Ciao! My name is Kat Huey! I grew up in a suburban city outside of Atlanta, Ga. I went to a high school where I wasn’t surrounded by a plethoras of cultures, so coming to Duke was as an amazing experience where I was amerced in to other cultures. Duke does an outstanding job of creating a Duke culture that has within it numerous global cultures. I think having students take a foreign language is part of that. Most other large Universities don’t require students to take a foreign language for three semesters. In the beginning I was nervous about this being a requirement at Duke, as I was never the best at Spanish in high school. So I knew learning a language at a top University was going to be a challenge and I decided to challenge myself by doing a different language than before. Italian culture is something that has always interested me. I had originally planned to study abroad Fall of 2019 to Italy, but was unfortunately not able to. However, within my three semesters of Italian at Duke I learned a tremendous amount about life in Italy.
In particular Italian 203 brought Italian culture to life even more than before and let me truly understand Italy while being in Durham, NC. From interviewing a true Italian speaker to doing virtual tours of Italian museums, I was given an inside look as to life in Italy.
During our first project where a group of us interviewed an Italian speaker to better understand food culture in Italy, I was able to then use this to better myself in the rest of the class. From this interview we then had to do a presentation and memorize the script for our individual slides. In the post about Culture, I mention how I was very nervous and an extra slide was added for me a the last minute. I am not one for public speaking, especially in a foreign language, but I think having this first project built my confidence for the rest of the semester. The presentations also helped my writing as I was going to have to speak to the class, so I was very particular about using proper grammar when writing my scripts and scritturas. Not only the presentations help with public speaking, memorizing Italian, and writing, but it also helped when I was doing my oral and video blogs. Even though these blogs were at home, I still had to memorize what I wanted to say and be confident when doing it.
Overall, I think Italian 203 was the most hopeful when it came to understanding the Italian language and Italian culture. 101 and 102 were the base of my knowledge, but I felt that 203 allowed me to use everything in a more efficient learning environment. I learn best from pictures and videos and those were used tremendously as learning tools this semester.
Durante la lezione online dell’8 aprile è stato assegnato un gruppo. C’erano tre musei: Museo egizio di Torino, Museo della Ferrari, Museo Guggenheim a Venezia. Ogni studente ha visitato uno. Ho visitato Torino e poi completato un foglio di lavoro. Le domande mi hanno fatto riflettere su ciò che ho visto online e capirlo. Mi è piaciuto conoscere il Museo egizio di Torino. Il museo ha molti pezzi Egiziani. Molte raccolte esistenti principi, strumenti ed esempi di ricomposizione delle informazioni. I biglietti possono essere acquistati online o alla biglietteria per € 1300. Questo è 14,02 dollari negli Stati Uniti. Ho imparato a conoscere il museo e ho fatto collegamenti con musei in America.
