First of all I would like to say that my experience of the exchange was definitely positive. Through the Skype sessions I had the opportunity to find out how college students live and in particular I had the chance to know in details what they do to have fun. Thanks to Rocio I actually learnt something new about American lifestyle and discussing with her made me reflect on my own lifestyle and culture as well. Unfortunately we had only three Skype sessions, which were not enough to increase and improve my ICC. Moreover, our conversations were a little bit limited: there were a lot of things I wanted to ask her, I really had a lot of questions, but we had a Wiki page to carry out so we had to focus on our topics, leaving out all the rest.
As far as the first part of the questionnaire is concerned, that is the section regarding the description of my feelings, knowledge and actions during the exchange, I must admit that there were no moments in which I felt uncomfortable. Maybe I felt like this during the first Skype session when I didn’t fully understand what my peer was talking about, so I costantly had to ask her “I’m really sorry but I didn’t understand: could you repeat please?” but later I always felt comfortable while talking to my peer. She’s Spanish and I think that the fact of talking to someone who was born in Europe and relatively near my native country helped me feeling at ease and gave me to possibility of talking more freely about American life style and American students because often our points of view and our reflections or reactions were similar. As regards knowledge the most important thing I learnt about life at school is that College students pay very high taxes if compared to us but they have a lot of opportunities and some meaningful “privileges” we don’t have as University students. For instance they have the possibility to do sports or extra-scholastic activities of every kind within the campus and they have a lot of price reductions. Moreover I think that, the fact of living all together in a campus make the students fell more united, as if they were a community within a community and as a consequence they might have more possibilities to know each other, while here in Italy things are quite different. Finally, considering actions, at the beginning I often had to ask for clarifications because I didn’t understand how things worked within the College, especially regards the first topic we had to discuss, that was accommodation. Sometimes I also met some difficulties in explaining our peer how students live here in Padova: I had to focus on the way students party and it wasn’t always that easy to describe what we actually do to have fun, why we do it, what we drink (also because she had no idea of how the city of Padua is structured, the places the students usually meet, how they get to them etc..). Moreover sometimes there were some interference from the Spanish culture so I had to clarify some points.
As far as the second and third parts of the questionnaire are concerned, I think that during the exchange my interest in other people’s way of life increased a lot since our Wiki dealt with the daily life of students: I remember talking with Rocio about the extra-scholastic activities she was taking and she spent some time in describing the dance show she was preparing. Considering my ability to cope with a range of reactions people from different cultures may have to the way I express myself both in Italian and in English I think I didn’t have to face particular problems. It happened that I was surprised or particularly enthusiastic about what our peer told me about American students and I came out with some Italian expressions like “wow, che figo” that it English would sound like “wow, this is really cool”. The first and only time I did it Rocio started to laugh, she was evidently amused by it – or at least this is what I perceived – and then I translated the meaning of such an informal expression. As regards my ability of engaging in a conversation with people of the other culture and maintaining a conversation I must admit that it wasn’t so difficult to keep the conversation going with our peer: we had so many questions and practically no time to waste. There were no silences at all, also because we used to create a conference in Skype to give all the members of the group the opportunity of listening to the conversation, asking question and intervening if there were misunderstandings. Besides, considering my knowledge about intercultural communication I can say I know how to resolve misunderstanding which arise from people’s lack of awareness of the view point of another culture. I actually didn’t have to solve any specific misunderstanding: it happened that our peer confused our “Aperitivo” consisting in going to one of the three main squares in the centre of Padova and have a Spriz with the Spanish Botellon, which is something slightly different. Thinking about my language learning, I realized that my listening and writing skills improved, as well as my vocabulary: in fact, I learnt some new words such as “Dorms” for dormitories, “frats” or “Greek” for fraternities and I also discovered that similar female organizations are called “sororities”.
Finally, having the chance of discussing with an American peer, or better a Spanish peer attending Dickinson College, was really a great opportunity for me: now I know how American students live while they are studying at College. Even though we didn’t spend so much time in Skype and every time we had technical problems to solve – due the fact that not all the computers in the lab do work properly – I had a lot of fun while talking to Rocio and I hope that next year students will have the same possibility do to this wondeful exchange as well.
