Hello SIJ 🙂 We finally started the 7 day program after much preparation!! It was so lovely to finally meet the kids. We had a wonderful opening ceremony with guest speakers Mr. Nori Murakami, board member of SIJ, and mayor of Oita, Mr. Kishiro Sato. Mari also delivered an inspiring speech that I’m sure helped excite the kids for what was gonna come! As one of the LA3 instructors, I had the opportunity to work with kids driven to learn more about the English language. I was pleasantly surprised by their level of comprehension, and can’t wait to have them share their end-of-week essays!!! -Marwan #SIJ #Harvard #Oita