Hi guys! I’m an exchange student and I’ve been there for 4 months! I’m having a great experience in Alaska! I would like to share with you some information and impressions about my magic experience!
I’m attending the East Anchorage High school, that’s near Anchorage down town. The building is very big, inside of the school there’re four gym centres, a pool, the auditorium, tennis, hockey courts, a football pitch and the lunch common with different kind of fast food, like subway, burger cash etc…
I think everybody knows that in America are the students who change classes and not the teachers. Honestly I really love it because every hour you have to run from one side to the other side of the school and it help to relax for a second your brain and also to stretch your legs!
One of the biggest difference is the way how teacher teach! In Italy we spend a lot of time studying and reading books, here you learn the same stuff reading less and practicing more! They try to learn chemistry through laboratory, math through exercises etc…Everybody thinks American schools are easier than the schools of other countries: honestly I think this is true but it doesn’t mean American student spend less time on the book or they are less instruct! The trick of the success of this magic school is that students learn everything at school and all they need to do on their own is to practice and assimilate what they learn during the day.
Another aspect I really love of American school is that it includes a lot of sports programs! During the summer season students can decide to play football, volleyball, softball, tennis, cross country running, swim and during the winter season they can choose between cross country skying, wrestling, basketball, dance etc. For example I played volleyball for the first three months and now I’ve already start cross country skying! This is amazing especially because Alaska have some indescribable landscape and while I’m doing this sport I have the opportunity to capture fantastic imagines and print them in my mind to conserve them for the rest of my life. Another quality of this sport is that is really funny and the team spends half of the lesson just laughing and playing snowball. Even if I’m doing all this sports I’ve taken 8 kg! In fact the food is something I want to tell you about. First of all everything tastes extremely good and everything is really fat! I use to have lunch at 10.30 am and for this reason I have two lunches because at 2 pm I become hungry again! In my house the fridge is huge and you can find every different kind of food inside it and then, if you go in the garage you can find another huge freezer which is full of all different kind of meat like hamburgers, beef, sausages, spare rid etc. That’s impressive!
I think Alaska is such a great place, the only thing I don’t like at all is that everything is spread out and you always need the car to move and actually I don’t have one. That’s terrible because I always need someone that pick me up and bring me. I miss my independence!
I definitely love this place and I’m having a lot of fun and, more important, I’m having a lot of life lessons that I’m sure will be useful for the future.
Eleonora Camerone (4B)