Campbell Burns - NSW to Italy
Wed 13 May 2009
Campbell Burns is currently on exchange for a semester in Udine in northern Italy. He wrote to us a few weeks ago to tell us about his experiences thus far:
"Ciao a tutti,
Well it doesn't feel like it but only a couple of months ago, after saying my farewells to my family and travelling for nearly 30 hours, I arrived in Italy. My time here has been so great so far, I don't know where to begin!
My host family is really nice. I have a host brother who is the same age as me and speaks fluent English and a host sister who's 8. As my host parents both speak very good English, at the beginning of my time here I didn't speak to them in Italian much. I did a year course of Italian last year but when you actually come to Italy it’s a whole different story.
When I first arrived here everyone spoke too fast for me to understand them and I lacked confidence speaking. In 2 months I have noticed a big improvement with my language skills and I can now understand a lot more. I am proud of myself when I can have a conversation with someone, understand an Italian joke, or order something from a store.
I do an Italian course after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays for foreign students. The course has been a lot of fun and I have learnt a lot in it. We have students from around the world (Albania, Canada, America, Ghana, Japan and Australia). It’s been great to have other native English speakers at the school and most of the others students have been here since August and so they have also helped in showing me around.
I live in a city called Udine which is in the region of Friuli in the North East of Italy, on the border with Slovenia and Austria. It is practically so close to Slovenia that one day we took a short drive and crossed the border. The centre of Udine is really great, and it has a castle overlooking the town. I love going into the historic piazzas in the centre and my favourite pizzeria is there too.
I go to the same school as my host brother and we are also in the same class. At the beginning it was really great for him to show me around help translate things for me. Italian school is different from my school in Sydney. School starts at 8 instead of 9 in the morning, but I'm lucky as I only live 2 minutes by bike from the school. I go to a scientific high school, the classes I am in are; Biology, Maths, English, Italian, History, Latin, Spanish and PE. The kids that I know seem to find studying Latin pointless as it is a dead language.
School finishes at 1 with only one 10 minute pause in the day, and you stay in the class the whole day. My class is pretty chaotic but they're a lot of fun, and not too different from my class in Australia. They have all been really nice to me from the beginning. I was asked a lot of questions about Australia and all my friends were shocked to hear that kangaroos actually get killed on the road. They all seem to want to communicate with me and they all speak different levels of English.
A great aspect of my exchange has been my weekends skiing. My host family are all skiing champions! My host father used to be the ski champion of Eastern Europe and nearly every Sunday since I arrived here my host brother and sister have had a ski race where the whole family goes skiing. At the beginning it was difficult as I had been skiing only once before (7 years ago), and my host siblings have both been skiing since they were 3. Despite this I quickly improved and the whole family, and especially my host brother, are great teachers. There were 2 times where my host brother got to ski for our school and I got the day off to spend the day skiing as well.
One of my best accomplishments so far has to do with skiing. A few weeks ago, after my 5th time skiing I got to compete in a race with my new ski club along with my host brother and sister. Although I got beaten by an 82 year old man I still completed the race fairly quickly and had a lot of fun. In the award ceremony I actually ended up winning the award for "The skier from the furthest away country". It was great!
Udine is only a 2 hour train ride from Venice and I've been there twice now. The first time I went was on one of the last days of Carnevale, which was amazing, with lots of people dressed up in Piazza San Marco. The second time was when I went with my school, and we got a part of the day to explore for ourselves. I think that Venice is amazing and now one of my favourite cities.
I have struggled a bit with home sickness but it hasn't affected me as much as I thought it would. Although I do still miss Sydney, my friends and family, and especially the heat as it has been so cold here!
The food is really nice in Italy. Of course this sounds stereotypical but my favourite foods and sweets from here are probably pizza, pasta, tiramisù and gelato. It's all a lot more authentic in Italy!
In less than 2 weeks it is Pasqua (Easter) and I am going to Rome or 5 days with my host family, it should be a lot of fun.
I just thought that I'd also say that I have learnt how to say, hello, goodbye and the days of the week in Friulian (the regional language)!
I think that's enough for now. I hope everyone who is thinking of going on an exchange decides to take the step and do it, it's really a fantastic thing to do.
Allora a presto,
Mandi! (goodbye in friulian).
From Campbell Burns "
Click here to go back to the Student Updates page.
|
