My Experience of the Exchange

First of all, I really have to say that our exchange was a wonderful experience overall. I really felt involved in it and I really appreciated our peers’ determination to know us better. Moreover, Italian is far from being an easy language so I was really flattered by their efforts to speak or write good Italian.

What can I say to sum up the answers to the questionnaire?

FEELINGS…

Undoubtedly, following all the activities was challenging sometimes because we also had other courses to attend. However, I was really satisfied both with the final project and the exchange because you can never know if you will have other similar occasions in the future.

Of course there were also moments in which I felt a bit uncomfortable: comparing some aspects of our country with such a big nation as America is not always encouraging. Anyway, I also have to say that our American peers were really down to earth people so they didn’t have a condescending attitude towards us and were really aware of their own weak points as well.

KNOWLEDGE…

Apart from Skype, I also learnt a lot from the forums: they gave me the possibility to discuss issues concerning both Italy and America and the questions our American peers posed gave me a more clear idea of how we, as Italians, are perceived abroad. One of the most important things I learned is that sometimes the media give us an image of the United States that does not always correspond to reality. They offer us stereotypical representations of people and places, so some of the discussions going on in the forums helped me to know what real people think or believe and to consider the American culture in a less superficial way.

As for our final project, it was one of the few group projects, in my university career, in which I really felt involved. I generally prefer individual activities because I like to work at my own pace but I have to say that I really liked to work for the wikipage and to have contacts with my peers also outside normal classes.

LANGUAGE LEARNING…

As for my language learning, I don’t know if there has been consistent improvements or not…the amount of time spent talking in English was relatively small. Moreover, talking English with each other (I mean, we Italian students) sounded really embarrassing and strange to me.
However, I think that we had several occasions to learn how real people write or talk in the real world. I have also learnt to become more familiar with a less formal and academic kind of English and I’m happy of that because I think this is the way real people talk or write.



Well, I’m looking forward to sharing my experience with you all tomorrow…so see you then!!!

(photo taken from Flickr)

Bye

Alessia

...3 proposals for our project...

Hi Girls!!!

It’s time to decide the topic of our final project!

I’ve received a mail from Brian ( I forwarded it to you) where he says that both our proposals are good. Moreover, he also gave us another interesting suggestion: to use the media as a source to compare the United States and Italy, to show how the lifestyles between Americans and Italians are different. Of course his proposal can be linked in some way to Raffaella's proposal because it will be possible to make references to the issue of how women are portrayed through the media.

Now, we have three proposals:
(all of them obviously refer to a comparison between the United States and Italy)

1. immigration policies
2. the use of women and female body in commercials and policies
3. using the media as a source to compare the United States and Italy


To me, all of them seem to be interesting. The only thing is that we have to be sure to find enough material on the Web.

Let me know what you think so that we can write our topic on the Wiki Page.

Bye Bye

Alessia

Reflective blogging (week 6)...

I have to say that we really managed to get the most of our last Skype Exchange.

This time we had to focus on the issues of both the American and the Italian platforms. The first thing we noticed about the two American platforms was the fact that they were so extreme, compared to the two Italian political programs. Brian told me that it has really become hard to choose between the two main parties and that no intermediate positions are available. If you take the issue of the war in Iraq, for instance, it is easy to see where the two main candidates stand so that the decision WAR or NO WAR can deeply affect your choice.

Then we discuss about the issue of the environment that represents a very pressing concern in the next political elections! Brian explained to me that many countries in America are nowadays really trying to take the right steps in order to solve the problem of global warming, to reduce gas emissions and to find alternative energy resources. Here in Italy, environmental concerns are pressing too, but maybe we are not taking the right steps. I explained to him that some big cities such as Milano, Padua, Turin and Rome periodically organize “giornate a piedi” but that they are so rare and unsystematic that they won’t bring us very far.

Moreover, Lisa mentioned the Kyoto Protocol and asked why the United States didn’t want to take part to it. Brian was not able to explain that...maybe it was because of the restrictions that such a Treaty could impose to the huge number of natural resources they have.
Later we discuss Italy’s main concerns, the economic recession and the problem of temporary jobs in particular. Brian told me that in the last few years, America had gone through a sort of recession too and that they had lots of jobs lost. So, all the three candidates are offering in their campaigns to take the right steps to get their economy back in line (to cut off taxes, for instance). Nevertheless, lots of Americans are convinced that these are just promises and that they won’t be fully maintained.

...immigration in Italy...

As I wrote in one of the last posts, I can perceive some differences between Italy and America as far as the attitude towards immigrants and immigration in general is concerned. That has something to do with the history of this phenomenon in the two countries. Italy, cannot rely on a rich history of immigration as America does: it has long been a point of departure for lots of emigrants trying to escape from poverty and hunger. Then, starting from the last decades of the XX century, the trend has completely changed direction: our country has progressively become a “dream” for lots of poor people, mostly from Eastern Europe and Northern Africa.

Immigration has of course positive and negative consequences: one the one hand, the newly arrived are so poor and desperate that they accept any kind of job and so they sort of take on the works that nobody here would like to do and contribute to keep our economy going on. BUT, on the other hand, their desperate conditions may also lead to dramatic consequences. There’s no reason to spend many words on this because the plague of criminality, drug traffic, violence and the formation of ghettos in more degraded parts of the city (via Anelli, for instance) is constantly under our own eyes. Not to mention the problem of illegal immigration, which costs us an awful lot of money every year.

Of course there are many things to say on this topic and I'm really looking forward to our discussion, so that we can learn more from one another.


P.S.: In the meanwhile, I’ve browsed the Net in order to find some useful pieces of information. There's a little bit of everything but I particularly liked this website:

http://www-pub.naz.edu:9000/~cmnewell/index.htm

It is really clear and well-organized. It contains a brief history of Italian immigration as well as a very useful insight on the phenomenon of illegal immigration and a description of the recent measures adopted in order to tackle it.

OUR FINAL PROJECT

Dear group 2,

next week we should start thinking about our final project. As you know, it should cover a particular aspect of the two cultures, so it should be a sort of comparison.

I was thinking that maybe we should focus on immigration and see how the two countries deal with it or have dealt with it in the past. I mean, not only in terms of attitude towards immigrants but also in terms of immigration policies. As we know, immigration is an important component of American history but nowadays it seems as if immigration policies in the US are a bit more strict compared to the Italian ones. Moreover, it seems as if the American citizenship is a really hard goal…maybe this could be a misconception based on our own ideas so we could explore the topic more in depth.

This is just my proposal! Of course if you come up with completely different ideas we can discuss them together! This is just what interests me most about America!;-)

See you in class!;-)


(photo taken from Flickr)

Reflective blogging...

Even though we didn’t have a lot of time at our disposal (because of some technical problems), last Wednesday’s chatting with my American peer was really interesting and fruitful. First of all, he asked me about my spring break but I had to admit that I stayed at home all the time in order to prepare for an exam (anthropology)! Anyway, he hadn’t done anything special either, so at least I was not the only one!

As both our countries are now facing the general political elections, we inevitably ended up talking about politics. He told me that in America the candidates of both wings put nowadays a lot of emphasis on environmental concerns (gas emission/the preserve of forests in California and so on)…apparently this is a good way to get votes nowadays. ;-)

Then, he told me that last Monday they watched “Il Caimano” by Nanni Moretti at Dickinson and that some of them had been pretty shocked by it. Some of them heard (for the first time) that our former president (I cannot tell the name, we are in “par condicio ;-)) had faced a trial but that he was then discharged of all accusations. To him, the fact that he was finally discharged and that he was allowed to continue in his political career sounded really weird …Well, it IS actually weird but unfortunately here in Italy it is the norm: the morality of both left and right political candidates is not always immaculate and I’m afraid we have to cope with it.

To cut a long story short, I think that our conversation helped me, once again, to have an idea of how the Italian system is perceived abroad : sometimes we are “accustomed” to its negative aspects but maybe we don’t even ask ourselves if things really have to be that way.

(photo taken from Flickr)

...reflective blogging...

Last week, I could not skype so I decided to write a reflective post about my experience with the forums so far. First of all, I have to say that I really like our forums because I consider them very useful means not only to know our peers at Dickinson College better, but also to help us coming to terms with the American culture as a whole. Moreover, I’m sure they enable our American peers to have an insight on our own world as well!


This week, I’ve felt particularly involved in the ones concerning death penalty and “pentitismo”, which originated from questions posed by some Dickinson students. Actually, the image of Italy that came out from the discussion was not a very comfortable one: criminals does not seem to be punished here and “mafiosi” are usually set free in turn of a little collaboration. Well, I admit that there are lots of defects in the way in which the Italian system of justice is organized and this is nothing to be proud of. Anyway, we should not generalize. And this is the case also with America. If some American movies and serials (actually, l watch them…but this is another story…;-))are populated with blondes only concerned with their physical beauty, this does not mean that all Americans are concerned with appearances (by the way, that was the topic of another forum).


All in all, I think that the questions in the forums also contributed to give us an idea of how our country is perceived abroad and to foster a reflection on the way our system is organized. Our culture is of course constantly under our own eyes, so we may not be able to analyze it in a neutral way. Paradoxically enough, we are sometimes aware of some of the most negative aspects of our own culture only when someone from outside “notices” them. And, at the same time, we may not be able to retrieve the positive aspects of our own culture for which other countries know us and which distinguish us from them.

(photo taken from flickr)