SKYPE AGAIN!

Last Tuesday I spent an enjoyable hour speaking with Alessia, Martina and Allyson about political issues.

We asked Allyson basically two questions:

• Hillary and Obama are the main candidates for elections in the USA. Do you think that the fact of being a woman and a black leader can influence the voters’ choice more than their political platforms?
  

According to Allyson the answer is definitely affirmative. Since the possibility to have a black leader or a woman as president is a great achievement for America, many people, especially women and the black communities, are voting for one of them. Allyson thinks that both of them can really give something more to politics because they can offer different perspectives on a large number of issues and especially Obama is an open-minded person. But do they have enough experience to rule the country?!

• Among the different issues of the political campaign which is the most important and that the Americans care of?
  “The decision of the army withdrawal from Iraq is definitely a central theme in the political campaign.” said Allyson to us.

Then she asked us some questions about the candidates who are running for the new office in Italy and the main differences between Berlusconi’s and Veltroni’s programs. She told us she heard that Berlusconi has a high probability to win again, although most of the Italians she knows do not like him… Well, we have only to wait for Monday night!!

Besides politics, we dealt with other topics such as the organisation of healthcare system in America and the lessons Allyson had in those days. She told us that she watched “Il Caimano”, another interesting movie about Italian politicians!

What else can I add on my reflection?! Yeah, Skype is a wonderful means of communication and our American peers are really nice… Talking about topics such as politics, immigration, healthcare system is very useful to develop our intercultural competence and to improve our linguistic skills!

POLITICS: elections in 2008

Last Tuesday together with Martina, Valentina and Allyson, I took part in an interesting discussion about American and Italian elections. Also this time the topic of the conversation was very difficult but it helped me a lot to understand how the electoral system in Italy and in America works and how different they are.
Allyson explained us that the American electoral system consists of two kinds of vote: the popular and the electoral vote. This latter seems to be much more important than the popular because if a candidate doesn’t win the popular vote but wins the electoral, they are elected… Is this democracy?!
In Italy there are many problems concerning the electoral system too. The main reason is due to the fact that there are a lot of parties and the electors find it very difficult to properly follow every political program… And therefore the result is that most of the people feel confused and uncertain.
Moreover, we discussed about the three videos "Menomale che Silvio c’è", "I’m PD-Si può fare", "Obama Girl" and we all agreed saying that there’s something pathetic in them… We all are rather pessimistic towards our politicians and we think that both electoral systems (American and Italian) should be reformed in order to be more effective.

As far as the cultural topic we will focus on in our final project, I’d like to deal with the situation of women in politics and in everyday life… Is it true that American women only think of their career and independence? What are the opportunities women have in the society they live in? What are their needs? Observing that in Italian society, especially in some jobs, women are still discrimated, I’d like to find out if American women suffer the same condition.

C u on Tuesday, have a good weekend!