The End is Near

Our time is winding down; we’re planning final dinners, parties, exams, and last minute gelato runs. I’ll save my final feelings about my study abroad experience in Italy for my last blog post next week, and for now will focus on the last bit of fun we’ve been having. During the second half of the semester we have had the opportunity to participate in service learning with elementary, middle, and high school level schools in Sansepolcro helping teach the English classes. Everyone goes on Monday morning to their school, but because no English classes are taught on Monday morning at my school, Tecnico Commerciale di Sansepolcro (high school), I go on Friday mornings. However, because of our second travel break, Easter break, and our excursion to the Val d’Orcia, I haven’t been able to go to my school until just this past Friday. So finally now having had my first service learning experience, I’d say it was a success. I help teach three different classes, with two different teachers for about three hours. Thankfully before I arrived on Friday morning, one of the teachers had emailed me with suggestions of things I could talk about in her two classes. Since this was my first time, I spent about half of each class having the students introduce themselves, then introduced myself; they said their names, where they lived (since not all of the students live in Sansepolcro and some travel quite a long way each day for school), and what they like to do in their free time. It was obvious that this sort of conversation was one of the first things they learned and practiced a lot in their English classes, because each student had the dialogue down pat. Something I have come to realize about Italian youth is that they are very similar to American youth in the way they express their individuality through dress and hairstyles, and that their favorite free time activities include “listening to music, surfing the net, and going out with friends.” Even Italian high schools feel like American high schools—as soon as I walked in I was taken back to my days at Cary High with graffiti written on doors and desks in white out, masses of students overwhelming the hallways, teachers desperately trying to be heard over the noise, smokers congregating in the outside courtyard, and messy notebooks scattered over the desks. After going through introductions in my first class, I was asked to discuss the American education system with the students, something they were interested in for comparison purposes with their own school system. In fact, I think the teacher was more interested in hearing about similarities and differences between the school systems in each country than the students were. Italian high school students attend class from 8:00 in the morning until about 1:30 in the afternoon, where they then return home for lunch and are done with school for the day. But they do attend school on Saturday to make up for no classes being held in the afternoon. The students and teacher did not seem to be too surprised by the fact that American students usually go from about 7:30 in the morning until around 3:00 in the afternoon; what they were surprised by was the fact that homework is assigned on a daily basis and that quizzes and tests are given on a regular weekly/bi-weekly basis. In Italy, students are given one large cumulative exam at the end of the school year without much testing during the semester. Of course my teacher used this fact to try and tell her students that they were lucky compared to American students and that if they wanted, she would be happy to adopt the American way of homework and regular examinations…of course that didn’t go over with them so well.

After talking about school systems, I had the opportunity to talk about prom night! Most television and movies aired in Italy are American programs that have been dubbed in Italian; because of this, Italians are very much aware of American pop culture and unless they have traveled to the United States, their idea of American life is what they see in the media. My students wanted to know about prom night in the U.S. because they were having their very own, first ever prom night at the end of the semester and they wanted “to do it right.” They knew what they had seen in movies and on television, so they wanted to get a first-hand account from an American that had experienced prom night for herself. They asked what the girls wear, what guys wear, if a tuxedo jacket and jeans would be appropriate for guys (like I said, high school guys trying to be funny—same in any country I guess), if people went out to dinner, where prom was held, what time the dance started, what time it ended, and if students drank alcohol at prom. This last question didn’t throw me off that much because there is no drinking age in Italy, so Italians are raised on drinking alcohol responsibly and it would not have been out of the norm to see some of my students out on a Saturday night at a bar. Another reason this question did not surprise me was because some American students do drink alcohol (illegally) on prom night, as is common knowledge, so perhaps they picked up on this from movies. We also discussed corsages and how the flower or ribbon of the corsage should match the girl’s dress—to which they asked what you did if the girl wore black; that made me laugh and I just told them you could pick whatever color flower you wanted in that situation. It was fun to think back on one of the biggest nights in a high schooler’s life and see how excited the Italian students were about having their own prom night. The more I experience Italy, the more I realize that much of human nature must be universal.

The second class I helped with is younger, about 13-14 years old and we’re practicing for their end of year Trinity exams that are coming up; these are the exams that test students on their English competency. Half of the class went into a separate room with the teacher while I stayed with the rest of the students and asked various questions about their family, hobbies, pets, etc to help them with their oral skills. My third class was the most troublesome, only proving what the teacher had warned me about before I entered the room. They nonstop talked, threw things at each other and were generally rowdy. Because of this behavior it was difficult for me to do anything productive with them, and their teacher seems to have given up hope at this point in the year, so we made it through introductions and that was about it before I left. This week I’ll be working with her more advanced level class which is better behaved, according to her. I enjoyed my time in the high school getting so see similarities and differences in the school systems and the students; I’ve been lucky with some great groups of kids.

This past Saturday we took our last group excursion to Gubbio where we ate large pretzels being sold in the market, rode up the steep mountain on a chair lift giving us the chance to witness a beautiful panoramic view of Gubbio from above, and visited the site of the K-T line where the first evidence of why dinosaurs became extinct was found. We were lucky with the weather and our day in Gubbio learning and exploring was very enjoyable.

The biggest benefit and joy of studying abroad in a small town are the unique opportunities with which we’re presented because of connections and getting to know the people in that town. One of many examples of this from this semester was our jewelry buying/cooking lesson/dinner night at the Chimenti’s house. A very friendly and generous family here in Sansepolcro invited us into their home for dinner on Monday night where we were also treated with a lesson on how to make onion soup and tiramisu. One of the Chimenti’s daughters, Barbara, makes jewelry that she had on display in her workshop for us to admire and purchase (of course I couldn’t turn down this offer and bought some beautiful earrings). After everyone had picked Barbara clean of her jewelry, Mrs. Chimenti taught us how to make tiramisu (I’ll add this to the homemade pasta I learned how to make from Patrizio once I’m home and have a complete meal!), as well as the Italian version of French onion soup, which was our first course for dinner. The “soup” was followed by pork, potatoes, zucchini, salad, and the tiramisu we had made. Mr. and Mrs. Chimenti are funny and friendly, as well as wonderful cooks so we had a great time that night.

We’re now half-way through our second to last week here, with our first exam tomorrow. Before we know it we’ll be gone, so this weekend I plan to soak up as much of Sansepolcro as possible.

Ciao for now,

Hilary