An interview with foreign exchange student Federica Tagliavini

Post date: Mar 29, 2016 3:03:51 AM

By: Elysia Dowd, News Editor

Posted November 13th, 2015

This year Slinger High School is blessed with four foreign exchange students. Each one has a great story to share and so much to add to the school, and so these articles are meant to show a snapshot of these awesome people.

Federica (you can call her Fede) Tagliavini is visiting us from Italy. She is from a small city that is about half way between Venice and Florence. Though Fede doesn’t come from the stereotypical big Italian family, she is very close with her big sister (who didn’t want her to leave) and mom (who encouraged her to go on this adventure).

Fede loves hanging out with her friends and is super sporty. She has done gymnastics almost her whole life! If she had arrived in America sooner, she would have tried out for the cheerleading team. Fede has already enjoyed a slew of American classics, namely football. She played in the powderpuff game and watched the Badgers play, and loved both. The cheeseburger is definitely her favorite american food, but apparently our pizza doesn’t even come close to how the Italians do it. She also wants to set the record straight - Nutella is Italian, so Americans don’t get to claim it!

So far Fede has liked America and Slinger High school. Back home she didn’t get to choose her classes, so she is enjoying some curricular freedom before she goes home to finish two more years of school. She loves Great Minds of the Western World with Mrs. Erdmann, and physics and AP World History are also fun for her. As much is American History is an interesting class for her, she admits that it is definitely her hardest. She has enjoyed spending time with the friendly Slinger kids, even though our accent is sometimes a little tricky for her to understand. Fede has never celebrated Halloween or Thanksgiving before, so those holidays will definitely be a high point of her trip.

She has learned English in school similarly to how we might learn Spanish or German, so she was willing to share a few tidbits of Italian. Ciao means both “hello” and “goodbye”. Come Stai (which is pronounced very much like “como estas”) is similar in meaning to “what’s up?”

This is just a brief snapshot of Fede, Slinger’s Italian foreign exchange student who appreciates sports, loves elephants, and is excited about what the future holds for her here in Slinger. In order to get a more complete understanding of who she is and what her story is, one would simply need to meet her for him or herself.