{"id":88,"date":"2017-04-19T16:44:35","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T16:44:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dickinson-italian-program-in-bologna\/?page_id=88"},"modified":"2017-04-19T16:44:35","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T16:44:35","slug":"homestay-feedback-student-02","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dickinson-italian-program-in-bologna\/homestay-feedback-student-02\/","title":{"rendered":"Homestay feedback (Student 02)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think I completely lucked out in getting the hosts I did, because there were so many similarities between our families. My experience with my hosts could not have been better. While I definitely had to make an effort to show them that I\u00a0wanted<\/em>\u00a0to be involved in anything they would let me be involved in, they were really inclusive from the start. The beginning was difficult because we were all traveling a lot, but once that settled down in October, we started to get to know each other and fall into a\u00a0comfortable routine and relationship.<\/p>\n

I do have to say that it was isolating, however. In my experience, I lived 40 minutes by foot from the Dickinson Center and about 20\/25 minutes by bus. This made it hard to connect with the other students. I also didn’t have\u00a0classes with any of the non-Italian speaking and lower level Italian students, so I had a limited social life from the Dickinson perspective. That was hard for me to deal with at the beginning, but overall\u00a0I needed that isolation because it allowed me to find other activities that let me get to know the Bolognesi. For example, I had three different English teaching\/babysitting jobs. The isolation also let me put more effort and time\u00a0into my relationships with my host family members. Towards the end of the semester, I found myself skipping some weekend trips and social events because I really wanted to spend time with my hosts over the weekend.\u00a0Sunday\u00a0lunch was usually the highlight of my week!<\/p>\n

I would completely live with a host family again. My Italian improved more than I could have hoped for because I had so much one-on-one or one-on-whole-entire-Italian-family time. A lot of weekends, I would speak more Italian than English. In the end, my Italian is a thousand times better than it would have been\u00a0because I interacted so much less in English than normal.<\/p>\n

Overall, living with my\u00a0host family in Bologna will probably be the highlight of my year abroad, if not my Dickinson career. I was exposed to so much culture, daily life and gained a whole new family. I visited them last weekend for Easter and I felt right at home immediately. For me, the positives outweigh the negatives, but it does\u00a0take a person who is ready to be strong and\u00a0independent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think I completely lucked out in getting the hosts I did, because there were so many similarities between our families. My experience with my hosts could not have been better. While I definitely had to make an effort to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":848,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-88","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dickinson-italian-program-in-bologna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dickinson-italian-program-in-bologna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dickinson-italian-program-in-bologna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dickinson-italian-program-in-bologna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dickinson-italian-program-in-bologna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dickinson-italian-program-in-bologna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/88\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/dickinson-italian-program-in-bologna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}