Thinking about it....

For the end of this second semester we again have to reflect on our intercultural competence. To help us in this hard task we had a questionnaire.

It is always a good thing to stop and reflect on what you did, in order to understand what concrete goals you achieved, and in what way.

This exchange with American students gave us first of all an occasion to reflect on our own culture. I had to reflect on my culture, in order to explain her things in the most objective way, and then to add my opinion. I was always glad to answer her questions and discuss the "topic of the week". I like the idea of comparing our two lifestyles, but sometimes I had to remind me that she's younger than me ( Elena's 18, while I'm 24), and probably we have different approach to life.
I have never had problems or misunderstandings, even when we compared things different for our cultures. For example when we talked about death penalty, although our opinion were so different, we compare our ideas respectfully, I really appreciated it.
I learnt many things about their lifestyle, about education, and of course many about election system that was the topic of our final project.
Another particular thing was that those guys are children or grandchildren of immigrants, and so discussing with them about immigration provided a particular point of view, it was no more a matter of American and Italian culture.
I really appreciated this activity, and I think I was particularly lucky because doing it not inclass but in my spare time there were always just the two of us talking. I hope that Elena too had found it interesting, probably the fact that at a certain point we realized that we spent more than an hour talking together reveals that we enjoyed the conversations.