Discussing terrorism

Hi peers,
last time with Anne, my partner from the US, I spent an enjoyable hour with her discussing terrorism issues and something US and Italy have in common… the election process! What I found really interesting was to see how much different things are: here in Italy terrorism is often related to all the bloody actions made by some active groups belonging to the extreme left wing, while in the US terrorism seems to be related only to Muslims… especially after the 9/11. As a matter of fact, Anne pointed out a meaningful word, that is “stereotype”: she definitely think that they all need to blame someone so that Americans often tend to assume that all Muslims behave in an aggressive way. Talking about this terrible moment it was natural for me to ask her what she thought about Bush administration and if she think he did something concrete against terrorism. Considering that a lot of people criticize Bush political action, her answer surprised me: she and her parents are Bush’s supporters because of both the decisions he made to face that situation and his encouragement to the nation; my peer said Americans needed to trust in someone and to believe that US was still the most powerful country in the world even after that attack.

I N T E R C U L T U R A L C O M P E T E N C E

Since I rated myself using the YOGA form I realized my need of improving my intercultural competence and the great importance of cross-cultural preparation to deal with differences in a constructive way. I must say that our classes didn’t offer us great opportunities to develop our intercultural competence, as a matter of fact the Skype exchange is the first concrete intercultural project we can experience. I do think that the “language proficiency” section was probably the easier to self-evaluate, while the “awareness”, as it’s an abstract concept, was something quite difficult to me: for example I had no idea about how my social identity is perceived from the host country; what’s more is that this assessment tool showed me how much narrow-minded I’m... I do believe that I really need to take into consideration other perspectives! What I liked most of this very useful tool is that it truly allows you to be conscious of some of your limitations, then to overcome them and to reach new objectives.