By Delaney Dine

Alessandra Pavone is a junior from Messina, Italy. In Italy, Pavone attends an art high school where she chose to study painting, along with her other general subjects.

Pavone has experienced some culture shock since arriving. “It feels so weird to me to think about someone my age that already had experience with jobs and driving these big cars,” Pavone said. “So from that point of view, I feel very much ‘younger’ compared to American teenagers.”

Food was another adjustment. “Now I’m appreciating a lot more things I eat,” Pavone said. “But when I came here, I felt so full after eating very few portions of food because even the same things are made differently.”

“Italy is probably known as a very welcoming country which is pretty true, especially in the South,” Pavone said. “But even if I’m from the South of Italy, we don’t say hi to each other if we don’t know people, so this thing was a little bit of a cultural shock.”

The last cultural shock is how important school is here. “I feel like in Italy most of the teenagers don’t know what to do with their life,” Pavone said. “While here, a lot of teenagers put so much effort in their activities and never stop working on building the future that they want to have. I feel like a teenager’s life is all about school and its events.”

Pavone is very close with her family. “I am a very family person and especially with my parents I have an amazing relationship,” Pavone said. “I can almost consider them my friends and I miss them. I miss the comfort of my house, I miss watching movies with them on the couch, I miss the food they made for me, I miss everything.”

Being an exchange student comes with some difficulties. “It’s different for everybody,” Pavone said. “But for me the time when I was the most homesick was the first week. I didn’t know where I was and felt like I didn’t have a home.”

“Now everything’s different,” Pavone said. “I already feel like my new home is my home and the people I’m living with are becoming my family. They’re already so important to me because as I was used to my parents, they are the people who see me in every emotional state, they’re the people who see me when I’m tired, they’re the people who will know me better than everybody else.”

Pavone is currently running with the cross country team which has helped her make friends while also enjoying the sport.

Schedules can be different for exchange students, and language can be one of the hardest barriers. “When school started, I also felt pretty tired because studying in English required me a lot of time, even if I was able to speak,” Pavone said. “And I also had cross country every day. But now, it’s been more than two months since I came here and I still go to school and do cross country, but I have more time for myself, because I learned how to organize my new schedule, even if it’s completely different from my old one.”

Pavone is here through a foreign exchange student agency who has some expectations for clients. “It depends mostly on the agency,” Pavone said. “But from my experience, I can say that most of the agencies want to test you on how much you want to start this journey, how much are you ready for it, if you know how to deal with your emotions, and of course, they’re going to make you do some pretty easy test to see how fluent you are with the new language.”

Pavone was able to gain a scholarship to be a part of the program. “In my case, since I won a scholarship, they required high grades to have the chance to win the scholarship and a low income to determine the percentage of the price that would be covered by the scholarship.”