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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

 

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