Junior Experience: Italy

On June 1, 19 St. Andrew’s Latin students left for Italy with three faculty chaperones.  While there they studied the ways that ancient Roman and modern Italian culture intersect.  The group started the trip by exploring the Bay of Naples area where Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, preserving several ancient towns that they visited.  They even hiked up Vesuvius while in Southern Italy.  Then, they moved on to Rome, and slowly explored the city neighborhood by neighborhood.

While there, they had the opportunity to visit a refugee center at the Episcopal Church of St. Paul’s Within the Walls.  The group learned of the incredible crisis facing Italy.  Last year over 40,000 immigrants sought refuge in Italy.  Another almost 4,000 perished in the Mediterranean trying to get to Italy and other parts of Europe.  After spending some time learning about the refugee crisis, the students spent some time talking with immigrants, hearing their stories, and playing games with them.  Many students were nervous about how they would communicate, as the St. Andrew’s students had learned some limited Italian and the refugees are at various stages of learning Italian and/or English.  As one student remarked afterwards, it’s amazing how much you can communicate with a combination of limited language and gestures. 

The experience of meeting people from Africa and the Middle East definitely opened the eyes of our group in so many ways.  Not only did they educate us about their plight, but talking with them revealed so much about the resilience of the human spirit.  It certainly changed our perspective about all the immigrants we saw around Rome trying to make a living by selling souvenirs, selfie sticks, and other toys.  We brought back a peace flag made by artisans at the center that we would like to hang in the St. Andrew’s Upper School Chapel as a reminder of what we learned there.