It all started on the 3rd of July. I left from Malpensa airport with other Italian guys that decided, like me, to live five months of their lives in Australia. We knew that this period wouldn’t be a holiday, but a path to to grow up and maybe finally find one’s own vocation in life. I believe that all the exchange students like me are both lucky and adventurous: they are lucky because their families decided to give them the opportunity to live this big experience and adventurous because, without knowing exactly what they would experience, they decided to take the risk. After a flight which was too long, I finally arrived in Sydney and I still remember that I wanted to yell outside the airport: “Finally I’m in Australia!!!”. I couldn’t believe I was in the country I had dreamed about so many times! I was excited for the rest of my stay in Sydney with other exchange students from all around the world; in front of the Opera House I wondered : “Am I really in Australia? and other similar questions. After a while it was already time to leave that beautiful city to reach my host family in Hobart, Tasmania. After taking off I realized that my experience had just started and I would have to deal with problems alone. I was scared but it wasn’t the right time to panic. I remember also that I thought in the streets near my future house and all around the backyard there would be Tasmanian devils, and I was really scared! Anyway, the day after, I realized that I didn’t have to worry because my host family told me that these animals just stay in the wild forests. Anyway I felt my English improved every minute that I stayed there: in just three weeks I could understand most of the things that my family and my classmates said to me and I could answer without always saying: “Yes” or “Okay”, and I was really proud of me. After a month and a half I was absorbed by the Australian world and I just felt like I was born there. Thanks to my host family I could see the most beautiful places in all of Australia: I saw big cities like Melbourne and Sydney, I saw the long white beaches of Queensland, I saw many times the famous Australian animals. I saw uncontaminated nature parks and places in Tasmania. I felt I was really lucky! I have to admit that in the first period of school I had some issues to understand what my teachers and my friends were saying but, after a while, I could understand all! I started to watch Australian/American movies with subtitles and I realized that you really can understand all the aspects of that if you watch it in original language, and it was really cool! In this period I had to “rebuild” a new life and, also if sometimes with some issues, I did that! After just three month down there I started to dream and think in English and it was awesome!!! I didn’t have to think in my mind in Italian what I would to say and then translate it in English because I didn’t need that anymore: I just said it automatically. After that experience I changed and I think about that heaps of times. I reckon I changed in better and now I think about all the stuff around me in a different (and better) way, more mature. I was alone on the other side of the world, with people I had never met before who spoke a different language. I couldn’t speak properly before arriving there, but I just faced all that and now I’m really proud of me.
Giacomo Tabacco (4E),
corrispondente dall’Australia