Hello. I’m Hiyori from Japan. I am an exchange student majoring in Psychology at Gannon and I am participating in the Arizona ABST!

We left our house at 7:45am and headed to the Pio Decimo center. It was cloudy but warmer than yesterday.

We worked on painting that we had left over from yesterday. While we were painting, we had a lot of conversations. That made us get close to each other and I felt so happy.

For lunch, we went to Barrio Brewing, which is a Mexican restaurant. Most of us ordered Tacos, which tasted amazing!

After we had lunch, retired Border patrol agent Raul Rodriguez provided us with a presentation about the situation of the border patrol. The stories which he told surprised us and let us think deeply about the current issue of immigrants.

Afterwards we returned to the Pio Decimo center and resumed painting again, and we finally finished it at 4:30pm. It was sunny and we could see the beautiful sunset on the way home. One of the groups made a quick stop to the coffee shop Black Rock. It was super delicious!

For dinner, myself and another participant, Ha,  cooked Japanese curry. Everyone told us that it was good! I was so glad that they could enjoy Japanese curry.

After dinner, we had a reflection time. We shared what we felt about Raul’s presentation, and discussed what we need to do for accepting immigrants, creating the ideal diverse society, and so on. Personally, It was interesting to ask the other members’ opinions about creating the ideal diversity.

Reflecting on what happened today, I think it was a day where we came to many realizations as people and became more united as a team.

We will interact with the kids tomorrow. We would like to enjoy our precious time with them and learn more about Arizona!