Meet Chantal: This Is Her Little Big Story
Chantal is an italian piano-playing student with mad skills and an open heart. This is the story of how she started in a small town in Tuscany to go live in New York, with only talent and kindness.
A random act of kindness was her ticket to NYC
Chantal is an Italian student - she’s a crazy talented piano player. She has always been an open-minded person: she’s never been one to mistreat or judge anybody based on their ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion or so on. It was just the way she’d been brought up, I suppose.
She went on Erasmus (a European study abroad programme) to Germany, and studied Music in Freiburg. From Freiburg, she remembers how being Italian seemed to get her closer to people: singers would ask to be taught Italian, others wanted to learn how to cook Italian dishes, and so on. She managed to fight homesickness with this friendship that other international students and the local Germans gave her.
This is something that she never forgot: two years later, still studying in Italy, she always kept an eye out for international students in town, and tried to help them feel a little bit closer to home.
“However, I think that the most beautiful story I can tell is about only one person, Kanami.”
A Japanese girl was admitted to her class on the very last year of her university. As usual, Chantal wanted to get to know her. But when she approached her, she found that the girl, Kanami, did not speak one word of Italian. Not ciao, or pizza, or pasta.
Kanami had landed in Italy knowing nothing but Japanese and (quite randomly) German. She was scared and confused. Chantal speaks four languages (Italian, French, German and English), and immediately offered to help. She helped her in classes, speaking with teachers, other students and - of course, registered Kanami in an Italian language course. For months, Kanami was shy and very lonely:
“She was always alone, unable to speak with anyone when I wasn’t there.”
So Chantal started inviting her for coffee, more and more regularly. That turned to dinners and lunches. At the end of the year, they had become great friends and confidants - sidekicks in each other’s adventure.
At the end of the year, Chantal had a piano exam to pass so she could graduate. She was going to play a Concerto, by Mozart. It was the most important moment of her university experience - Chantal had to shine. But there was more to it than that:
Chantal needed somebody to get up on stage and play an accompaniment with her in front of the examiners. She called Kanami of course, and they aced it. There, playing together, two great friends who had been complete strangers just ten months ago: it was the epic climax of their journey.
“Even now,” Chantal says, “I remember very well the day I had to leave university: she, crying, hugged me and gave me a letter she wrote in German (the language we still prefer to use to speak and write), in which I could read that for her I was like a sister.”
“This beautiful experience made me realize that, if you try to be helpful with people, you will find someone who will appreciate your commitment, from which a wonderful friendship can eventually also arise.”
Chantal’s great talent and performance was recognised when she made it into the New York University as a Masters student. And her kindness was recognised somewhere else: she won one of 10 Uniplaces Scholarships for the value and honesty of her kindhearted account, which meant that part of her accommodation in New York was covered by Uniplaces.
“The Scholarship was very helpful. I am studying and living in New York, which is such an expensive city and my family is not able to afford all the expenses. Once I came to know that I was one of the winners, I breathed a sigh of relief. This was my confirmation that, if we behave well and really work hard, we will be rewarded.”
In fact, that’s how I came across Chantal’s story: I was organising the Uniplaces Scholarship then, and I am organising the Uniplaces Scholarship now:
We’re looking for 15 students who do good deeds. If you’re one of those everyday heroes and have a cool story to share, drop by scholarships.uniplaces.com . Who knows you could be living rent-free the whole of next semester?
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