WEPisode #6: Molly In Italy

I am having the best time ever on exchange. I have experienced lots of new and exciting things and seen places that I only ever dreamed about! I have made lots of new friends so far and they have all been incredible at including me besides the language barrier.

School is very different over here for me personally. The days are longer (8.5 hours a day) and on Wednesdays it is only half a day. Instead of bringing my lunch myself I get given a hot warm lunch and because I’m close to the border of Germany we get a mix of French and German foods. My classes are different in the way that there are no elective type subjects where we do things such as Art, Music and Food Tech. These are available on the weekend outside of normal school hours. Other than that, majority of the subjects are the same. I have mainly 1 hour classes for the whole day and have 1 break at lunch for an hour and a half.

One thing that I think is really interesting is that we take our bags with us to every class and the lockers are tiny. I don’t have one but I have seen my friends and they only use it to store their jackets when they don’t want to use them. Also because we don’t have a locker for our bags when it is lunch time everyone just puts their bags on the floor, so all the corridors are always covered with bags! Another thing that is really different is that if the teacher is absent for whatever reason there is no substitute, we just get that time block to hang out in this area called the Cafeteria (not the canteen area) or we have this thing called permanence where we go into a room that is used for completing homework.

Overall I am having the best time ever!