Videoconference with Sintermeertencollege, the Netherlands
It was a cold morning and in our school the heaters didn’t work so many students decided not to enter and to go back home.
Federica, Alessandro and I stayed in school to speak with the Dutch school in the video conference.
I
was very excited because that was the first time when I had spoken with
people who came from another place and my English is not very good. The Dutch students were very pleasant teen-agers.We began to speak with them and so they gave us some information about their culture, music, country’s problems, food and many more.
First of all we introduced ourselves and told them about our names and I discovered that my name (Miryam)is very popular in the Netherlands, but the names of my other friends were very difficult to understand for the Dutch.
While we were speaking about music, we discovered that Tiziano Ferro , an orrible italian singer,is known in Holland in fact they told us that his music is fairly kown and they love some songs …but how is it possible?His songs are very bad!!!It’s ridicolous I thought! But I must admit it's personal taste..A Dutch student sang a piece with a beautiful voice then we had to sing a typical Milanese song because they wanted an example about our culture and so we sang it. It has been very nice in fact they laughed so much.
During the conversation someone showed somethings like a CD or a modern accessory. One of my friends has showed a strange necklace and much more but now I don’t remember it.
Later our conversation became more interesting: in fact the Dutch students told us something about their habits which are extremely different from ours .
For example, in Holland you can take drug freely because in this country it is legal, meanwhile in Italy drug is a serious problem because it’s no legal. Besides, like in Italy and in some other places, one of the most important and difficult problem is immigration expecially because many emmigrants don’t have a stable job so, they often steal and sell off drug; however quite often these people don’t have their own house and so they have to live in the streets so they become criminals and they earn one’s living, working illegally.
We also spoke about the murder of their president who was one of the most important events, in fact now the governament is different and so the laws have been changed.
Instead another problems which they have like us is the pollution because in their country there are many cars and factories, firms that with their smokes pollute the air so life becomes impossible.
Instead in our country you can take alcohol also if you aren't 18 because there is not a law which forbid to take alchol when you are young.
Then we talked on other things but telling you about all the subjects would be very long.
The video conference exeperience for me, has been very useful for many reasons:
Firs of all I’ve learnt to respect other pleople’s opinions who don’t come from my country.I believed that each students should try to make a videoconference because it‘s useful to know much information about the culture, habits, music, food,tipycal problems,politic system or school system of other country and You can learn to speak with other people in English (which is very important).
You can appreciate English in each sense. I loved it and I want to try again this experience.
It has been fantastic!!!
Miryam.