Erasmus: a touch of France in the "F. De Sanctis"High School

Just like every year, the Francesco De Sanctis High School in Salerno has welcomed the Erasmus initiative. Erasmus is a project made by the UE which allows people from different countries to apprehend the difference in their daily life, the places and the school. From the 29th March to the 5th April, we have had people from the François Truffaut di Beauvais High School in France. They got to know places like Pompei and Paestum, which are beautiful historical places in Campania, and they also got to spend a day like Italian students. In our class, 1C, two students had been chosen to take up this opportunity, Agostino and Maria, and they each took care of the French students who they got assigned with, Giovanì and Jiulia. They spent every day with them, and they experienced the Italian lifestyle. They slept and ate like us italians, and who knows, maybe they had something in common or they found something we did strange. We got to talk to them on Thursday and on Friday; on Thursday Giovanì and Jiulia spent the whole day at school with us and we got to do 2 hours of maths, where they told us that they were ahead of us, we had a free period where we organised for the π day which was the next day, and two hours of Italian where we got to ask questions to the French students. During these “interviews” we didn’t only talk to Giovanì and Giulìa, but there were 3 other French students from another class, and since they didn’t know where to go, we welcomed them in our class. They introduced themselves one by one, and may I say, I was expecting them to talk at least a bit of English, but it looks like the stereotype about French people not knowing English was true. The main differences between France and Italy, as they said, was the school, which in France is much more difficult than here, but they also said that our school is a little old and bad looking. There, they have a canteen, because they stay al school for much more time. Even the hour of the meals is different, because they said that they usually dine at around 19:00, while we could even eat at 21:00. They find us to be lucky, because we have a lot of free time compared to them, because they have so little time that they can’t even have hobbies or sports, they only have enough time to finish their homework. That sounds really depressing, and some of us think that our life is difficult, imagine theirs! They didn’t speak English very well,in fact it seemed that they understood Italian better than the most spoken language in the whole world! They said that they actually study italian in their school, which I found shocking, because I didn’t think that our language would be studied by other countries. On Friday, during the afternoon, all the French students went to the π day celebration hosted by our school, and although I don’t think they understood much, they still sat there and showed appreciation. Overall it has been a very lovely experience, and it’s awesome that all of us can apply for this project. Unfortunately you can only do it once, but it would be cool to show off your city and then see how another country works. Now next year Agostino and Maria will go live with Giovanì and Giulìa for a few days, and they will tell us how different it is from here!