On Monday, October 20th, sophomore students from a private school in the suburbs of Saitama, Japan walked the halls of Paint Branch for the first time and were astonished by all that Paint Branch offers.

After a 14-hour flight, the students finally touched ground and assembled in Paint Branch’s auditorium.  In the auditorium, some of our seniors made their own Japanese-animated video to welcome the Japanese students and give them their own animated tour of the school grounds which, according to senior My Hai Vu, was “intensive but it was fun to do.”

After the introduction, students were paired up with their host families and walked down to the cafeteria to have their first taste of pizza here in America. Pairs exchanged gifts as part of a Japanese tradition, and junior Emelia Cieslak even built a stuffed animal herself and offered it as a gift to her young guest. Though the students stayed in Maryland and Washington, D.C. for only nine days as part of a science program that, among other places, visited NASA and the Smithsonian, they were excited and eager to “learn American culture here,” said student Shimada Yoshitaka.