Student says ‘Ciao’ to Italia

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August 30, 2017 - 12:00 AM

Sophie Whitney is gearing up for the field trip of a lifetime.
Whitney, entering her senior year of high school, will travel this weekend to northern Italy, where she’ll spend the next nine months as a foreign exchange student.
The trip is part of the Rotary Youth Exchange program, which takes American students to overseas countries, and vice versa.
Whitney, 17, chose Italy for myriad reasons, but primarily because she’s eager to learn about its culture, lifestyle and language.
“I’m nervous and excited both, but mainly excited,” she said Tuesday, shortly after speaking with fourth-graders at Lincoln Elementary School.
Whitney will serve as a correspondent of sorts for Mary Ann Regehr’s fourth-grade class, posting periodic reports about her excursions.
Whitney will stay with a host family on the outskirts of Milan, one of the primary industrial and financial centers in all of Europe.
With a population of about 3 million, and situated in the heart of the Alps, Milan is one of the most affluent metropolitan areas in the world, and is rich with history and art. Milan is home to the famed Santa Maria delle grazie, a church that holds Leonardo DaVinci’s mural of The Last Supper.
Oh, and there’s the “shopping, fashion and food,” Whitney chuckled. “Lots and lots of food.”

WHITNEY will study at the I.T.I. Breda Scuola Paritaria Liceo Scienze Umane, a school that specializes in human science.
She will follow her host brother, a 14-year-old, through the school.
“I’ve never had a brother before,” she noted, “so that’ll be different.”
She spoke about other details regarding her trip.
Whitney does not speak Italian, aside from what she’s learned on her own, so learning the language will be a crash course.
She’s also eager to see how Italian customs differ from those in America, she said.

THIS year promises to be a cultural one for Regehr’s fourth-graders.
In addition to Whitney’s updates, the students will hear periodically from Takumi Ito, a student who spent three weeks in Kansas before returning to his native Japan Tuesday. (His story was in Monday’s Register.)

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