New Italian in Town: What is it like to live in Sweden?
Hej, hej, did you know there is an exhibition hall in Alvesta Station? It is situated in the second floor of the historical building, therefore you can always stop by when waiting for a train/bus connection. Damiano, our new volunteer, who arrived in April, is working here. Let’s meet him there!
Here comes his new blogpost…
Hello, my name is Damiano. I chose this project in Alvesta at the Exhibition Hall because I’ve always loved art and every form of expression.
Being a long term volunteer in an other country it helps to see more deeper than with the common tourist’s eyes, I am still at the beginning but I love this feeling. Meeting a new culture, a new language and especially new people.
Travelling is like reading, the amount of information we absorb when we are in a new place is always directly related to our desire of learning things and that is what being a volunteer means for me.
Evolve in something new without forgetting what we were before and where we come from. We can store several new information but as they say old habits are hard to break, especially for me, being Italian means having pasta at least three times a week even if I am here in Sweden.
But food has never been one of my concerns, I can’t say the same for the language. I came here to improve my English so the questions in my head where more than one: Were the Swedes able to speak in English? Could they understand me even if my English isn’t perfect? Could I improve my English speaking with them?
I got the answer the very first day when a ten years old kid answered me speaking in English much better than me. That is something I will never forget.
In my case before coming here i didn’t have a lot of other fears, one of my goals for this project was (and still is) growing up and become more aware of what I want from my life, which means that I was really prepared to face even the worst of the situations to wait for me here in Sweden, fortunately I found the opposite; the work is great and the people are amazing, sometime it makes me happy to find out how many incredible people there are out there. But this is just the beginning, I can’t wait to find about more.
Damiano out.
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