Even more important than being well informed about the situation existing in your country is the attitude you will assume in your contacts with people. It is necessary that you begin to reflect on this matter from this moment, since sometimes your natural reaction may not be very appropriate.

Above everything else you must forget that you are a citizen of your country, as much as believing that certain attitudes or thoughts are required simply because you belong to a certain country. On any occasion during your stay in which you are going to be in contact with other people, you should not act as an ambassador of your Nation: you must act as yourself.

It may be that people will turn to you as a foreigner, but you should try to make them feel all the time, always with the most polite manners, that you are, before anything else, a person and that the fact that you were born in another country is of secondary importance. If you find out that people are more happy when you turn to them as a person, you will also find out that they are angry with you if you go around spreading the ‘glory’ of your nation, it does not  matter what their political ideas are.

In this case, they will not understand or learn anything about  you and your country, and they might get even an opinion which is exactly the opposite of what you were trying to convince them.

What are we expecting from you

Every year more than 30 million tourists visit Italy. The majority of them comes back home satisfied, after having enjoyed our sun and our art treasures. But their contact with our culture and with our way of living is very superficial.

You will be more fortunate than all of them. You will be given the opportunity to get an intimate understanding of the life in our country, of the historical and cultural heritage of the Italian people.

Try not to forget that such understanding will not come to you naturally. Of course, by being exposed to new things you will be naturally inclined to ask questions and to search for the motivations behind a different way of living. This is not, however, an easy task. It will require of you some sacrifice. Knowledge is never acquired by examining only the surface of things, on the contrary it is a matter of constant care and orientation directed to grasping the inner significance of our actions and of the actions of the others.

Remember, therefore, that it is essential that you get rid of preconceived opinions and that you come with an open mind. Or rather: since you cannot know what is a "preconceived opinion" till you have experienced a different way of thinking, you should at least understand that your environment has thought you certain social and mental habits that, though fully reasonable and acceptable for you, are not a pattern equally followed by all countries and people of the world.

You will have an easier experience, if you realize that your habits are a product of your environment and can be worthless in another country. With this attitude, you will be able to accept what is new, without judging. And along the same line of thought, you will be able to understand opinions different from yours, and even feel sympathetic with people who express them, without loosing your identity.

Ready to try it?

This also implies that even when you face a different way of doing things, you should be ready to try it, rather than to impose your way on others. And if you do not understand why people do things differently from you, never be afraid to ask and find out. You must adopt this attitude not only when you arrive, but through your entire experience. If knowing something, having an opinion on something, means to penetrate to the core of the thing, and this is a long and difficult task, you should not draw any conclusions before a very long time after your arrival.

But there is something else connected with your capacity of learning: your capacity of giving. What other people give to you (friendliness, respect, understanding and care) often is a direct outcome of what  you are giving to them. If you fail in this, if you cannot really open yourself in your relationship with other people, then all of your other aims will be more difficult to obtain.

Of course at the beginning, and also later on during your stay, there will be occasions in which between you and your friends and between you and the other members of the host placement some misunderstandings will arise....

You should by no means consider this a failure on your part.

Since it happens many times that even people who have been living together for a very long time do not "understand" each other, it is quite probable that there may be some lack of understanding between you and your new environment, when you are just learning to know each other. But what is important when this happens is that you discuss your misunderstandings openly and frankly (but always with respect for the opinion of the other person) particularly when failure to do this might worsen your relationship with the involved people.

Another thing to keep in mind is that not everybody is going to be sensitive to your needs. The people you meet are not strangers in their country, they all have their friends, and they may not even be particularly interested in getting to know you. So, do not expect that just because you are friendly everybody else will want to be friendly with you. Many times the response of people is slow or does not come immediately. In such a case the worse mistake you could make is to consider it your own fault and not merely as an unhappy episode.

In the following pages, we will attempt to point out some of the specific problems you might meet during your stay and some of the answers we suggest for them. There are, of course, several other ways of matching with these problems if they arise, so you should try to work out, with our help or with the help of your local chapter, the ones more suitable for your personality. We want to be certain just of one thing: do not overestimate nor underestimate them.