Summary of my self assessment of my intercultural competence

I am supposed to write a post about this semester's exchange program with American students. Unfortunately, our group started the skype phonecalls a bit later and so I wasn't able to talk to my American peer as often as I would have liked to.
Anyway, the exchange was a good way to get an idea of American culture, even if in a tiny tiny extent.

What stroke me most was the fact that Anne (that's the name of my skype peer) did not at all seem to be different from myself and my Italian friends. Actually, we like the same shows on TV (e.g. Grey's Anatomy) and we like to be around our friends in our free time. Of course, we are both young adults and therefore, have the same interests but, the cultural differences were not noticeable.
I really enjoyed talking to her and it was a great opportunity for me to talk with an American; One reason is that I hardly get the chance to talk to someone from so far away and to hear what she/he is thinking of my culture, and another reason is that it was a good training concerning my language (speaking, listening and comprehension). It was like a test whether I could cope with calling somebody completely unknown and having a conversation with that person on various topics (e.g. immigration, TV, news, university life) in a foreign language. I think I managed to do that well, and I enjoyed it.

I think I learnt a lot when we talked about the elections in the U.S. I sort of got an idea of what the American system is like and what needs to be changed from a political point of view. It was very interesting to see the issues American have to face day by day. What you see on American TV shows and movies is just not real and the film industry doesn't deal at all with the everyday life of an average American family.
That is why the election part of this year's course was so particular to me.
As far as my ability to change perspective is concerned, I think I was able to that even before the exchange program. I've been living in Italy for almost seven years and during these years I often discussed with people about differences in culture. I had to learn to explain certain facts from my point of view as a stranger and I also had to learn to live in culture that is different from the one I grew up in. I think it's important to have these discussions because besides learning more about a foreign culture, you get more aware of your own culture, as well, and then you might see positive aspects of your own culture that you had taken for granted.

To summarize my impression of the exchange program I can say that I am satisfied of what I have learnt. Of course, the time was too short to analyze things, e.g. the political system, the job situation in the U.S., better but, I think that as a class and as a whole we all participated in this project and each and everyone of us contributed some knowledge to the wiki pages where you can get so much information from.
As far as I am concerned, I enjoyed seeking for information on news and how they influence the culture and people's expectation, e.g. an Italian would never expect an election campaign to be as big as in America but, at the same time, an American is used to this effectiveness in the media.

I learnt that there definitely are aspects that influence culture and therefore, the people living in that determined culture. On the one hand, there are differences, some are in politics, in TV broadcastings, in food, in the university system etc, and on the other hand, there seem to be no differences at all (e.g. when I talked to Anne she just felt like some of my friends from either Italy or Germany). I think it is important to be aware of the differences and it's also important to maintain them and try to understand them. And then, it is even better to notice that people on the other side of the world are so similar to yourself.