REFLECTIVE BLOGGING 4

I have just finished with my last editings on the 'Alternative energy sources' pages and I'm exhausted!! I mean, the work we have to do to look for information, read it and then reformulate it, is hard work..but it's nothing compared to what you have to suffer when waiting in front of your computer for that pink rectangle to disapear!!!..I mean the one that says: "X is currently editing this page but has been for more than five minutes (really 1000000 minutes)..."; this is a real pain!! Without mentioning when you do your part at the beginning of the week and then go back to see how the page is developing on Friday, and you can't find your part anymore...because it finished at the end of the page withput any reason!!!
Of course, these are all things we can survive with..I just needed to write it down and joke a little about it.
The skype exchange this week was fun. Alice and I talked for more than half an hour with Laura. To say the truth we didn't talk a lot about alternative energy sources...we spent most of our time talking about fraternities, which she called just "frats", and sororities. She told us how they work in Tulane and how expensive they are (this is the main reason why Laura decided to stop being part of a sorority after one semester). Moreover, she told us what she had done during her spring break and was very pleased to answer to our questions.
In the end we talked a little about biomass and solar energy. She told us that where she lives she has absolutely never seen any solar pannel! We also talked about our behaviour towards a responsible usage of energy and found out that, even if she too tries to be careful, perhaps we are a little more careful than she is. I'm looking forward to the next exchange!

lsabella

REFLECTIVE BLOGGING 3

This week at our wiki course we finished our Recycling pages and talked about culture and Intercultural competence. The recycling work on our page this time consisted in putting together neatly what we had all written and perhaps add something more. I looked through Sarah's corrections and modified my pieces of writing and then I also added some things here and there. I edited very little of the content, I modified much more of the grammar and then I also put some of the things I had written inside somone else's paragraphs where they fit better than before.
Then we had to do with intercultural competence and culture in general. I had a great time getting to know the different ways of thinking of different cultures and now I just had a look at the website on the differences on power distance and uncertainty avoidance.. the results pretty much were what I thought they would be. Reading the pages we were given I had the chance to get an overall vision on culture and intercultural competence..and I think I will try and read some more about it as soon as I have some time. In the meantime, I'll try to learn as much as possible about the American culture through the Skype exchange and the information gathered on recycling and alternative energy.

Isabella

REFLECTIVE BLOGGING 2

Today I want to stop and think about my English imrovements thanks to my knew English course. The course has just begun a few weeks ago but I feel already the importance of it for my English. In my opinion this course, thanks to the exchanges with real American students of our age, is just the best way to practice spoken English. With other people of our age we feel more free to speak in a foreign language and the fact that they are native speakers is positive because they can correct us whenever we say something wrong, just like we do when they speak in Italian.
Moreover, the fact of working on the same topics allows us to see the differences between the uses and costumes of our countries and, therefore, this lets us now each others cultures better. This is great.

REFLECTIVE BLOGGING ON RECYCLING

I have just begun a new course at university. In this course my clessmates and I are trying to develope a wiki writing in it about several topics. The first one we started with is Recycling in the Veneto. I have just begun to get into this topic because I really did not know much about it before and we never talked about it at school. Little by little I'm getting to know new information, e.g. what can be done with our garbage, how many things can be transformed into useful ones if they are divided properly by us humans. This especially has cought my attention and in the next weeks I'd like to read and learn more about this part of this subject because I think it is really interesting.
Moreover, the last time we went to lesson we experienced a very nice exchange of ideas with some students on the Tulane University of New Orleans. In the beginning I felt a little uncomfortable because I had to talk to someone I did not know in English and about a topic that is actually new to me! But then as soon as I started talking to this student called Lia, I found out how fun it was. I was impressed at how good she spoke in italian even if with a lot of effort. Talking to her I learned many things about recycling in New Orleans and also in New York (she comes from New York) but above all she told me about what hurricane Katrina caused and what the situation is now because of that disaster. Then we also talked about Italy in general and also about the States.. I really had a good time!

Isabella