Exam Week!

13/5 - 19/5

This week is definitely a week I am proud of as every day I managed to do some kind of assessment piece. 

Although I didn't originally plan for it to be like this, I arrived on Monday morning to a three-hour-long exam in Italian. I would never have thought to participate as usually in class they study old Italian literature, written in ye olde Italian I can't understand, but the teacher was absent and the substitute teacher, not knowing that I wasn't Italian, gave me a test. I was about to hand it back, not having studied at all, but I decided to read it instead and found out that it was in fact a reading and response comprehension test; a test you don't need to study for. So I read the stimulus, spent a bit of time translating the words I didn't know and starting answering questions. And I am so so proud to say within the time constraints I managed to finished 3/4 of the exam! So I handed it in with my name on it, thinking my Italian teacher will get a nice surprise when he goes to do his marking.

My first ever Italian exam

In fact, already knowing that this week both my class and Alice's class had a lot of assessment to do, I decided to bring in Fairy Bread for them on Monday. None of them had ever even heard of it before, as it turns out to be an Australian invention, so it was a big hit!

That afternoon I left school early as my class was doing an exam that I really couldn't do and Silvia had offered to pick us up and take us out for gelato at a popular place in Milan called "Gelati Famosi".

Fun fact about this week too; the Euro got new money! The European Union has decided to make it's money more difficult to copy to avoid fraud, so one by one they are replacing the notes with newer, more plastic feeling designs and this week they released the €5 note. Basically it's similar to the old one but feels like Australian money!

On Tuesday we had a test in PE. PE is a fairly informal subject, so again no one trains for the tests or really knows when they're going to be, but we arrived and the teacher announced that we were doing a cardio exam; skipping. We basically just had to skip for a minute long as fast and hard as we could, and the teacher counted how many jumps you did in a minute. I did 87, so I took the highest mark you can get, a 10!

On Wednesday there were "interrogations" or oral exams, in English. Interrogations are a type of assessment that doesn't really exist in Australia, but they do almost every day here, I suppose as an alternative to assignments because they don't do assignments. Simply enough, the student sits next to the teacher and the teacher asks questions off the top of their head about the unit that has been studied. So for this exam I studied, it was a lot about old English literature, but I pulled through and got another 10!

On Thursday I did my Geography presentation, because at my school Geography is taught half in English and to assess their English and understanding of the Geography lessons taught in English they put together short presentations where they simply talk to the class about the topic studied, in English. The topic at the moment is the European Union, so we were asked to choose one country each and talk about the role it plays and I spoke about Sweden! And I got another 10!

Finally, on Friday I did the written exam of Geography, this time for the part of Geography in Italian. I studied for it in Italian and wrote it in Italian and in the end the teacher gave me an 8, which is equivalent more or less to a B+/A! To celebrate such a good week, Chiara and I went to get pizza to take home for everyone from one of Milan's most famous pizzerias, "Spontini". Whilst most pizzas in Italy are very thin based and done with different flavours, Spontini's pizzas are absolutely thick based and only come in one flavour; Margherita. This was my first time at Spontini and I was amazed watching how the pizzas are made (as the kitchen is at the front of the store, open for you to watch). 

My first Spontini pizza!

Another difference at Spontini is that while usually in Italy each person eats one pizza for themself, at Spontini each person eats one or one and a half pieces and that's enough!

On Saturday I went with two of my friends from my class, Cathy and Carlotta, for my first time to a cinema in Italy to see The Great Gatsby. Naturally, I was running late and when I got there the girls had already bought my ticket for me, so although I had been trying all day to think in Italian to make sure I would understand the film they had bought the tickets for the screening in English with Italian subtitles as a surprise for me. The movie was as wonderful as I expected and although afterwards Carlotta had to go home Cathy and I went and got a gelato and did some window shopping.