Texas Rodeos and Japanese Origami
Japanese exchange student and American classmate show their origami cranes (tsuru)

Prize pigs and paper cranes

I am going to talk about how I spent spring break and about my friends. I went to San Antonio with my family for spring break. It was just a one-day trip but it was so fun. We went to the Alamo which is the historical place where the battle happened.

In San Antonio, there are lots of buildings that I’ve never seen before. They were made of only stones and blocks. They were very pretty. We went to some museums and the rodeo. The Texas rodeo is the biggest in the U.S.

I couldn’t go to the rodeo concert, but the carnival was so fun. There were lots of cowboys, animals, food, and attractions. Animal competitions are held there. This was the most interesting thing for me. On the day that I went, there was a pig competition. I saw more than fifty pigs. Honestly, I couldn’t understand the difference between them, but they were huge pigs. One producer told me that the pigs compete by their weights. I thought they competed by appearance. He also allowed us to touch a pig. That was pretty scary.

I taught my friends how to make a crane with origami when we had free time in our class. It was a good experience. We wrote the date and our names on them and turned our original cranes into memories. I think for American people, it is kind of difficult to make origami, but they didn’t give up. They tried to learn Japanese culture seriously, and that made me happy.

—Nonoka (Japan), hosted by the Williams family (TX)