In December, Poly students hosted a group of boys' water polo players from Trinity College in Perth. To prepare for their visit, Gabi and I asked Ms. Diederich and Maddie to give some background on the history and culture of Australia. We also put together a list of Australian slang, some of which was, it turned out, fictional. I did not host a student, so I cannot attest to the full experience, but I thoroughly enjoyed the lunch we had together on Arden.
The students said they enjoyed the classes they attended, citing food in classrooms as an especially notable difference between our school and theirs. We talked about the contrast between our respective education systems at length, until we were gathered to formally welcome the Aussies. Gabi and I gave a short speech detailing our motivation behind joining the program, the commitment to enriching the opportunity for connect provided by the hosting experience. Tom, a senior there and possibly the team captain, also gave a lovely speech, thanking the school for its hospitality.
I spent much of that lunch speaking with Tom, and the brief but meaningful connection my fellow Poly students and I felt, the natural and unscripted nature of the conversations going on all around me, reminded me of why I began this project. In just 30 minutes, Tom and I connected to one another as two fellow teens, two people, each with his own perspective and opinions, each ready to share and to discuss and to interact. This hosting experience was perhaps easier because the guests spoke English, but their lives were undeniably different than ours. They were, after all, from the other side of the world. Yet our differences provided room for conversation, observation and analysis. They facilitated sharing rather complicating it. As usual, we were much more similar to our guests than we were different.
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