Hello everyone, Amanda from Group 14 海洋資源 here. This is my personal post.

I am extremely grateful to Japan Foundation for creating Virtual Study Abroad Exchange and giving us the opportunity to take part in it. At a time like this, when Coronavirus’ presence has basically called off all international exchange programs and prospects of internships in companies and associations, being able to take part into such an important and international program almost feels like a blessing.

At first I was a bit skeptical, because my conversational skills in Japanese aren’t at their best yet, and I felt scared and insecure about having to partecipate in weekly meetings and lessons where the only thing you have to do is talking at all times. Looking at the groups’ topics also made me worry, because they were all about things I’m not usually interested in and things I have no knowledge of.

Luckily I was paired with some fantastic Italian students who, like me, knew very little of the topic, but by helping each other at all times we’ve been able to carry out the entire project. In our group there was also a Japanese student who, on the contrary, was very informed and conscious about our topic, and we couldn’t have thought and processed a lot of passages without his help.

My favourite part of Virtual Study Abroad Exchange has been the conversation lessons. As I said before, at first I was really anxious and scared, but it only took one lesson to break the ice and during the second lesson we were all already laughing and talking casually about our topics. In my opinion, these lessons are particularly important not only for improving our speaking skills, but also for getting to know Japanese culture and habits better, directly from Japanese people. For this reason, I think that the attendance of Japanese students to these lessons should be encouraged more, since I feel like not all Japanese partecipants have given their contribuitions.

Overall, I feel extremely grateful for being able to take part in this project, since I’m certain that my conversational and writing skills have improved without any doubt, and for this reason I would and will definitely recommend Virtual Study Abroad Exchange to other students.

Until next time! またね～