Here comes the sun...

Photo by Sun Drama

Skyping...a bright new world I've been discovering in the last few weeks!

I had never used Skype before, because, to tell the truth, I'm not so fond of all these new Web 2.0. tools...but I must admit that it's a great means through which we can easily talk to American students...

...who could imagine such a development of the tools provided by the Internet? Surely, I couldn't!

I remember myself being at middle school and listening to music cassettes with English native speaker talking, and watching some movies my teacher bought in England...and now...see how things have changed just in a 10 years time! Web 2.0. provides a number of tools which, I believe, will change completely the way languages will be taught in the future! And we're just at the beginning!

However, as far as our Skype session is concerned, I really liked talking to Michelle because she's very nice, kind, friendly and helpful and actually it was so easy to talk with her that I soon forgot that I was talking to someone I've never heard of before, who lives on the other part of the Ocean! We discussed the issue of immigration in the two countries, and I realized that it is something I didn't know anything about! For instance, I didn't know that the Latinos and Spanish speaking people were so marginalized and discriminated in the US, and this is something which differs a lot from the European context, where people coming from Spanish speaking countries are perfectly accepted, if not well perceived, given the high level of popularity Spain is achieving in the last few years!

However, in the next Skype sessions I would also like to discuss some other issues, and discover, for example, how do they live as University students in the US, and I would like to know something about her habits, hobbies, tastes, what does she know about Italy and so on! I would like to know which are the differences and similarities between being young University students in the US and in Italy!

That's all for the moment...see you soon!

Camilla

Thinking about the final project...

Photo by Goodimages

Photo by kansasliberal

Here I am thinking about the topic I would like to develop for the final project..

...there are mainly two things I would be interested in working on, such as the working policies for young people and health care.

The first topic is obviously something which we are very interested in, given the fact that we'll be looking for a job at least in a year...so that I would like to compare the working policies for young people in the US and here in Italy, in order to see the differences and the similarities.

Secondly, I would be interested in discussing the issue of health care, which I think is a problem of great importance in the US: I would really like to know something more about it.

That is all for the moment...I hope we'll find a compromise as a group and focus on a topic we are all interested in!

Camilla

What about immigration in Italy?

I think that this is a hot topic to talk about, especially here in the north of Italy where the problem is particulary felt as important.

First of all I would like to say that immigration does not only mean "poor people arriving with ships in Lampedusa" but it is a phenomenon which occurs also with reference to many other kinds of people coming to our country for different reasons.

However, it undeniably true that most of the times immigration involves people from poor countries moving to other countries which are supposed to be wealthier. I would like to underline the fact that, for instance, as far as Italy is concerned, it is "supposed to be" wealthier because of the fact that, at the moment, it is not a particularly wealth country, so that immigrants may find it more difficult to integrate into our society.

Having a look to the data provided by the Istat as regards immigration in Europe and in Italy in the last few years, you can see that Europe has welcomed 34% of the whole worldwide immigrants, whereas North American has received just 23% of them. This is an interesting thing, particularly if we consider the size of the two continents. Moreover, in the last few years immigration has provided 89% of the whole European demographic grown, which is also an important matter to take into consideration.

As far as Italy is concerned, at the beginning of 2006 the number of immigrants in our country was of almost 3 million people. Most of these immigrants come from a few number of foreign countries, such as Albania, Morocco, Romania, Ucraina and China. Another important thing is that nowadays the number of clandestine immigrants coming in Italy crossing the sea with ships is much lower than in the 90s.

These are just a few data to see how the phenomen is developing nowadays in Europe and in Italy; however, I think that in each Italian reagion there are different approaches and different problems concerning immigration. Living in the Veneto region, for instance, we do not have problems concerning clandestine ships or whatever similar, but we are literally invaded by a huge number of people coming from Romania, and as far as I'm concerned, I feel this may turn into a problem for the population because of the fact that some areas of the city can be actually be perceived as "Rumanian colonies". Moreover, we're also facing a lot of problems because of the racquet ruled by illegal immigrants, so that our cities aren't safe anymore.

I know some of the things I've just written down here can be considered as commonplaces, and in fact they are, but actually I cannot even say that those problems do not exist: I would be hypocrite.

There would be also the religion problem to discuss...but it is such a ticklish topic that it requires an overall analysis which I'm not going to do here.

Camilla