After these two months and some days that I've been doing the erasmus exchange students program in Turin I realized that my country is not as bad as I always thought it was in terms of the education system ( not just that but it's the most important factor when you're doing erasmus - if you do it for learning ).
We, portuguese, are always criticizing ourselves about everything, but, I think, we have no idea of the value we have.
For 4 years I've been studying at the Fine Arts Faculty of Lisbon, now I'm on the fifth year. In all of these years, I've had the opportunity to see people doing all types of work at Painting - all from traditional to conceptual, video, photography, etc. It's not perfect, but people learn, or improve their style throughout the years using all king of methods, all free of you to choose, while you talk with the teachers and they help you to find your way. We also have very good theoric classes ( maybe too much work sometimes, when we could be doing the practical ones) which help you to have a reasonable knowledge about many kinds of subjects, not just art but also history, psychology, aesthetics.. And it's not easy, I must tell you. Also the faculty is open everyday, you can paint there even at the weekends.
So at the accademia im in, in Torino, I was surprised when I saw that here, the classrooms are only open at the time of the classes ( which can be 2 days per week, 3 or 4, it depends on which class ), and most of the people only do figurative art - most of them use squares to draw and draw mostly from photographs ( many use photos from fashion magazines and paint sexy models ). It must be really bad for an italian to read this, but it's true! And it seems that it's not just the art education, I've talked with other people from erasmus and they all say that everything is more easy here.
In my accademia there is an english class (people in their 20's attend it), and they are learning stuff like saying "I am a student" there, when they should have learned it 10 years before..
How can such a country so famous for the art be like this nowadays? Are they so proud of themselves for having such a great art history that now they just don't need to change the art education? It was a very big disappointment in terms of that.
Anyway, the city is very beautiful and it is a great experience - you don't speak your mother language that much, you meet people from all over the world and with all kinds of different cultures, everyone should do it.
I'm staying there till the middle of March.
It's funny because the first month I've had all kinds of bad experiences including losing a plane in London ( I went throught London to be half price), then I had o catch a plane to Brussels (where one of my bags stayed there), and when I arrived to Turin I lost my Identity card, and the hotel wasn't booked like I thought it was. A month later I ended up on the street because this italian couple I was living with were asking me and a friend for more money than what it is acceptable for a double room after I lived there for a month (and payed for it), and I just said I wouldn't pay. We slept at a friends house for some days and then I went to a residence (single room with private bathroom) and she went to live with some portuguese friends.
I LOVE to live alone, not having to listening to my mother always yelling at me, do my own shopping, cleaning, it's amazing. I just wish I could do the same here Lisbon after.
It's everything for now, I'm sleepy***
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