Hello everyone! I’m Adelina from group 13 難民問題. Now that the Virtual Exchange project has come to an end I’d like to look back and share my thoughts and feelings about this experience.

First of all, why did I decide to join this project? The main reason was because I really needed to practice and improve my abilities in speaking in Japanese. I’ve always been shy and afraid of making mistakes so more often than not I find myself being very afraid of talking in Japanese. I thought that joining this project would help me learn more about the language and be more comfortable in my conversations.

At first, I felt intimidated by the theme of my group: 難民問題 or “the problem of refugees”. I was familiar with the problem, but I never really thought much about it or researched it deeply, so it’s fair to say I was pretty ignorant about the matter. In addition to that, it’s also a bit of a hard topic to talk about in Japanese, I find it difficult to discuss even in Italian, so I was obviously nervous. I thought I wouldn’t be able to understand anything and that it would be impossible, at least for me, to speak about it in Japanese.

But the experience was much more enjoyable than I expected. The other members of the group were very kind and nice people and talking to them made me feel less insecure and nervous. The leaders of the group did a really good job in helping us all understand the topic and making this project fun and engaging. We had many conversations about different topics related to refugees, some more serious (like the situation of the refugees during corona or the fake news that are spread by the media about refugees) and some more entertaining (like famous refugees or art made by refugees).

It was very interesting to hear everyone’s opinion and thoughts, especially since I think people generally don’t like to talk about this problem. One of the things I’m happy I got from this project is the knowledge about this topic, which I think is very important. I don’t think I would’ve had the courage to dive into such a big and complex problem on my own.

I feel like right now, after 7 weeks of this project, I’ve learned a lot. I feel like my understanding of Japanese has gotten a lot better and my speaking abilities have improved. I’ve also learned to have a bit more confidence in myself and that making mistakes is okay as long as you keep trying to improve. It was also nice to meet new people and make new friends, especially in the situation we are in right now with the pandemic, where going out and interacting with others has become a bit of a problem.

I’d like to say thank you to all the teachers and coordinators that made this project possible. It was a very enjoyable and very useful experience and I’m glad I got to be a part of it.

Thank you for reading.