In addition to the Musical Club’s musical Show Boat, one of the cultural festival’s attractive displays I wanted to visit was the Kelso Heartland Homestay Program report by students who visited the United States. Devin Kelso, born in Mount Vernon, Iowa, worked at Kokugakuin Tochigi University High School as a communicative English teacher and hosted the homestay program with his family. They arranged for host families in Mount Vernon to encourage them to accept each participant.

About a dozen high school and junior high students took part in this program. They spent about two weeks with the host families, learning English, and were taken to cities around Mount Vernon for shopping, camping, barbecuing, and sightseeing. Every picture displayed on the boards showed that the students had been very excited to experience an unknown new culture.

They brought back plenty of American items as well as the American mind. They are really nice.

According to a local newspaper article, Devin Kelso began this program to encourage Japanese youth to have the experience he had at 15. He visited Mexico with his father and learned many things there. He found that the Spanish he had learned at school worked well, and that people were getting along without English.

I thought the students were very happy to see the world of different cultures when they were very young. I hope I can participate in this program someday 😉

Extra: the pictures of trains from Tochigi to Tokyo.