AFTER AMERICAN LIFE

In a car on my way to my host-family house, I've completely made it a habit to try to catch English from the radio. One month earlier, I thought I hoped I would understand what they were talking about within a month. Now I just realized that it is too short for me to learn English in just one month. However, I've learned a lot of things from this experience. Since I came here to the U.S., I've felt that American values are definitely different from Japanese ones and it gave me a chance to rethink what Japanese are or Japan is. It isn't sometimes easy to　understand new values. It reminds me of the story of Thanksgiving, it is known as the biggest event here in the U.S. In the class, one of the professors told us about what it happened, what the origin was.

 Heroes in this story are people called "Pilgrims" ,the founder of America. The Pilgrim left Plymouth, England in 1620 because of religious persecution. They wanted to start a new life in the New World (America) and practiced their religion in freedom. Their sea voyage was very difficult and many of the Pilgrims died. Finally they arrived on the north east coast in North America. At the time, that area was wilderness. It was almost winter and they had no homes and little food.  The winter was very cold and harsh. Almost half of pilgrims died from starvation and sickness.

 However, soon they became friends with the local Native American Indians who showed the pilgrims how to grow food, namely corn, pumpkins and beans. The pilgrims worked hard and the summer harvest of 1621 was excellent. The pilgrims declared a three-day festival to thank God and to celebrate the wonderful harvest with their friends, the Native American Indians, who had helped them so much. This is the origin of Thanksgiving.

 So Thanksgiving is a symbol of their strong bond between the Pilgrims and the Indians, many people don't know about that today though. Now, it is not so hard for me to imagine what the pilgrims felt when they met people who were incredibly different from themselves. And also their burden to try to know each other goes beyond my imagination. I'm on that way now. I should keep on trying to take new culture and values. From next month, I am going to start a new life in Mexico and stay there for 3 months. I’m ready to give a try to anything. I hope the day would come when I could thank God for all I would have and all people who I’ve already met and I would meet from now in 3 months, like Thanksgiving.