groups of students from my high school gathering and arranging data for a presentation they would eventually combine with information shared by the Vietnamese students and give the presentations, together, in English, to the entire high school. Really long sentence. Gomen. Having little or no experience creating research projects of their own, let alone in English, we had a lot of work to do and each of my students put in a lot of time and effort to be ready for the arrival of the visiting students.

When they came the following four days were a rush, as if a great gale blew in through every window of a house and you had to hold on to the furniture to make sure it didn't fly to the other side of the room. We had no idea what resources the Vietnamese students had back at home, so we were prepared for a whole variety of things, but as they filed into the classroom in their uniforms, after touring the school in traditional dress, the speed of their English, the depth of their research, and comfort with active learning blew both me and my students away. Our major obstacle was removing me as a translator and creating a level of sincere communication between very different types of students.

I must say, over the next few days while we concentrated on getting to know each other, having fun, and finalizing the projects, I was extremely impressed with everyone's work. In addition, both the Japanese and Vietnamese students involved performed beautiful examples of traditional music and dance from each of their cultures, a feat that led me to wondering what I would have done with my high school classmates in the same position.
After hours of running between groups of students, plugging away at connecting the students despite their different levels and backgrounds and constantly correcting and revising everything from organization to layout to pronunciation, watching them present their projects on subjects from Asia's Role in the Modern World to Population Issues was a great grand finale to all of their hard work.



The exchange was not only of cultural ideas and traditions, of semi-prepared projects and time, but of students learning about what it is to be students. There are so many ways to teach, so many different education systems, so many ways to learn. Careful listening, patient problem solving, and articulation of resolutions was the meeting point for everyone—the way to step through differences and into a middle ground of growth. And questions. Questions are the seeds to the water of consideration, the sunlight of patience, and the nutrients of perspective. I am lucky enough to be one who is able to watch them grow.

Plant seeds.