The Matriculation Ceremony

Well, I am somewhat surprised, but the matriculation ceremony is actually worth mentioning. First we were given all the statistics, 117 international students have arrived in the fall semester with 13 continuing from the last semester. They come from USA, Canada, Mexico, U.K., Germany, Hungary, France, Switzerland, Czech republic, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Russia, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, ailandThe phillipines, Mongolia, Australia, and New Zealend. US has by far the most Students at 49, 2nd place countries only have 9 students and include the UK and Korea. There were 22 new freshman entering AIU, because in Japan you usually start a new grade in the Spring there were relatively few new freshman.

The Matriculation ceremony had busienss leaders, and some renowned community members. One other thing of note are the student speeches, one by a new freshman and one by a new graduate student. Both speeches were extremely personal and both students talked about their personnal goals and their views of the future. They were a lot better then the speeches you generally hear in the US talking about the future in general terms such as "Challenging". The first student, Airi, (She is the piano player, not "Iri" as I initially thought) in her speech she talked about the hope that the Japanese citizens become more politically active and less indifferent to the rest of the world. She did mention the fact that she spent a few years living in Australia.( I also learned that Arisa, who I mentioned before as well spent about 3 years living in Shanghai).

The 2nd speech was from a graduate student, he talked about how he hopes to become an English teachrer and that he hopes to change the way English is taught in Japanese school. He talked about his childhood, and how he liked English and did not like English class. He said that he hopes now to create anymore students like that. Anyway, off to trying to register my computer!