By Spencer Ball
News Editor|
Anna Moser likes American movies, singers and the people as a whole. One could safely say that most Americans like these things as well, the only difference is that Anna lives more than 4000 miles away in Italy.
Moser is part of the foreign exchange program that is hosted between Prospect and the Copernico school in Verona, Italy.
In the program, both Prospect and Italian students had to complete an application which had questions that asked about the students’ interests. Their answers then allowed for the students who had the most in common to be partnered up.
The Italian students arrived on Sept. 7 and are returning home on Sept. 16. The Prospect students are also going to be going to Italy in March for spring break. In the meantime, the Prospect students show the Italians the American way of life when they’re out of school. During the day, the Italian students go on planned excursions, which are made by Italian teacher and head of the exchange program lyn Scolaro.
Scolaro started the exchange program seven years ago.
“I had always taken students to Italy for a two week trip,” Scolaro said. “It was getting difficult and costly to do and a former high school teacher of mine had been doing an exchange since 1972 and she kept telling me that I needed to do [an exchange]and that it would be a wonderful opportunity, so I decided to do it.”
Before Scolaro did the exchange with Copernico, she arranged it with another school in Verona called del Cerro. Scolaro had met the English teacher at del Cerro through one of her friends, and when del Cerro could not do the exchange anymore, the English teacher told Scolaro about Copernico.
“It was from my experiences and my friends in Italy that I was able to set us up with a good school,” Scolaro said.
Moser is very excited and happy that she had the opportunity to come to America.
“The people are very friendly,” Moser said. “I was very surprised by the hospitality. Also, I love the streets, and the squirrels.”
Moser has only been in America for a handful of days and she already noticed big differences in the cultures.
“Your small is our big,” Moser said. “People in the U.S.A are more friendly in my opinion. They are very funny, they wear funny clothes and in school there aren’t rules that we have in Italy.”
