Reflective Blogging 2

Alternative Energy Sources

First of all, I realized that last week, I talked about reflective blogging, but I did not really explain what I meant and what it is, so I will do it now:-).

Our English course is devided into two parts. One course is about bloginng and the blogsphere and in the other we do a Skype exchange with students from the Tulane University, New Orleans. Normally, we attend one course during the fist semester and the other one during the second semester. As I was studying in Madrid last semester I could not attend the English course in Padua and that is precisely the reason why I am attending both of the courses this semester:-).

In the Skype Exchange course Sarah (our English teacher) asked us to write, each week, about our experiences, thoughts and about what we have learned in class on our blog. This activity is called 'reflective blogging' and I will do it regularly:-)! I like this task, because we are supposed to write freely and not to worry that much about grammar and spelling (that is always good news for the student, isn't it?):-))

The topic we deal with this week, is alternative energy. I always thought that I was quite well informed about that issue but when I started to look for information in the net, I realized that there were quite a lot of things that I did not know. There are a lot of alternative energy resources. I was surprised about how many organizations are doing research in order to improve the existing renewable energy sources and to discover new ones. Even tides are used to produce energy! As fossil fuels become more and more expensive it is necessary to find alternatives.

Generally speaking (and it is not my intention to offend anybody) in Italy, people do not worry too much about environment. From the last skype exchange, I learned that in the US it is quite the same. I am really looking forward to the next skype exchange and talk about renewable energies and see if there are differences in attitude. The exchange is a great opportunity to become more culturally aware, reflect upon the differences and similarities.

In class we talked about cultural awareness, cultural competece and stereoptypes. I would like to talk about stereotypes with the Tulane students. I think it is interesting to know how people who come form a different cultural background see and judge our culter. Obviously, stereotypes are only a generalization and nothing more than a possible starting point. They do not tell us anything about the "real" culture of a country. Therefore, I cannot wait to talk to my American peers!!

Susanne

P.S. I took this picture two month ago in Spain near Madrid:-)