My experience of IVE project

Hi! I would like to talk about a project that I participated in last year from September to December. The IVE project is an International Virtual Exchange Project that brings together students from all around the world to discuss a variety of topics. We were divided into groups of about 18 people in total. I was able to talk with people from Japan, China, and Columbia.

My thoughts

I had a good time sharing comments with people from different countries. I was very happy when I got replies from students who are in China and Columbia. Also, it was interesting to know that people living in different areas of Japan have different experiences as me. For example, there were students who lived in Okinawa, Shizuoka, and Kyoto. I was able to learn more about Japan such as a Japanese sweet called ‘Ayarimochi’ which is famous in Kyoto. I thought even though we live in the same country Japan, there are still lots more to know about Japan.

Ayarimochi

One of the difficult things was that the main exchange was not related to food, so even though I wanted to talk about food I wasn’t able to. However, I tried to connect some topics with food. For example, I made up food-related questions in the topics of “Us and the places we live” and “Modern Vs Traditional Culture”. I couldn’t talk deeply but I was able to know new dishes such as “yucca bun” which is a traditional food in Columbia. The person said he eats it for breakfast. A different person from Columbia introduced a dish called, “Sancocho”. Sancocho is one of the most popular typical dishes of Colombian gastronomy and has been proposed on different occasions as a national dish.

Sancocho

Another difficult point was that it was difficult to continue communicating. I had to keep questioning after I wrote about my thoughts in each post. Also, people replied to me more when I added pictures. Furthermore, I felt that students preferred shorter answers and easy questions. 

Overall, I thought the IVE project was a good opportunity to learn about different cultures in different places. However, I didn’t think it was a place to enhance our English skills. I didn’t have an opportunity to learn new words and to talk about difficult topics. To be honest, I am not entirely satisfied with this project, but I am grateful for the opportunity to participate. The picture below is how the IVE project looks like.