Exchange students from Gaeta, Italy and their Somerville hosts recently visited Plimoth Plantation.L-R: Marco Montagna, Aaron Nevin, Sara Di Florio, Sara Leccese, Siobhan Murray, Mitch Freitas, Nathilla Magalhaes Santos, Costantino Vecchio, Cristina Capomaccio, Fabiana Di Ciaccio. The two girls kneeling in front are Melissa Martinez and Lara Jimenez. ~Photo by Jackie Rossetti

Italian exchange students visit Somerville High

By Elizabeth Sheeran

American bagels get a big thumb’s up. American pasta? Well, let’s just say it’s not as good as the stuff back home.

Those were just a couple of the discoveries made by a half-dozen high school students from Gaeta, Italy, who recently spent two weeks visiting Somerville High School.

Together with their host students from the high school’s Italian language program, the Gaeta teens toured the region’s historic and cultural highlights; they took in some uniquely American entertainment, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Blue Man Group; and they shared the day-to-day experiences of American high school life, including football games, pep rallies, and the occasional trip to Dunkin Donuts, where many of them were introduced to bagels.

“I think that this experience is very interesting for teenagers, because it’s really interesting to know another culture like the American culture. I can compare my culture and another culture, and I know there are lots of differences,” said Costantino Vecchio, one of the visiting students.

This year’s exchange was the latest in a series of initiatives to promote cultural understanding and build a mutually beneficial partnership between Somerville and its Italian Sister City of Gaeta, a seaside town of around 22,000 people on the western coast of Italy, between Rome and Naples.

The two communities have long shared cultural ties: many Italian-Americans in Somerville and East Cambridge, including the family of Mayor Joe Curtatone, trace their roots to Gaeta. And at the time of the first cultural exchange four years ago, Gaeta’s mayor was a Somerville native who had moved to Italy with his family as a young boy.

Students from Gaeta first visited Somerville High School under the Sister City relationship for a week in the fall of 2008, and this most recent visit was lengthened to give the students more time to spend with their Somerville host families, and to experience daily life at the high school.

“I think it’s very important to have a cultural exchange to see how Americans of my same age live and to see American life, because we have just seen it on the movies and from stories,” said Gaeta student Sara Leccese. “I knew a little of what to expect, because I’ve seen many American movies, but the school is completely different from Italian schools.”

Fabiana Di Ciaccio, who said she had dreamed of visiting the United States since she was a young girl, said she was surprised by the difference in the school structure, and especially by the rapport among the faculty and students. “In our school, for example, there isn’t this friendly relationship between the students and the teachers. Here … it’s a very beautiful thing,” said DiCiaccio.

The visiting students were also impressed by the hands-on and vocational opportunities on offer at Somerville High. “I’ve seen for the first time this kind of workshop,” said Marco Montagna. “We have very few things like this at my school.”

They were struck by many other things too, including the urban atmosphere. “Lots of things surprised me, because in Italy we don’t have this kind of cities. In Italy, the cities are ancient, but here the cities are modern. I loved the people in Somerville, and in Boston I loved the city: the skyscrapers, the city life,” said Vecchio.

While they were noticing their differences, the teens also found they shared plenty of common ground as adolescents. Aaron Nevin, whose family hosted Montagna, said he saw it when the Italians comforted a member of their group who was ill, “I knew that, no matter the culture, friends take care of friends,” said Nevin, “but it was just weird to see them do it in the same way we do, just through a different language.”

And they discovered that a sense of humor can transcend international boundaries, describing how Vecchio entertained them with an impromptu opera performance in an MBTA station one evening, and on another occasion engaged a substitute teacher in a classroom duet. “Everybody could understand that he was a funny guy,” said Mattie Barber-Bockerman. “Being funny translates anywhere.”

Towards the end of their visit, the Italian students talked of how much they would miss their host families and all of their new friends in Somerville when they returned home to Gaeta. And the feeling was clearly mutual.

“It’s really just an awesome experience in general just to get to know people from a completely different world than you, and they all have really become like my family,” said Somerville student Mitchell Freitas, who said Vecchio, especially, “has become like a brother to me.”

“It made everything so much easier, having exchange students who wanted to be here so much,” added Siobhan Murray who, like Freitas and other juniors and seniors in the Italian language program at Somerville High School, is hoping to visit Italy during the second chapter of the exchange, in the spring.

When they do, the students of Gaeta say they will be waiting for them with open arms, ready to show them the best of what their hometown has to offer: the historic ancient city, the beautiful beaches, the sea grotto of the Montagna Spaccata … and of course, the cuisine.

With no intended offense to all the cooks in Somerville, “If you want to eat good Italian food, you have to eat in Italy,” said Di Ciaccio.