Later that night, we ended up at exploring the area. We found that the only thing cheap in Australia is wine and fruit. Everything else is about three times as expensive in Australia compared to the United States. I ended up back the apartment and some guys on the first floor had their door open and invited us in. The room was occupied be Italians. Andrea (On-dray-a), Luca (Lu-ca), and Jacobo (Yak-o-bo) are all graduate students working for their degree here at Macquarie. They only recently got their four roommate, Ozzie, from Finland. Later, Vinnie a French man joined us. We all sat around having a couple of drinks and really good conversation. Vinnie is hilarious. We literally discussed the our countries perspectives of one another. Vinnie stated in his French accent, “ not all French hate Americans, only the ignorant ones.” We talked about sports, family, and our majors. Every so often myself, Liliana, or Amanda (the Americans) had to fill in a word they did not know how to say in English, but we understood.
(The above Picture is John from Sydney, he is our Study Aboard mentor, guide. He's really laid back and fun. Also, thought I just say he is straight and soon to be engaged. Don't let the t-shirt throw you off)
This fun night really made me think about how sheltered the average American is when it comes to language. All these Europeans speak multiply language, and quite well too. Nearly all of them were raised to learn English in school. Going back to my conversation with Vinnie, I stated the when I visited France and tried to speak French the French person said, “you are murdering our language, lets just talk English.” However when I was in Italy and tried to speak Italian, they stated “thanks for trying, we can speak English.” Vinnie laughed and just stated how growing up French people learn to speak English, and the French are just proud people.
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