While before I used to only memorize information to pass the tests, now I find myself inquiring about what I am reading and learning about, trying to dissect the notions and to connect them to my prior knowledge. 

I also think that now I manage my time more effectively than I did when I started university: I learned that I need to organize and divide the syllabus in smaller chunks to study following a schedule that I make, which also includes my prior commitments, hobbies, appointments and rest days. 

To memorize what I study I like to make keyword maps and summaries while I read and learn. Then, I study through repetition and I usually imagine I have to explain what I studied to someone to understand if I really know it or not.

Moreover, the context I find myself studying in contributes to the way I manage to retain the information I need: at home I can never concentrate because there is always someone around making noise or distracting me. I do my best when I’m in a study room or a library where everyone around me is trying to do the same thing as me, learning, which I find motivating.

As the video states, good friendships provide us with emotional support and lift our spirits during difficult times, giving encouragement and motivation.

I liked those people, and I still do, but I think that our relationship wasn’t ever that close to actually impact my life and make it better. 

The people that truly make me happy, that make a difference in my life, are the ones I can still call my friends right now. I care about them and so I put effort into cultivating our relationships.

The easiest but more impactful thing we do is constantly checking up on the others: we live far away and go to different universities so we don’t see each other for days at a time, but we like to send a random text sometimes to check if everyone Is fine or if anything good (or bad) happened.

We send photos of what we are doing, audios of something we dreamt, weird thoughts that made us think of each other, long text explaining conversations we just had that we found embarrassing, complaints about something we have to do,…

I love the way we still want to be in contact with the others and to be present in each other’s lives even if we aren’t always together anymore, and I think that it means that our friendship is true and solid.

The OECD main purpose is to bring together the governments of countries committed to democracy and the market economy from around the world to:

The OECD publishes economic reports, statistical databases, analyses, and forecasts on the outlook for economic growth worldwide. Moreover, it analyzes and reports on the impact of social policy issues–such as gender discrimination on economic growth –and makes policy recommendations designed to foster growth with sensitivity to environmental issues.The organization also seeks to eliminate bribery and other financial crime worldwide.

The OECD is leading an effort with the G20 nations to encourage tax reforms worldwide and eliminate tax avoidance by profitable corporations.

The OECD maintains a so-called "black list" of nations that are considered uncooperative tax havens, although there aren’t any nations currently on the list since in 2009 all nations on the original list had made commitments to implement the OECD standards of transparency.

The OECD's structure consists of three main elements:

When we arrived, the entire family of Nello was expecting us, including his three grandsons and two granddaughters, which my mom had talked about to me and my brother. 

As soon as we got through the presentations, we went to the garden to play, but we quickly realized that specking different languages made playing a bit difficult. Nello was Italian, so he knew the language, and he taught it to his kids, but his grandchildren only knew a handful of words, and me and my brother knew none of French. But being (stubborn) kids ranging from seven to thirteen years old we just tried to think about how to get over this obstacle.

The answer was “English”. We were all being taught English in school, and, while we were young and couldn’t communicate fluently, we all knew how to say “football” “doll” “hide and seek” or whatever game we wanted to play. So we started to play and talk in broken English, throwing in some Italian and French here and there trying to explain some things. 

The joy in our faces when we realized it was working and we could communicate must have been so sweet to witness, even though the adults were pretty baffled at the idea that ten-year-olds were talking to each other in a language that they couldn’t understand, not having studied it ever in their lives. 

When we were studying the European Union’s states in Geography, the teacher made us do presentations about them, assigning a nation to each student but making us work in pair. I was given Spain and my friend was given Belgium. 

We decided we would meet that evening, and she explained to me where she lived. When I got to her house, the first thing I noticed was the big shoe rack just outside the front door and when I got inside, I realized why nobody used shoes inside: the entire living room floor was covered by this beautiful Persian carpet. Right then and there I made the connection that, being a Muslim, her house and her family might present differently than what I was used to see and experience; something that I had never thought about since meeting her.

I remember feeling a bit uneasy for a moment, but then I immediately thought that I liked my friend and her company, so what her house and family looked like shouldn’t bother me, and I decided to fully embrace the different culture and to have a curious approach about it: I greeted her and her mother and then we got ready to do our project.

Some time later the mother came in the study room to bring us a snack that she made for us: it was a Kosovar sweet type of cake that I had never tried before. I saw my friend got kind of embarrassed and shy about her mother giving me something so different from what I must be used to, but I wanted her to feel good and confident about her culture.

I thanked her mom, took a piece, tasted it, and asked what it was made of, to try to spark a conversation and make them more comfortable. She didn’t know Italian really well, but she told me the ingredients and then started talking to me about some of their typical recipes, probably seeing my interest in learning about new food and spices -which I love by the way-.

When I got to school the next day, my friend thanked me for how I treated her mother, saying that people usually ignore her because she doesn’t know the language well, while the day before she felt seen and proud of her culture and her cooking skills. Then she gave me a Tupperware full of the same snack she made the previous day from her mother to bring home for my family.

In the materials Craig Storti says to “be culturally sensitive” and to “act positively”, and I think that those aspects are exactly what helped me to have such a nice encounter with a different culture.