皆さん、こんにちは！グループ2働き方のサラです！

Hello everyone! I’m Sara from group #2 働き方 and I’m here to share with you my experience with the Virtual Exchange project.

I decided to join this project because I was looking for a substitute activity for the internship but that’s not the only reason. In fact, I was also looking for a way to improve my Japanese and gain new experiences. Due to the pandemic I hadn’t spoken Japanese for almost a year, in fact my level had dropped a lot and I was very insecure.

During the first week I was really scared, especially after I’ve found out which topic I was assigned to. I was like “how can I talk about such a difficult topic with my poor Japanese? There’s no way I can do it!” As if that wasn’t enough, I’m really shy, so I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to talk neither chat with people I didn’t know. Usually it takes me lots of time to being friend with someone but thanks to my teammates I was able to open up and speak. In addition, the theme was not only complicated for me, but also for others and this made me feel more at ease. Since it was not a subject that we felt close to or of which we had direct experience, we all needed to study the most specific and suitable words for the subject. Thanks to this I started to get involved more and more, especially during the 自由会話.

Even though our topic did not attract students (in fact during 自由 会話 it was just me and another girl) it was fun to chat, compare myself with someone who had more experience than me in the world of work and, above all, be the one who was able to help someone by sharing my knowledge and new vocabulary. It really was a stimulating experience and it helped me to have a little more self-confidence. And even when we both got our grammar wrong or didn’t know a word it was fun just to be able to talk to someone after been locked in the house for so long.

The blog was also a great opportunity as I had never had the opportunity to write in Japanese outside of class and it helped me a lot to improve my Japanese and understand some mistakes I used to make. It was very interesting to read the articles of the other groups, to have an exchange of opinions with them through the comments and it allowed me to grow as a person, to see the world from other points of view that I had not taken into consideration before.

At the end of this project I cannot say that I have overcome all the difficulties, I am still very insecure when I have to speak a language different from Italian or English but if I have even 1% more confidence than I had at the beginning for me it is already a goal and I will continue to give my best to improve myself more and more. And I would like to thank all the professors, junior coordinators, colleagues and the Japan Foundation for giving me the opportunity to participate in this project, to challenge and improve myself.

A special thanks to my teammates, who have helped me a lot, perhaps without realizing it. I hope our friendship will continue outside the project!

皆さん、これからも頑張りましょう！

ありがとうございました！