Lara Wilkinson - NSW to Italy

Fri 07 Dec 2007

Lara Wilkinson from Pymble Ladies' College in Sydney is currently in Italy on our Summer Explorer Program. Here is her latest news.

Well, I've been in Italy for one month now and I know it sounds a cliché but it has gone so quickly! I really love it here, and I've settled into routine life very well. My host family were really welcoming when I first arrived, and they made a cheesecake for me as a welcome gift! They have also planted a tree in their backyard that we chose together, and named it 'napkin' because it was the first English word that I taught them!

School is really fun (strange, I know) because it's so different from my school back home, and we finish at 1pm. But I have to go on Saturday which is really bad! The food, obviously, is amazing. I've never eaten so much in my life because we have three courses for lunch and dinner; pasta, a meat dish and dessert or fruit. Oh my gosh! They also eat rabbit, which is surprisingly good, and horse, which I am adament on not tasting!

If I had to describe the Italian people in one word it would be...loud. And then nice. Today, we were at my host sister's grandfather's birthday party, and there were 35 people there just from one side, but they treated me just like I was part of the family.

We have visited a place of Italy every Sunday, like Verona, Verrara, Vicenza, Venice, and then went to Rome on a four day holiday staying with relatives in a place called Abruzzo. We're also going to Florence or the mountains, and Milan, so I'm getting to see a lot of the country!

As far as learning Italian goes, I am studying for about 2 or 3 hours a day and already I can understand a majority of conversations, although they speak very, very fast. I'm really surprised that I'm picking it up so quickly!

Another good thing is that there haven't been any problems so far, excluding the culture shock on the first day; everything's gone really smoothly and I'm having a fantastic time!

If you're wondering about the coordinator, she is one of the English teachers at school so I see her every second day just for classes, which is really handy! I'm teaching lessons about Australia at school, so that's also quite fun. The one thing that all the people at school know about Australia is--- NEMO! Haha. I thought that was funny.

Anyway, I'll be in touch soon,

Lara