Thoughts From our Foreign Exchange Student
To
the Community:
I
am Valentina Milanese. I am 17 years old
and turn 18 on July 3. I live in Remancocco,
a town of 5000 people in Friuli, Italy near the border with Austria on the north and Slovenia on
the south. I have one brother, Michele, age 15. My father is
Francesco Milanese. My mother is Flavia Rinaldi. (Women in Italy usually keep their last
name after marriage.)
I
attend school in Udine,
a city of about 400,000. My high school focuses on science like
biology, physics, and math. I have to
attend 5 years and I've studied and will keep studying math, English,
Italian, Latin, biology, physics, philosophy, history, history of art, and
design.
I had
a great time here at Hermon-DeKalb. The school system is very
different. I got used to it. Here, I move from class to
class. In Italy,
the teachers move and students stay in the same classroom. We move
just for gym, labs, art. The people in the class are pretty much
always the same (Some people would change class or fail the year.) from the
first year to the fifth. I go to school from 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM from
Monday to Saturday. I love having Saturdays off here and I'm going to
miss that! To go to school I have to take a train, but it's just a
seven minute ride, and then a bus from the station to school. In my
school there are about 1300 students (just high school), with 300 just in
my grade. High school, middle school, and elementary school are
always separated and independent from one another. There are no
school districts. You attend the school you want to.
I'm
happy that I came to a small school because I was able to know more people
and make a lot of friends. At first it was
weird because people would say hello in the corridors and I would
not even know who they were. I really like school here. I think
the student-teacher relationship is great. It's
way more relaxed than in Italy.
There it's really formal. Teachers would call us using our last
name. Classes are ok; some more fun than others. Right now I'm
taking math 12, physics, gym, U.S. History, photography, AP English, and
government (economics first semester), and I also took AP Calculus and
geography.
I like
going to school, but this period of the year it's hard because it's almost
over, but not yet. I'm really happy for all the Seniors who are
graduating. (I can imagine how that feels.) For me, though, the
end of the school year will mean going home. I'm leaving June 30,
three days after graduation. I'm going to miss everyone so much, and
I actually am going to miss going to school here. I had the best host
family ever. There are no words to say how much I'm grateful and how
much I love them. They are awesome.
If I
could, I would do this all over again, no kidding. Thank you
for this awesome year. It was the best of my life!
Sincerely,
Valentina Milanese
