Italian Department Hosts International Students

A group of 11 high school students from Milan, Italy came to Marin in September to visit and collaborate with the Marin Catholic Italian program. The students are from a linguistic high school in Northern Italy and had been sharing cultural projects for almost a year with the higher level Italian classes.

Mrs. Gruenwald and Sig.ra Rossi had worked together to create video sharing projects on various topics about life in their perspective countries which included; holidays, student life, cuisine, etc. Students created and shared videos, sometimes interviewing members of their community and family. Students commented and questioned each other about their projects.

Since April, the Italian students and their host families have been in contact and on September 7, the students met for a ten-day cultural exchange. The American and Italian students enjoyed touring the Bay Area together- visiting iconic tourist attractions such as the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, Lombard Street, etc as well as Marin’s natural beauties such as enjoying a bonfire BBQ at Muir Beach.

Aside from creating lasting memories on their tours, the Milanese students attended classes at Marin Catholic. They divided their time evenly between attending a variety of other subjects to improve their English and attending Italian classes, where they worked one on one tutoring students of Italian to improve their speaking skills, pronunciation, and vernacular. Students were very excited to share their culture and discuss, in person, the topics that had been introduced in their prior video projects.

By the end of their stay, there was a tearful goodbye as the students departed to return home to Italy to share with their classmates about their adventures and the insight they gained from the experience. But the story is not over- students continue to communicate, some daily, with their newfound friends. And soon we will meet them again- in Italy