Each month, Armidale Express Extra will share the experience of an international student.
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My name is Minoru Masui and I come from Japan. I am currently studying English at the English Language Centre at the University of New England. I am here for nine months as an exchange student.
I have been studying English for seven years and want to become proficient in English so that I can manage and train baseball teams in America.
This is why I came to Australia so that I could improve my English. Last year, I visited San Francisco to watch baseball – this cemented my dream of working in this field.
While I wanted to come to Australia to improve my English, my parents were supportive of my decision to do so.
For the first five months I stayed in homestay with a local family. During my time in homestay, I experienced Australian life, such as food and Aussie sayings.
In the beginning, I found it quite difficult to speak and understand my homestay family. Over time, I have overcome this and now feel confident with my speaking. Homestay has been really important and I really appreciate my time with my host family.
The second part of my time will mean living on campus at UNE and I am looking forward to mixing and socialising with students similar in age.
In Japan, I live with my parents and older brother. During my school years, I played baseball every day.
The cost of this was many injuries! These injuries made me reassess my goals and plans. After finishing English in Australia, I will return to Japan to graduate at my Japanese university (Tsurumi).
After graduation, I want to have a working holiday to earn money so that I can then study physiotherapy.
To keep my English skills, I plan to work in an English-speaking country for several months. At this stage I am not sure whether I will complete the physiotherapy course by distance education while living in Japan, or actually going to a university in an English-speaking country.
During my time in Armidale, I joined the Outlaw team which is part of Armidale Baseball. I have never played baseball with foreign people.
While learning a lot about Australian baseball, I have also been able to describe the movements such as hit, throw and run. This experience is really valuable for my future. I really want to say thank you to my teammates.
While here in Australia, I travelled to Alice Springs, Harvey Bay, Adelaide and Melbourne. The big difference between Japan and Australia is soil color. Although Japanese soil is brown, soil in Australia is red!
I travelled with international people such as Germans, English and Canadians and even if English was not their first language, we all spoke English. This encouraged me to keep improving my English.
I learned about Aboriginal culture at Uluru and Katajuda and I walked around Uluru. It was so amazing. I loved the vastness of the area. At night I slept in a swag and looked at the stars. I will never forget this experience.
At Harvey Bay, I stayed with my homestay’s maternal mother and was lucky enough to go out on a boat to see sea turtles and dugongs. I also went to Fraser Island and my favorite place there was Lake McKenzie.
I find Australian people are very friendly – even if you are a stranger, they always say “G’day Mate”.
When I went to a pub by myself, people were happy to drink their beer and have a conversation with me. These conversations helped my improve my English and learn Aussie slang!