Part of the inspiration for my website came from my 12th grade American Government and Economics teacher, Mr. Jaime Richards, who has a fascinating site about what it takes to live a successful, positive life. His latest article, about “looking for blue,” related to my Japan trip so well that I had to post about it.

One day, about two weeks into my six week cultural exchange, I was walking home from school feeling frustrated at how different Japanese and American cultures were, how little I understood about daily life, and how lonely I was. Suddenly, I noticed the sky. It was almost identical to the sky in my hometown, except bluer, purer. “If the sky is the same, the people below it can’t be too different,” I thought.

And just like that, my outlook changed. I began noticing similarities everywhere. My classmates’ personalities were very similar to my friends’, the importance of respect to elders in Japanese culture was similar to that in Indian culture, and the types of conversations teenagers had in my Japanese high school were almost identical to those my friends and I had in America. I even began seeing traits of my parents reflected in my host-parents! It is not that the similarities did not previously exist. I was just not “looking for blue.” (Please read Mr. Richard’s blog post to understand what I mean by “looking for blue.”)

P.S. The sky ended up playing a very important role in my exchange trip.  Every time I was frustrated, sad, or missed home, I would look up at the sky and feel reassured.  In fact, if you notice, I tried to capture the beautiful sky in almost every outdoor picture I took for previous blog posts!