Global Lessons

Ryan Suazo, 14, recently had a chance to glimpse the world through the eyes of a Japanese family, giving the Bernalillo High School freshman insights into his own culture.

“The kids start to plan for their futures when they’re really young,” Suazo said of the family he lived with for nine days in Sasebo, Japan, a city of 260,000 in southwestern Japan, about 30 miles north of Nagasaki.

“It brings disgrace to the family if you don’t get the job you’re meant to do,” he said.

	Albuquerque Sister Cities Foundation The city-funded nonprofit encourages young people ages 13-20 to participate in cultural exchange programs abroad. For more information, visit www.albuquerque-sister-cities.org or call Richard Buckler at 291-8175.

Ryan’s host family had three sons, ages 14, 10 and 8, and much of the discussion in the household focused on the boys’ career plans. Their mother, an English teacher, had known her own career path since she was a young girl, he said.

“It showed me how much freedom I have about what I’m going to do in the future, and I don’t have to decide right now,” said Suazo, who said he is leaning toward a career as an architect. “I think it made me appreciate the privileges I have.”

Suazo is one of seven New Mexico teens, ages 14-17, who visited Japan from July 19-31 through a student exchange program sponsored by the Albuquerque Sister Cities Foundation. The nonprofit fosters cultural and commercial ties between Albuquerque and nine sister cities around the world, including Sasebo.

The exchange program pays educational dividends, both to the students and to society, said Richard Buckler, the nonprofit’s president.

“The world is really tied together, whether we know it or not,” he said. Students who visit sister cities return with a greater awareness of their world, he said.

“Becoming internationally aware as a person, as a world citizen, is very important,” he said. “It breaks down walls that in the past have been barriers between countries.”

The New Mexico youths who went to Japan visited Tokyo for two days and made a day trip to Nagasaki, the site of the world’s second atomic explosion in August 1945, and visited the city’s Atomic Bomb Museum.

“They actually get an authentic view of Japanese life,” said Denise Mullen, who coordinates youth exchanges between Sasebo and Albuquerque.

Exchange students stay with host families that have children of comparable ages.

“The kids do a lot of things with their host brothers and sisters,” Mullen said. “They become part of the family.”

The rigors of traveling in the foreign country, such as navigating Tokyo’s bustling subways, boost their self-confidence, Mullen said. “They learn they can travel in a foreign country.”

While the New Mexico students were in Japan, nine students from Helmstedt, Germany – another of Albuquerque’s sister cities – arrived in Albuquerque on July 24 for a 2 1/2-week stay.

The German students, who visited the Grand Canyon and Sedona, Ariz., seemed most impressed with the spectacular landscapes of the Southwest.

In recent years, the Albuquerque Sister Cities Foundation has focused its student exchanges on Helmstedt and Sasebo, Buckler said. The foundation plans to send New Mexico students to Helmstedt next year and another group to Sasebo in 2014, he said.

Buckler said he has made it a goal to organize a student exchange with Rehovot, Israel, Albuquerque’s newest sister city, but none is scheduled.

The students’ families pay the cost of airfare, Buckler said. For the trip to Japan this year, that cost was about $1,700 for a round-trip flight to Tokyo.

The foundation, which receives city funding of $30,000 a year in addition to some private donations, pays for food, hotels and other costs, he said.

Volunteers in the host nation house the visitors at no cost to students or their families, he said.

Buckler recently hosted a pizza party at his home for the New Mexican and German exchange students. Listening to the New Mexico students compare notes about their experiences offered a teen’s-eye view of Japanese society.

“My host sister was jealous of my long hair,” said Allison Merrell, 15, an Albuquerque Academy student. Students in Japan must keep their hair cut short, and aren’t allowed to pierce their ears, she said.

Kaitlin Dotson, 15, said she could wow Japanese teenagers by flashing her New Mexico driver’s license. Japanese youths aren’t allowed to drive until they are 18, she said.

“It’s a very compact place, and everybody is very polite and considerate,” the East Mountain High School student said. At times, they are “almost over considerate,” she said.

“They wouldn’t let me carry my own bags,” she said. “At times it made me feel guilty for not helping, but I didn’t know how to protest.”

Mullen said the exchange experience allows young people to build lifelong friendships with people in a foreign country.

“A lot of people think the world is a dangerous place, but the world is still out there for us to enjoy,” she said.