At the end of these first extraordinary days of Erasmus, we asked the students to tell us their point of view, to share with us all the impressions that build our experience together. Here is the result.

Martyna from Poland. I was very excited, and I had big expectations about the program. I was also scared at the beginning because I didn’t know anything about each other. Fortunately, as soon as I came here, we found out, people are nice, and they want us to be happy. I visited beautiful places like Portofino, St. Margherita, Rapallo. I had a chance to try some Italian food: pizza, ice-cream, pasta (I loved it!).

Martina from Italy. I’m glad we can take part of this project, but also a little scared because I have never had experiences like this. When I met the Polish girls, it was a little bit weird, but also so beautiful and exciting because I know that I will spend a lot of time together with friends from different countries and learn different cultures. Despite the few days we know each other we have already established a good relationship and I hope to be able to meet her in the future, perhaps by going to her in Poland.

Pablo from Italy. These first days of Erasmus have been a new but very interesting experience for both me and Arsenios. For him it was the first time in Italy and in general outside Greece so there was also a small hint of fear in him. We immediately participated in some very interesting and beautiful initiatives, like visiting Portofino but also in my case the game on the beach against the Romanian boys which was a lot of fun. Even if we believe that the best thing so far has been meeting new guys, coming from many different states and with different stories. It was particularly nice because after two years of covid, a moment like this represents a great breath of fresh air for us. But it is not over yet because there are still a few days to go until the end of this new adventure.

Angela from Spain and Alice from Italy. In these days we have a fantastic opportunity to meet and socialize with new people while improving our English. When we met our host and our hosted, we were so nervous, shy and extremely excited, but after few hours we managed to talk a lot. The first day we were so happy, and we laughed and had fun a lot and then we had to talk about other guys as Romanian, Polish and Greek. In the evening we were so tired but very happy, so we don’t care about the fatigue. We are loving this project, this people and this place and we don’t want this it to end. Tuesday when the Romanian leave and Wednesday when the other guy, in particularly Spanish guys, leave we will be very sad. A huge and giant thank you at all teachers and to vice principals Federico Pichetto and Tiziana Cignatta. We are looking forward to seeing us again, because we are going to miss us a lot.

Javier from Spain and Francesca from Italy. This Amazing and unique project it makes us feel a lot of different emotions.  For example: at first we were a little bit nervous, but when we started knowing each other we started feeling comfortable. I (Francesca) was nervous because I feared not knowing how to communicate. I (Javier) felt nervous because I didn’t know if my host would have a cold personality. But when I saw that wasn’t like I thought I started feeling comfortable with family and with you (Francesca). We experienced Also the same emotions. For example we felt both very happy and excited. We socialize a lot with different people from every country. We hope that we can see each other in another time.

Achilles and Trifon from Greece; Sara from Italy. Hello my name is Sara and i host Achilleas and Trifon two wonderful Greek guys, I really enjoyed this experience because although we don’t know each other much we had a lot of fun, and i learned some words in Greek. I really want to do it again because is beautiful. They are funny and sweet; they are also good singers. I met new people like Agata from Poland and Claudia from Spain, I also made new friends like Aurora, and others. Hello, my name is Trifon, my experience in the Erasmus project has been wonderful. We visited many beautiful places and we got to know Italy’s culture better. However, the best part of this project is the relationship I built with my host, Sara and her family. Except from sara i also met a lot of new people from different countries and we had a lot of fun. Furthermore, I believe that the work we have done has helped me improve my English and get more sociable. In conclusion I had an unforgettable experience and I hope to keep in touch with sara and the people that I met. Hello, my name is Achilleas, and the Erasmus program gives me the opportunity to know new people like Sara and her family and make new friends like Emma and others. I think that Italy is the most beautiful country in the world and I like the Italy’s culture and food like focaccia and pasta with pesto sauce, I really like the people that I have met. They are very friendly, and I like workshop and the games that we have done.  My English got better, and I really want to get back to Italy one day.

Silvia from Italy and Claudia from Spain. This is our first time participating in an Erasmus plus project. We are Silvia from Italy and Claudia from Spain, we met on Thursday at Rapallo station, and we share the room. We wrote to each other for a few days before meeting in person. Friday was our first day all together, after the activities we got to get to know each other better (after covid we think it was difficult for everyone) and in the afternoon we took a walk around Rapallo and Santa Margherita Ligure, where we had dinner with our first pizza of the holiday. Saturday was very nice, we started to tie more together and thanks to this evening we celebrated the beginning of spring all together in Santa Margherita. This experience will certainly leave us with better language skills but above all wonderful international relations, we can say it has “unlocked” us from a pandemic point of view. We are happy.

Amelia from Spain and Elisa from Italy. Amelia and I are excited and happy because of this experience. We feel like we know each other since years and years. This experience has been very important, and we would like to repeat it. We have a lot of fun together and living together is teaching us many things. Amelia taught me a lot of words in Spanish, and I taught Italian to her.  This experience is proving to be a wonderful surprise and we have met many new people that we hope to see again in the future. We want to thank all the people who made possible this experience.

Celia from Spain and Greta from Italy. Honestly both me and the host girl are very happy with this experience because it is very constructive for us.  We are very compatible because we are both very sociable and cheerful girls and we really want to gain experience.  It is very difficult to put into words when we meet people from other countries with a completely different culture than ours. My girlfriend really likes typical Genoese food.  She tried focaccia, cappuccino, baciocca, pizza, croissants, ice cream and pesto.  she likes everything. My friend also met some of my Italian friends, even if there were some difficulties, we can understand each other because we all have a good level of English. Yesterday we took a boat and went to Portofino which is a typical Genoese city with fantastic colors.  While today we went to Sestri Levante which is also a typical Genoese city, we bathed our feet in the water, danced and took photos that we will keep forever.

Giacomo from Italy and Andrei from Romania. The experience was good for both of us, we learned a lot of things and facts about the other cultures, languages and countries. We both enjoyed the places that we visited and found interesting the workshops; Andrei really liked the typical food my family cooked for us. Even if the weather wasn’t that great on Friday and Saturday, he really appreciated Portofino, Rapallo and Santa Margherita Ligure. Today we went to Camogli, Andrei tried Italian gelato and he loved it; the sun was shining, it was warm, and it was a beautiful day. For two days we went with Ape to the activities and today in Camogli. I taught Andrei some Italian, and he taught me something in Romanian. He also took a lot of pictures of the mountains of the sea and of the cities.

Christian from Italy. The first day I was very excited to welcome Anastasia in my home and have a chance to know her better and know something new about Greece. The day after we met the other foreigners and I was excited to meet them too, we had some trips together and I was very happy because I came back to Portofino after too many years and I was happy to see it with my friends and the other people as well. The activities were so much funny. Then when we ate the pizza that was the best part of all, because we had so much fun, and played as well with the teachers.

Anastasia from Greece. From the moment I arrived in Italy, I was looking forward to meeting both the person who would host me and the other children. When I finally got to know Christian, I was happy because he and his family welcomed me as if I were my home. It is quite interesting to live in a house of a different country, to live the daily Italian routine as you get to know more about their culture and habits. I am grateful to participate in a program like Erasmus because I live experiences that I will remember for a lifetime!

George from Romania. This project gave me the chance to leave my country for the first time. Also, with this project I have experienced how it is to go by plane. From the moment we got here, in Rapallo, I knew it will be an unforgettable experience. I made new friends, I visited stunning places and learned new things that will help me in the future. I am very satisfied with this project, and I hope to participate more in such activities in the future. I’m very sorry that there are only 2 days left and it’s done, but I must live every moment from here.

Elisa from Italy and Agata from Poland. We have been waiting to do an experience like this for many years now, and we are very happy to finally have the opportunity. Erasmus is a European project that involves thousands of people, coming from many different countries. We have had the chance to manage a site, called sharing, that allows to write articles, created only by the students, about news and things that are happening all over the world.  Due to the pandemic, we were very nervous about how the experience would have developed, because for the lockdowns we have become more introvert than we used to be.  Now here we are, united again to complete this amazing project and we are very grateful to all the people who organized this, because we finally had the chance to meet boys and girls from other countries, to host them in our houses and to get to know all their cultures.

Wiktoria from Poland and Margherita from Italy. During this project we were able to experience a lot of different emotions. When the foreign students first arrived, we were nervous and excited to meet them, and they were excited and were looking forward to meeting their host families. After the first meeting we started to get to know each other, and we met a different culture and point of view. During this all project we got to know different people and learn about their tradition. In this week the hosts lives didn’t change that much but we got to know a lot of new friends and experience interesting activities that we normally don’t do. For the foreign students it changed a lot of more. They got to visit a beautiful new place, they got to admire a colorful sea and they were amazed by the sight of hills near the sea. They got to try new foods and they really liked ravioli and focaccia.

Giacomo from Italy. This project has made me feel a lot of different feelings: being nervous because if I mistake a few words and do not understand me always creates a problem, happiness because I was happy to keep a foreign boy in the house, commitment because I had to express myself at my best, and this project I also used it to improve my English, Spanish also and to meet Italian boys of my age and also foreigners of the same age.

Mihai from Romania. The first day here has gave me various emotions because it was my first time seeing/visiting a new country, respectively Italy, I was kindly welcomed by my host and felt very confident because I could talk English with him and not my native language Romanian. Obviously, I was a little bit scared because it was a new experience but luckily, I got used to it very fast. I was impressed of all the things me and the others have seen in the project week. The lighthouse in Portofino has given me a strange feeling because everything was extremely different of what I have seen so far. In conclusion these feelings represent who I am and changed me in a very major way. I will leave Italy with no feelings of regret because I have met new people and made good memories with them.

Francesca from Italy. I was very happy to start this project in which I decided to participate since the first high school. Finally, the first meeting with foreigners was about to happen and I was very agitated, because we all spoke different languages and to understand each other we had to speak in English. The school had organized a meeting in the gym with the possibility of having breakfast with a piece of focaccia and getting together to get to know each other; I immediately made friends with the students from Romania, also because I can understand and speak their language, later I also met those from Greece, Spain and Poland. After that we went to do a project in the school lounge, where all the various countries presented themselves, indicating various characteristics of the country they came from and introducing themselves. In the afternoon we went to Portofino and had a lot of fun. Back in Santa Margherita Ligure everyone went to their own home and then there was the dinner which, however, I did not attend. Another day of this beautiful experience had begun. We all met at school and participated in some communication projects organized by the school. After that in the afternoon we went to San Michele, where we attended a lesson by Alberto Zali, a former student of the Liceo Da Vigo Nicoloso, who explained the difference between the various types of newspaper articles. In the end, everyone went to their own homes. For the coming days, the school has already thought of other activities we can participate in. A fact that I really liked was that of giving a lot of free time in which we pupils could do everything, because in my opinion the most suitable way to get to know people is not to participate in lessons of various kinds, but that’s it. to be all together to have fun even just singing and stammering or even doing walks that in any case allowed us to interact with each other.  For now, we have only reached this point of my path in this project. I can say that I am very satisfied up to now, because I have made friends with people from other countries, but also with people from my school that I did not know before. The school organized the work very well even if it was certainly very difficult. I can say that it has been one of the best experiences to date and I am sad that this is about to end, also because I never thought I would be able to get so attached to people I have known for such a short time, but I am very sure they will always have a place in my memories. I have chosen to express my experience through a diary, then describing every day up to now also expressing my emotions. In the end I wrote a personal comment which would have been what I should have made this morning.

Ohara from Italy. Ar the beginning we were very excited and we had big expectations about the program. We were also quite scared at the beginning because we didn’t know anything about each other. Fortunately, as soon as we immediately found each other well. We visited beautiful places, we could know different cultures and meet new people from other countries. We are really glad we can take part of this project, we have a lot of activities and we can spend a lot of time together with our new friends. In the first morning the school was so friendly to people from other countries and let us meet ourselves better and gave chance to foreigners try focaccia. We think this Erasmus project is great because it let us visit a piece of world and open our minds.

Stefano from Italy and Amir from Romania. Amir: Thanks to Erasmus+ project I got the chance to meet new and beautiful people. The number of emotions and feelings I had felt is amazing. I am thankful to everyone that made this project happen. I was amazed by the hospitality that Italian people have and how good hearted they are. It was a fun experience because I got to see other cultures and live like them for a while. Stefano: This experience has brought me a wider view about all my everyday feelings: I had the right time and place to see how the same things, conditioned by the filter of other cultures, can take to completely different emotions. The mixture of different languages and personalities has taken me out of my comfort zone, and that’s not a thing that happens often in my life.  In the end, I feel that experiences as different and deep as this one can really make me improve and give my best, and I must be thankful for this opportunity. Even though we are totally different people with different lifestyles, we got along very well. In these days, we created a strong and united group: even when we were free, we’ve always been propositive in organizing something nice for everybody. The activities, the walks, the meals, the music, and the parties together made us become like an only person, with the goal to do something special, to invest in our future, getting rid of every border and barrier between us.

Emma from Italy and Nikoletta from Greece. Our experience on Erasmus so far has been amazing; living with someone who speaks another language, has different cultural traits and traditions is always generally a very interesting experience, but after a pandemic even more. We got used to being on our own and now we have the chance to freshly restart. Nikoletta and I could’ve never wished for a better match: we have so many passions and interests in common. We played our instruments together, sang and created an amazing atmosphere in the house. After visiting nice places together, having lots of fun and sharing life experiences in long conversations, it is certain that we are taking full advantage of this project. It is so nice to get to know new people from so many different foreign countries and this can encourage the spread of awareness and friendship. We are so grateful for this opportunity, and we are looking forward to continuing the friendship we’ve created here.