Kadri writes

Written by Kadri Kalve

Me and my family had the great pleasure of hosting one of the students from the exchange from Italy. Our exchange student was a very kind and lovely Italian girl named Marta Audisio. She was rather chatty, quite cheerful and as it came out a very good cook.

Marta and the other Italian exchange students arrived in Kanepi on the Thursday evening. After the arrival everybody went to their homes. My mum had made a really tasty and fancy dinner for us. That wasn’t a big miracle though, because the day before she had bought loads of food.

Friday was the day that all of the exchange students would come to Kanepi Gymnasium. So me and Marta would wake up on the same times as every school morning. Of course the morning wasn’t as ordinary as usually because my mum had prepared quite a fancy breakfast. I spent most of the day in lessons but Marta and the other Italians were only in two lessons during the day. The remaining time they got to do many fun activities and they were also shown around the school house and introduced to the parish head. At the end of the school day there was a basketball game between Estonians and Italians. In the evening there was a little party in the local culture house, where the Italians were introduced to the Estonian culture and tradition.

On Saturday we couldn’t sleep for very long because a head of us was a busy day of many activities. The day started in the school house where we were divided into two groups. Our first group went to a lecture about the Kuperjanovi military battalion. Original we were oath to go to the said military base but unfortunately due the flu outburst the outside people were no longer allowed to the base. So instead we listened to a very nice and educative lecture about the military. After that came my personal favourite part of the day- the snakes. We got to see and hold real life snakes who were brought to our school by a man called Ainar. There were at least five little snakes and on every big snake who was about three meters long. My favourite was the snow white little snake who looked incredible beautiful, me and my friends decided to call the white snake Voldemort. We also had names for the other snakes like Harambe and Nemo.

Me and Voldemort havving the best time of our lives.

After meeting the snakes we went to Munamäe, to show Italians Estonian’s highest “mountain”. Getting up and down the hill was quite a challenge because all of the roads were covered by ice. It was quite a lot of fun, there was even a snow fight on the top of Munamäe. Afterwards we would go to Mooska farm where we would go snowshoeing. We saw lots of beautiful Estonian winter landscape and got quite a nice walk outside. The star of the whole walk was of course a cute dog called Ella.

Star of the Mooska farm- Ella.

We also had a sledding contest when we got back to the farmhouses. Then we talked a bit about sauna and had a meal and some tea outside. It was really lovely and I loved spending time in the fresh air. When me and Marta finally got back to home we went to sauna and then watched some movies together.

The next few days went by filled with lots of fun activities and suddenly Marta and the other exchange students were headed back to their homes. It was surely a really great experience and I am so glad that our school organizes such events and programs.