Hi! As you probably know I’m a foreign exchange student from Italy, so everything here is completely new for me. I have been here for a month and I have already seen thousands of differences between the lifestyles of the two countries.

CULTURAL SHOCKS

• Everything is BIG→ I’m shocked about the size of every single thing. For example the houses, cars, food, malls, school, roads, EVERYTHING!!! 
• The time of  meals → In Italy there are three meals: breakfast (at the time you wake up), lunch(1:30-3:00 pm) and dinner(8:00-11:00 pm). Breakfast is usually small and sweet; lunch and dinner are big and savory. So it is very weird for me because here the lunch is just a snack.  
• Everything is green → Wherever I look I see green, the yards are so colorful because it rains a lot. In Italy, especially during Summer, it never rains, so everything is brown/yellow. 
• The Price→ Everything costs a lot more. At the grocery store food, beauty products, literally everything is so expensive compared to Italy. Something here costs 15$ in Italy would probably cost about 5$. 

SCHOOL SYSTEM

There is not a single thing that is the same in the two school systems. This is how school works in Italy:

• Students don’t change the classroom, it is the teacher that changes it.
• Each period is an hour long instead of 45 minutes like here.
• There are five years of high school
• We don’t choose the subjects. In the last year of middle school, we decide which subjects we want to study, so we sign at the type of high school that focuses on that subject. For all the five year, we have the same classes.  
• We always stay with the same people for all the years
• Our school day goes from 8:15 am to 2:15 pm
• We don’t have lunch at school. We have only two breaks of ten minutes to eat a snack and lunch once we come back home.
• We don’t have elective classes, only study classes.
• No sports, no clubs, no school dances
• We have written and oral tests. For the written test we have to actually write long answers and the oral tests are like questions during the class that every teacher does to each student and they grade that.
• At the end of the high school there is a big exam 
• School on Saturday

LIFESTYLE

The ways to hang out with friends in Italy are completely different than here. In my country, we can just walk around the city, things that are impossible to do here; we can also go to a disco since 14, 16 or 18 years old depending on where you go. Here a typical way to hang out with friends is going at a friend’s house, going to a mall, and eating something.

OVERALL

I think that both of the countries have pros and cons, but what I can tell is that I really love this place. These people and this life. Everything here makes me feel like I’m in a movie. I don’t want the time to go too quickly.

NAME 3 FACTS ABOUT ITALY YOU THINK OF

Grace Bogacz

Pasta

Italian flag

Beautiful landscapes 

Carolyn Larva

Used to be a bunch of city states

Rome was the capital of the Roman empire

Art

 Jessica Burgard

 Pasta

Italian brands

Caffè

Ryan Justi

Very different 

Italian people have a lot of accents

Good food