World Youth Meeting 2000 Courtney Devine High school student, The United States of America

Before I left the United States, I was not sure what to expect from the World Youth Meeting. I was really nervous because I did not understand what would take place at the meeting. I knew we would have to give a presentation, but I was not sure what would be included in our part of the meeting. I did not realize there would be a workshop day (Saturday) for the students to get to know each other. That was a nice surprise. I did not expect to make so many new friends. I thought the meeting would be very formal with no time to actually talk with other friends. I also did not realize the conference would be so well known that it would be covered by news reporters. That was very interesting. When the meeting was over I felt much better. I really enjoyed the workshop day and the actual meeting was very informative. I understood everything a lot more and felt that the meeting was definitely a success. I was very pleased with our group's presentation. The practice had paid off. I also learned a lot from the other group's presentations. I found that the meeting was not only a great learning experience, but it was also a wonderful way to meet new people and interact with people of different cultures. To prepare for the meeting, I wrote several articles dealing with the conference. I spent a lot of time in my Japanese class at school working on different aspects of the presentation. Also, I participated in the practice sessions we had on Friday and Saturday evening before the meeting. I helped a little with the Power Point presentation and gave my opinion on what changes should be made in our speeches. The part I played in the presentation was simply reading. I read a summary of the movie Gung-ho and I read the concluding speech on misconceptions of different cultures. We had several members on our team so we each had only a small part to read. We were all very nervous. The parts we read went along with the slides being displayed from the Power Point presentation. The slides were wonderful and the speeches went along with them perfectly. We also had an Internet conference with Mr. Tweedy from Rockingham Community College. His part was cut off which was good because we would have run out of time. He was able to show his concluding slides after we finished with our presentation. Everything ended up going very well.

Now I will include some pictures. The first picture is of the rehearsal at the Sunheights Hotel in Nagoya on Saturday night after the workshop. The second picture is of myself presenting the information about Gung-ho along with Emi, Miyuki, and Patrick. The third picture is of some of the members of the Japan-USA group wearing the decorated T-shirts on the workshop day. I do not have access to the actual slides we used in our presentation so I could only include pictures. Overall, I think the World Youth Meeting 2000 was a huge success. There are so many benefits that come from the Internet. This meeting would not have been possible without the communication through the Internet. It was wonderful to meet people face to face that I had been communicating with for a while by e-mail. It was great to already have a friendship with someone before I had even met him or her. I will definitely take advantage of the Internet from now on to make friendships and learn about other cultures. In fact, I have already communicated with several people I met during my trip to Japan by e-mail since I have been home. I miss everyone but it is nice to be able to keep in touch with them so easily. My relationship will definitely be different now than it was before I had this wonderful experience. After visiting the country and learning from the students, I know so much more about Japan's culture, people, and language. I do not have the misconceptions I had before making friends in Japan. Because of the communication with people in Japan and being able to come to Japan, I now see it as a country I definitely want to return to and possibly even move there. At least I will always have the friendships I made while in Japan and will continue to develop through the Internet. This article is a reproduction of Devine, Courtney. "World Youth Meeting 2000" World Youth Meeting in Nagoya 2000 Report. Nagoya: World Youth Meeting in Nagoya 2000 Committee, 2000. 27-29.

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