Coming to an End

Now that it's coming to the end of my exchange here in Italy it's time for end of year dinners and parties to farewell all of the amazing people I've had the pleasure of knowing this year. This week I had dinners for both my community Italian language class, and my class from school - 3As, as well as a gelato trip with my gymnastics class. We also recently had an AFS Intercultura farewell party where we got together with everyone from Cesena, Forli and Ravenna.

The Italian classes which I've been attending twice a week since soon after arriving here in Italy have helped immensely with my language - especially grammatically - as well as given me so many fond memories. These classes were free and a great chance to meet other immigrants who come from a range of different backgrounds. If you're on exchange in Italy, or have moved there and don't know the language google 'corsi d'italiano per stranieri' in your town and maybe you'll have the same opportunity! For the end of year dinner we went to a piadina house which our teacher, Monica had been telling us about the whole year because they did mini piadina balls filled with nutella which my mouth can't help watering thinking about now. Uhh they were good. There were students from Egypt, Belarus and Serbia to name a few, all countries I'd never met anyone from so as you can imagine it had been an amazing year learning Italian with such a mix of people from different backgrounds. After the dinner Madi and I had to bike home in the dark and we'd eaten so much it was honestly such  a struggle hahaaha

The end of year dinner for my school class was in Cesenatico which is a seaside town near Cesena. They brought us out platters of different bits and bobs like pizza and chips and we all just picked and chose what we wanted. This is something I hadn't done in Italy before, it always seemed more classy and sophisticated the other times I'd eaten out so it was nice to have a relaxed dinner with such a big group. After the dinner the class split up and I went with some of the girls for a walk around Cesenatico and to the beach before my host Mum and Nonna came to pick me up. It was a good way to say goodbye to my class, although I don't have 'fond' memories of school here in Italy my class was always so lovely to me and we've shared some great times together.

The AFS farewell party was definitely the most emotional of them all. The people I'll be saddest to leave at the end of this experience are definitely my exchange friends family that I've met this year. I wouldn't have done half of the amazing things that I've been lucky enough to do without them, and I wouldn't have achieved everything that I have. As part of the party we had to read out letters that we'd written to our host families and thank them for hosting us this year. It was amazing to think that at our welcome party I had trouble saying "mi chiamo Emily, vengo dalla Nuova Zelanda" and now I'm writing and reading a whole letter and explaining my feelings in Italian. Although my language skills are far from perfect I'm happy with the progress I've made this year. Before Italian I'd only ever known English and I had no idea what it would be like knowing another one, and I feel like knowing another language opens up so many doors - not just opportunity wise in the world, but within my own mind; how I perceive and understand even the smallest of things.