It was breathtaking but...I want to do it again!!!!

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Here I am, the day after…Well, honestly, guys, I was afraid I would have not survived to tell it anybody, but I did and now I want to say that the first Skype exchange was absolutely AMAZING!!! My hands still shake if I think of it!
Let’s start from the beginning. Last week Sarah asked us if we preferred to participate to either an exchange with American students from Dickinson or a similar project with students living in Poland. In the first case, we were supposed to use Skype to communicate in real time with our partners for an hour or so; given that they have been studying Italian for a couple of years, we would have to speak both English and Italian during the conversation, as if it was a sort of tandem learning. In the second case, the two groups would communicate by writing their comments on a wiki and a forum, using English as Lingua Franca to compare Italian and Polish culture with the Anglo-Saxon culture. I was torn between the two opportunities: they were both very interesting, but the second one suited better my timetable…Most of all, I was afraid I was not up to the task of chatting with an American girl or boy for so long! I always get nervous when I have to speak English, I try to smooth my pronunciation and I forget what I wanted to say and vice versa. “I'll be so tense and worried”, I thought while I was trying to decide, “that I won’t be able to open my mouth and say a word!!!” Then I remember one of the complaints that I wrote in my mid-term paper: “I never have the chance to speak English and I feel that my oral skills are not improving”. I had no excuse: the opportunity that I was looking for was right there in front of me, I just needed to raise my hand to grab it and so…I did it!

Last Wednesday I talked with Leah Barreras and it was really thrilling! After introducing ourselves, we started talking about everything that came to our minds: Leah is nineteen, she moved from New Mexico to Pennsylvania to study History at the University of Dickinson and next year she’s going to come to Italy, in Bologna, to improve her knowledge of Italian. I tried to give her a description of our course, the subjects we study, my plans for the next future…So, without even realizing it, I was speaking English! It was unbelievable! And Leah seemed to understand what I was trying to say (even more unbelievable!) We also talked about the education system in our countries and our experiences at university: she was astonished when I told her that some of our courses are attended by hundreds of students and that in the same day we have to move around Padua to reach the place in which the lesson is held! Things seem to be more organized in America, according to Leah’s words: young people have to write an essay and an application form to get into university, classes are very small, students have free and easy access to the Internet and can often rely on the economic support of the State to finance their studies. The conversation was becoming fascinating and I felt sorry when we had to quit because the time was over!

I read that the topic of our next chat will be the comparison between Italian and American elections, very challenging! I hope I have the vocabulary necessary to say something sensible!