3/17/2010 - AFSer Planning Exchange to Japan for Five Years
By Denise Sautters
CantonRep.com staff writer
Betania Pawson is going places, and she can’t wait to tell everyone what she is doing.
Her first stop is Japan’s Kansai region, the western region of the main island of Honshu.
“I’m told the weather is a lot nicer there,” quipped the 16-year-old GlenOak High School junior.
She has been planning to visit Japan for the last five years and finally is getting the opportunity as an exchange student with the American Field Service exchange program.
She will be sharing her trip by writing a blog, “My Japanese Yen,” for the Repository’s Web site, CantonRep.com. It will start later this month.
Already bilingual, having learned Portuguese from her mother, Elizete, a native of Brazil, Betania’s interest in Japan, its language, and its culture started with comic books.
During the Arts in Stark’s, “Kimono As Art” exhibit at the Canton Museum of Art, she had the opportunity to talk to numerous Japanese residents, piquing her interest in the country even more.
“I am not fluent in the language yet, but about five years ago, not long after we first moved here (2002), we went back to Florida and I stayed at my best friend’s house. She had some Japanese comic books.”
Betania thought that was pretty cool.
“I read them (they were in English), but then I kind of fell out interest in them, until I returned home,” she said. “After a while, I saw them in a bookstore, and I started collecting them.”
In the back of the books, she said, publishers put a preview of the next volume. In the preview, every other one would be in Japanese. The publisher would have translator notes which helped her learn the culture, what was going on in the book, and the language. She also has been studying with a Japanese tutor for several years and has attended the Japanese Language School in Cleveland for the past six months in preparation.
“It is so different from what I’ve lived through already. I really want to experience it and live it for myself.”
When she told her parents about her plans, they said she had to learn the two basic alphabets first. The rest soon will be history. Betania and her father, the Rev. Bill Pawson of Westminster Community Presbyterian Church in Canton, will fly to Los Angeles today. Her orientation begins Monday, and on March 23, she and other foreign exchange students will leave for Japan. They will arrive March 24. She will be there 11 months.
“I am looking forward to experiencing the culture and the people of Japan,” she said. “It is such a beautiful country, from what I’ve seen and what people have told me. I am very excited.”
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