One letter

1. What’s the most memorable thing you ever got in the mail?

When I was in second grade, my family had moved to Champaign, and I had begun a new chapter in my life. Soon enough, I would face a big challenge: going to a new school. One of the things that helped me overcome this challenge was a piece of mail sent to me from the other side of the world.

The summer before we moved, my family went back to Japan to visit my grandparents. During that time, I attended a Japanese school for two weeks to learn and have a different experience from school in America. I was scared. I was worried about not making any friends and spending the two weeks without having much fun. On the first day, I walked into the classroom to meet nineteen other classmates who were eager to meet me. Everyone would come talk to me at any chance they got, hitting me with question after question. After coming home from school, my parents asked me how my day was, to which I responded, “Not bad.” I wasn’t lonely, but I didn’t know if they’d be friends with me. The next nine days of school would be so much better than “not bad”, leaving me with fun memories: playing dodgeball and soccer during recess, racing to see who could sweep the floors the quickest, and participating in a rock-paper-scissors tournament to win the last dessert during lunch. And just like that, I was already saying goodbye to my new friends, tears in my eyes, to return to the United States.

After this experience, I thought going to a new school wouldn’t be too bad. I was wrong. In my first week, I had no success in making new friends. I sat in the cafeteria alone during lunch and walked around alone during recess. I asked other kids if I could play soccer or tag with them, but I was quickly rejected as they kept playing with their friends. I hated that week. It went just as I hoped it wouldn’t go, and the worst part was that I would be attending this school for so much longer than two weeks.

That weekend was when I received the piece of mail. It was a large white envelope sent to me from the school in Japan. Inside were letters from each of my classmates, asking how I was doing and wishing me good luck at my new school. These letters and the thought of my friends cheered me up after the bad weekday. They didn’t just forget about me after I left and continued to treat me as their classmate. The timing was totally coincidental, but it was as if they knew I was struggling and were looking out for me. Not only did it make me happy, but it also felt like a push on the back from across the globe. It gave me hope that I would meet people as friendly as my classmates in Japan and gave me the courage to keep trying to make friends. And soon enough, I made many friends, whom I would eat with during lunch and mess around with at recess.

Even though I couldn’t see my classmates in Japan, I kept the letters as a token of our friendship, hoping that we would stay friends forever as long as I had them. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I’ve learned from them the importance of small gestures. They didn’t write anything super special, but just reading the ‘how are you’s was powerful enough to revive the hope in me and possibly even change my life. Their friendly and open attitude, talking to me as if we’ve been friends forever, made me truly feel like I belonged. It was probably just natural for them to treat me like this, and I wanted to be like them.

Since then, small gestures have become a bigger part of my life. I’ve learned that even things such as holding the door for someone or complimenting their outfit can make someone’s day better. And I’ve learned to also appreciate these small gestures more as they aren’t granted. Although I haven’t seen my friends in years now, I still hope to encounter them when I go back to Japan in the summer. Even today, I know that they’ll treat me with the same friendliness they once had.