Being a foreigner

Immanuel Kant
Sitting in a classroom again. Once again I'm the new kid.
"I think, therefore I am" Io penso
I learnt this already in high school. It's like an alternate view of the past. I'm back in high school… but in Italy. I understand the topic. I understand the dynamics of this class; eighteen girls trying to impress the teacher and each other. I just don't understand the language. I can pick up words and phrases here and there. It's such a strange sensation, re-learning something you already know in a different setting at a different time in your life… in a different language.
You can only know the 'fisie' (physical) world, but can think about the 'metafisie' (metaphysical)
We are like lab rats. The class hamsters. The new kids; foreign, strange. I'm used to this, but at the same time it's different from any experience I've had before. They can learn as much from us as we can learn from them. And in this classroom we are all eager to learn. Just not about Immanuel Kant.
Knowledge is experience. It is a system of thought.
Eighteen pairs of eyes stare at us. Only two pairs, our foreign eyes, carefully observe the insegnante (teacher).
Everyone has the same capacity for knowledge. Knowledge is universal.
I never studied Kant this in-depth. My high school wasn't specialized. If you wanted speciality in my school, you had to be special. I covered the topic of philosophy briefly in my AP European History class. This class is dedicated to philosophy. This high school is specialized, focused on Psychology education. Every child here already knows that they are learning, in turn, to teach others. They made that decision already, they dedicated their education to this already. At seventeen years old.
The moral: everyone has to follow his "imperative ego" (imperativo categorico). Man is free to follow his moral duty, or to choose not to. The soul is immortal.
They say this teacher is hard. She does not give good grades easily. Some things are international. The desire to know things; about your classmates, about the new girls sitting in the corner, about the topic which you are studying. The desire to do well.
Moral is metaphysical. Experience is physical.
One girl seems to know everything. The other girls role their eyes as she boasts her knowledge. There's always one. My friend and I are diligently taking notes while passing notes to each other. High school. I like the way the Italian girls dress. Some are grunge-y, some are sporty and casual, some are 'preppy'. I had a uniform in high school. You can tell a lot about a person from the way they dress. The girl trying her best to be our translator for this philosophy lesson is wearing jeans and a cut off black T-shirt with a red skull on it and a smart black blazer. Everyone is wearing tight jeans.
Because the existence of God cannot be proven this in itself is evidence that he exists. This is metaphysical.
The bell rings, a sound understood in any language. Yet the girls do not move. In Italy you stay in one classroom all day with the same teacher and the same classmates and the same learning atmosphere.
We are learning about the evolution of education in Italy now. Learning about learning.
After WWII Italy went through a lot of changes: From a monarchy to a democracy. The emerging of the welfare state. Women were allowed to vote after 1946. And an economic boom in the 1960s.
They each take turns teaching us something about their home. They are both proud and embarrassed to practice their English with us. They've been studying English since primary school, but don't get the opportunity to use it often. I am impressed with their attitude towards another language. I envy their ability to combine foreign words to make foreign sentences in a foreign language so that they understand what they are telling us, and make us understand what they are trying to say. I say two sentences to them in Italian.
Write five sentences about George Orwell's Animal Farm from your 'point of you'.
A simple translation error. Mistaking point of view for point of you. We are in English class now. It is such a strange experience seeing my native language taught as a second language. I can't imagine writing something like that in Italian, or any other language. They make some mistakes, I can tell a few things got lost in translation, but I am proud to see the way they regard my language as a challenge worth tackling. I hope to one day write in Italian like I do in English. I hope to string together a random assortment of beautiful words to make a melodious, coherent sentence. And then another, and another, until I write something I can be proud of. I am proud of what I write, proud of my language and how I use it and proud of my attempt to learn another. I can only hope one day to be as proud of my Italian.