Skype Exchange for our Final Project

On Wednesday we've been talking about the topic for our final project as group 5. It wasn't easy but in the end... we worked it out! We found our topic just at the end of the skype session!!! We'll be describing the life of students attending Univeristy in Italy and in the U.S.A.; we'll compare for example students aggregation opportunities and franternities. I'm eager to find out something more about the American fraternities, since when I first saw the movie "Animal House"!!! In Italy it seems that these congregation for assembling people fell out of the habit... I saw that in Padova there are two fraternities, but the first one hasn't got any web page, while the second one has it but the last time it was updated, it was in 2004... and to tell the truth, me tjat I'm attending the Univeristy here in Padua since 'many years', I didn't even know that they they existed!!! However, I think we'll have fun camparing customs of the two conutries, finding similarities and differences...

I'll write soon about what we'll be posting on our wiki!

See ya soon!

Alice

Immigration

The dabate about immigration is an issue which affects all those countries that are economically adavantged; representing opportunities for work and welfare to those people living in less developed countries.
What about Italy? As far as my personal experience is concerned regards this issue, it happend to me to get in contact with some immigrant families dealing with a number of difficulties. I remember that a few years ago, a friend of mine which was working for an association helping immigrates, asked me if could help him as a translator, because he had to talk to a woman, who had moved from Morocco, and she couldn't speak Italian. She had underwent a series of 'unpleasant discussions' with her husband and nobody could help her, since all her relatives lived far from her. What I learnt from that meeting was that although she had come and live in Italy - and therefore that should have represented an improvement, taking one step forward a better economical perspective, she had taken two steps back as far as her social condition is concerned. She was alone, she couldn't talk to nobody and nonbody could as a matter of fact help her.

My impression is that most of the immigrants, who not only live in Italy, but even in other countries, live in a sort of perpetual status of undefined situation: they'll never feel completely assimilated in the community and on the other hand they don't even belong any more to their culture and country of origin.
The question is, how could be these people helped in order that they won't live always in the borderline? What could we do for them? What are our social policies doing for these people?

Alice

Reflective Blogging on Skype

Hello everybody!

This will be a sort of reflective blogging post on my last Sype exchange with Dickinson students! Well, although for some reasons, I chatted very little with my American peer, I must say that this exchange is one of the most effective e-tivity of the course! I'm very happy with it, since I'm touch with an American speaker, (and I love so much her American accent!!!) I can improve my English and even learn something more about American culture and life. I really had fun talking to her, although sometimes it was difficult to me to find the right words to explain her about the Italian politics... I believe that we had an interesting chat, because first she asked me to explain to her how actually the previous Italian government stepped down, since she didn't know the role our Presidente della Repubblica plays in the governement. And then we spoke the American campaign which is still taking place in the U.S.A.
So, to conclude, it was interesting learning something new about the American campaign, which is not only what we see on TV, that is a fight between Obama and Clinton over the presidency.

As far as my final project is concerned... I haven't developed an idea yet...
Can I just think a little bit about it? ;-)

See you!!!

Alice