My third Skype Exchange

Hello people!

Last monday I had my third Skype Xchange!
I spoke with a girl called Lea (without the H this time!!)
First I asked her about the result of their final presentations (Tulane students' last class is on May 1st!).
She told me that the topic of their paper was Recycling in Italy, that was a good experience and she worked as a member of a group.She also said that she was too shy to speak in public so this task was up to her classmates!

Then I asked her some questions about Water Resources in USA, for example:

-Are there any projects (like MOSE) in New Orleans in order to prevent the sinking of the city?
-Is the sinking of the city a real danger?

She answered that the sinking of the city was a real danger for the future and that, unfortunately,there aren't specific projects to prevent this risk
or better, there are some ideas but nothing concrete.

Finally, she told me that next summer she's coming to Italy, in Florence exactly, to study Art History and Italian! She is really excited !





Photo source



I have to say that this Exchange was not so easy like the previous one..
The reason was that Lea spoke very fast and pronounced the words not so distinctly!

My second Skype Exchange

At last, last Monday I had my second Skype Exchange.
As the first one it was a very interesting opportunity to practise our English and to learn something new about a foreign culture.
This time I spoke with a girl called Leah.
Generally, we communicated in English but sometimes she tried to speak Italian.

First we talked a little about our different way to celebrate the imminent Easter.
Then Leah told me she was Jewish so...her Easter had a totally different meaning and name: Passover.
She explained me that, during Passover, they don't eat bread or drink beer for eight days. Moreover, they had a special dinner and read their Psalms.

After this, my American peer asked me some questions about the topic of our new wiki page: Water resources in Italy.
In particular, she wanted to know something about the Mose Project in Venice and its consequences for the city.

At the end, the conversation went back to alternative sources of energy.
In fact, Leah asked my opinion about the renewable source of energy for the future of Italy. It wasn't an easy question!

That's all for the moment
Annalisa

Photo sources:

http://www.martineschocolates.com/image/easter_egg_box.jpg

http://interactive.usc.edu/members/msteffen/archives/2006_04.html

Alternative Sources of Energy: a Challenge for our Future

Unfortunately this week I didn't have my Exchange because I was ill at home...I'm waiting for next Monday!

Anyway, this week we had a new topic to discuss.We were supposed to search information and write about ALTERNATIVE SOURCES OF ENERGY in Italy. It was not so difficult but we had to read a lot of stuff!
Moreover, many of the sites we used are written in Italian so we had to translate and summarize things.
Obviously this exercise had also the purpose of gathering knowledge
about this issue for our Exchange program.

I think that this topic it's really interesting and extremely relevant to our present.
Surfing the Net I discovered a lot of new things also because, to say the truth, I didn't know so much about alternative sources of energy except from something concerning solar and wind energy.

During my search, I asked myself questions like :
-What are renewable sources of energy?
-Which ones are most common in Italy?
-Are there legislation or specific campaigns in order to promote their use?
I learnt that, besides solar, wind and water power, there are also Geothermal and Biomass energy.

Traditional sources of energy cause many damages to the environment and a waste of great amount of energy.
Therefore, it would be important that nowadays government fosters the use of renewables and invest more on it.
Unfortunately, there are several difficulties. First, the resistence of multinational industries and the high economic costs: in fact, non-renewable sources are less expensive.
I also discovered that in many Italian regions like Piemonte, Lombardia and Veneto there are some initiatives (they promote, for example, the transformation of wooden biomass into energy) which represent an important contribution in order to arouse people's awareness of the importance of these alternative resources for the future of our planet.

Photo source