My stay in the USA

When I first decided to spend 4 months in the USA, everybody told me that it was going to be a wonderful experience but with a lot of difficulties to get through, and they always reminded me that I was going to handle the hard situations all by myself.

Now that I’m home I can say that I was never by myself even with the smallest issue…

I surely have to thank my awesome family, especially my sister Claire, with whom I shared every moment of my experience.  

Before leaving I used to look at the picture that my host family e mailed me and I used to imagine how every member was going to be like, but the truth is that when I actually met them, I realized that everything I guessed was completely wrong.

As soon as I got into their car, I felt like that was the right place for me to be.

The flight has been the most exhausting of my life because I had to fly from Milan to London, from London to Chicago and finally from Chicago to Milwaukee where the family picked me up. As I was walking through the empty airport in Milwaukee to get my luggage I heard someone screaming “Chiara” and then I found myself trapped between the arms of the biggest woman I have ever seen in my life and I realized that was my host mom. She had been waiting for me with her two younger children in the area where only passengers can walk into and I still don’t know why they let her in. However, I was happy they were with me waiting for the luggage because it didn’t come out so she filled out all the forms to claim my lost luggage and I didn’t have to worry about anything. As soon as we walked outside the airport I saw a gorgeous guy with dyed sort of orange hair and a big diamond earring walking towards me ready to give me a hug…that was the oldest son and as soon I realized it all the pressure I was feeling disappeared and I suddenly started loving the countryJ. My host dad was waiting for us at home.

My family lived in West Bend, a small city close to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The house was huge and it was located in the middle of the woods, so when it first snowed, the landscape was just awesome.

My host parents, Jim and Lois, have as I said, 3 kids: Jimmy (22), Claire (18), and Kitt (13).

Lois is one of the guidance counsellors of my high school while Jim is a chiropractor.

Jimmy attends UWM, which is one of the Universities in Milwaukee. He is in his senior year and he’s going to graduate this spring in Business and Management and next year he will work for General Electric in Milwaukee.

Claire attends UWWC, the University in West Bend as a freshman but she’s going to move to Madison next year and wants to graduate in Interior Architecture and Design.

Kitt still attends Middle school at Badger in West Bend.

After a bunch of weeks I was with them, I started getting into everyone’s personality. Lois was kind of the ruler of the family. Nobody did anything without her permission but still, she is the most loveable and sweet mom ever and she tries really hard to be there for her children even she works a lot. Jim is a very kind but shy man, he loves everybody but shows it in his own way. He is obsessed with being fit so he trained everyday in the little gym they have in their basement and tried to make me run and train with him but with no results. Jimmy is a very serious guy despite the weird hair and the earring. He does really good at school and he’s so into politics that every time he picked me up after school he started huge discussion about politics with me. He is a big fan of Obama and taught me a lot about the political system in the USA.  

Claire has been more than a friend to me; she has been the sister I have never had. We shared a room so we were pretty much always together. She introduced me to a lot of friends of her and so did I when I started making my own friendships at school. She works at the movie theatre in town so she always got free tickets and pop corn for both of us.

Kitt is the little one in the family and he is a sweetheart. He is very sensitive and caring about everyone’s problems. At first he was shy and didn’t talk a lot to me, but after a month we were good friends and allies and played together a lot. 

I believe the family is the one who helps you the most in this kind of experience because it makes you feel part of what you are living and it truly helps you out when you have any kind of problems.  

My family lifestyle was crazy. People kept coming inside the house, the phone rang at ANY time and people were never home…However, we gathered at supper time every night so that we had the possibility to share everyone’s day.  

Because Lois worked at my high school, every morning we left the house together and drove to school at about 10 to 7 am because school started at 7.30 but she had to be there a little bit earlier than that. Classes were over at 2.40pm and after that I had tennis practice for the first 2 months until 5.30 or 6pm.

Playing tennis has been a great occasion to me to meet new people and I have to say I met the girls who were going to be my closest friends during my stay.

Claire or Jimmy picked me up after practice and drove me home where I did my (little) homework until dinner was ready.  

I took 6 classes at school: German IV, Precalculus, Physics, US History, AP (Advanced Placement) Literature and Composition and Government and Law. My favourite class was US History because we had this really cool teacher, Mr Zappia, who had Italian origins and always tried to speak Italian and when he did it, it was awkward because I seriously couldn’t understand what he was trying to say but I didn’t want to make him feel bad so I always tried to fake it just laughing randomly. He has been more than a teacher to me, he always asked me questions about how was my stay going and his lessons were very interesting because he talked about events that were happening in those days so I was always updated about what was going on in the world. He had this particular way to teach so that you were never bored while he was talking. Plus, he liked to organize fun activities, some of them involving me and Lasse, the German guy who was also in that class, as protagonists because he wanted us to share our European culture with the others. At the end of my stay he wrote me this wonderful letter I will always keep and that still makes me watering a little bit every time I read it. 

The weekends though, were the best part of the week because Claire was like one the most popular girls in West Bend so she was invited to all of the parties in town. However I also had my own high school friends to hang out with so we did not spend all of our weekends together, but we did hang out a lot anyways.  

I always tried to get all the opportunities I had to have fun and make new experiences so in my 4 months stay I went to a bunch of concerts like Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, Modest Mouse…; went to the Milwaukee County Zoo, went to Madison, Milwaukee, Door County, Chicago, an amusement park called 6 Flags; played Powder Puff ( a sort of American football played by girls), helped as a crew member the setting of the school play Pride and Prejudice; play racket ball, went snowboarding, went snowmobiling, dyed my hair blue and dressed up to show my school spiritJJ; went to a haunted house, volunteered as a Key Club member and joined all the possible clubs I could so that I was always busy…J and this is what I would suggest to anyone who may want to have the same experience because free time might make you feel homesick a little bit… 

The association that I was partnered with, Ayusa, had its area advisor right in West Bend. Her name is Sue Henkel and she is one of the most hilarious women I have ever met. She organized a bunch of activities for us exchange students she was in charge of. Two of us lived in West Bend, me and the German guy and three guys lived not far from Milwaukee. We went to 6 Flags, which is an amusement park in Illinois and to Chicago and we had an awesome time together. Spending time with someone who is having the same experience as you are and probably the same issues, is always nice because it makes you feel having an ally or something like that. 

As everybody probably knows, the weather in Wisconsin is freezing in winter. When I first got there it was the middle of August and the weather was really hot. However, it started snowing at the beginning of November and it pretty much never stopped. The temperature went from 35 to 10°F but sometimes it also dropped to -4°F…Because the weather is so freezing, people in Wisconsin usually organize their life so that they don’t have to stay out for long periods and the heating inside every building is very high.  

Even if it feels always good to be home after a while you have been away, I can say for sure that I would have stayed there for the whole year without any problems and that now, that I am home, I realize I am missing even the little things I didn’t even care about when I was there. It is an experience that changes your life and stays with you forever, doesn’t matter how many months you spend there and which state you live in, because wherever you may go, there is always someone worthy to know. 

Chiara Maini