On Monday, our first day back to school our wonderful partners showed up quite excited. They were welcomed at our local Board of Education building by our superintendent and honored with an American breakfast enhanced by Southern Alabama hospitality. If you can appreciate Southern hospitality, then you know how overwhelmed they must have been.

After breakfast our superintendent also shared his well documented experience from his visit to Japan via slide show presentation and a moment of show and tell accompanied by an exquisite exhibition of memorabilia . Our partners were quite amazed to encounter our appreciation of their beautiful country.

We then toured Central Elementary school. As we toured, our guests were excited to see our bulletin boards and different signs that welcomed them to our school. They seemed thrilled to behold the size of our buildings as well as the utility of our classrooms. They became curious about how Americans run their schools and therefore had many questions. We were very excited to see their interest and found it fascinating. We then began to share ideas and to learn from each other. As we shared we all began to glean new ideas that we could both implement in our own classes.

Our team later met with them to have dinner followed by a reception at Alabama State University that also entailed a meet and greet session for the students from the College of Education. Our partners were elated to find such curiosity about Japanese education and were excited to share their educational experiences. This has been a wonderful first day!!!