By Hitomi Tanaka

There are 176 foreign students studying in Sapporo University this year; 15 of them are from USA, Sweden, Australia, and so on, and others are from Asia. You can see the pictures of English and Economics department's exchange students in this article, so when you see them on campus, say hello to them.

This article is about two students, Janka Hudakova from Slovakia, and Carlos dos Santos from Brazil. They are exchange students from the University of Nebraska at Kearney, which is the sister university of SU. They have interesting backgrounds in that while they were studying at the University of Nebraska at Kearney as exchange students from their country, they had a chance to apply to exchange students to SU.

Jankaﾕs hobby is Karate. She belongs to the Karate club in SU and took part in a Karate match. In Slovakia, she practiced Karate for six years. Carlos likes playing soccer, and he takes PE to play soccer and he also plays soccer with his Japanese friends in SU, so he enjoys playing soccer.

Of course they are good at English because they have studied at University in the U.S. But English is not their native language. Jankaﾕs native language is Slovakian and Carlosﾕ native language is Portuguese. They studied English in their native country just as we do. When I asked them when they started studying English, Janka said that she studied at an American school since she was an elementary school student and Carlos said that he studied English from elementary school to high school. Carlos studies at two other universities in Brazil besides the University of Nebraska at Kearney, and next year he is going to graduate three universities at the same time.

Why did they study in the U.S.? Janka said, "When I was a junior high school student, I wanted to study in America or Japan. When I was 17 years old, I took part in summer camp in the U.S. It helped me to decide to study in there." Carlos said, "I considered which is better, Japan or America. But I found a scholarship to study in the U.S. and I made up my mind to go to there." When I asked them why they started studying Japanese, Janka said, "Iﾕm interested in foreign languages, which are useful for international relationships." Carlos said, "Iﾕm interested in foreign cultures and international exchanges. If I understand many foreign cultures, I can avoid rude behavior." They also said Japanese is one of the most important languages in business.

What do they want to study besides Japanese? Janka said, "Now, I take Russian classes and Iﾕll take economics classes in the 2nd semester." Carlos will also take economics classes, and he said, "Japanese economics is developed, and it is different from other countries, so I want to study economics in Japan."

They seem cheerful and they enjoyed our interview, so we SU students should actively talk to them in Japanese to help their studying of the Japanese language. Such an act can be the beginning of international exchange. Considering that many Japanese students study abroad, it's a good idea to treat them as you would like to be treated if you were alone in a foreign country. It will make our campus life more lively and worthwhile.