Italy

With the Wilson Grant money that I received for Latin, I spent three weeks this summer living and studying in Rome with a collaborative program between Brown University and St. Stephen’s School in Rome. I went along with Will Stewart, and we represented Montgomery Bell Academy among a diverse group of thirty-five kids from all over the world, each seeking a true Italian experience. The school in which we stayed was a boarding school during the year for English speaking students, and this program was one of their offered summer stays. During the week I had classes, starting with an Italian class for an hour, then a class on Ancient Rome for three hours, then after lunch an Italian Literature class for an hour and a half. The Italian class was the shortest class of the day but arguably the most useful for daily life in Rome. The Ancient Rome class consisted mostly of site visits to ancient places and artifacts all over the city including the Colloseum, Capitoline Museum, Palatine Hill, Ancient Roman Forum, Circus Maximus, and other various temples and museums. The Italian Literature class that I took was essentially a Shakespeare class, and we studied Othello, Romeo and Juliet, and Antony and Cleopatra. Also, one night my class saw an Italian rendition of Much Ado About Nothing in the Globe Theatre in Rome, which is modeled after the one in London. Classes were normally over around two in the afternoon, so my afternoons consisted of socializing, doing homework, catching up on sleep or going out into the city with an intern.

On nights during the week, we normally either had group dinners and events or were taken to an area of the city in which we could spend a certain number of hours before returning to the school. Some of the night activities that we did included seeing a Jazz concert in a club, seeing Aida in the Baths of Caracalla, and seeing a tango concert.

Our weekends consisted of excursions to other prominent cities of Italy, the first being in Southern Italy and the second the Northern. In the first weekend trip we travelled to Naples, saw a museum there, then continued to Pompeii and saw the ancient ruins of the city, then we spent the night in Sorrento and were able to go to the beach and explore the city the next day before returning to Rome. On the second weekend trip we travelled to Florence and saw the Uffizi Museum and were able to spend the rest of the day exploring the city on our own before spending the night an hour or so outside of the city in a hotel in the Tuscan forests. Then on the way back to Rome the next day we spent a few hours in Sienna on a tour.

Overall it was a wonderful experience, and I truly did feel immersed in both Italian culture and Ancient Roman customs through my classes and on site tours that I could not have received by reading a textbook or hearing a lecture. A huge thank you to the Wilson family for making everything possible.