India Pearman
Features Editor
To help her travel back to her roots, freshman Carlotta Invrea received a scholarship from A Door to Italy, an immersion program located in Genoa, Italy.
A Door to Italy is a program that teaches students the Italian language in Italy, focusing on reading, writing, and speaking skills. The scholarship gives Invrea the option to decide the duration of her stay, the difficulty of her classes, and when she wants to go. Invrea is planning on attending the program for two or three weeks in the summer of 2018 at the most advanced level.
“I’ve been to Italy a lot, and I have grown up with an Italian dad, so I know their culture, but [living there] is definitely different,” Invrea said. “I think I will be able to adapt easily to it, though, because I do speak the language fluently, and it will only be for a couple of weeks.”
Invrea received a full scholarship through the Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C. due to her Advanced Placement Italian teacher, Simona Cavadini, recommending her to the program. Her only expenses will be the flights and meals. The scholarship covers her living arrangements, and she will be staying in an apartment with other high school students in the same program. The scholarship also includes the classes that she will be taking.
“This scholarship is a unique opportunity for Carlotta to master not only the language but also to learn about the Italian culture,” Invrea’s mother, Mercedes Lizcano, said. “She will be able to grow as a person, as she will be on her own in a foreign country.”
See photos of Carlotta in Italy here.
This year, Invrea took an Advanced Placement Italian course online with a program called Fondazione Italiana. Every Saturday she took a two-hour class through an app called Zoom. She wrote essays, learned about Italy’s culture and practiced multiple choice questions from previous AP exams.
“In the program, you are in an Italian environment; therefore, I will be able to learn the more casual part of Italian and the slang,” Invrea said. “I will also learn more grammar, just like taking an Honors English class in America, because I will be learning the basic things that an Italian-born student would learn in an Italian school.”
Invrea is a first-generation American, and her dad’s side of the family is Italian and still lives in Italy. The first languages that Invrea learned were Spanish, English and Italian. At home, her father only responds to her in Italian, even if she speaks to him in English or Spanish, Invrea said. Her father grew up in Genoa and when Invrea attends the program, she will be staying just 20 minutes away from her grandmother’s house.
“I hope to gain more experience with other Italian kids,” Invrea said. “I also want to make more friendships with Italian people and be involved more in their culture and be one of them. I was always the standout in my family because [I was] always the international one that never lived in Italy.”
Watch a video here for a tour of Genoa Italy.
In college, Invrea plans to major in Foreign Relations, and she hopes that by learning more languages, she will be more successful in this field. Invrea is currently in Model United Nations, and she enjoys the opportunity it gives her to learn about the rest of the world.
“Taking AP Italian and Model UN has definitely made me want to see the rest of the world,” Invrea said. “The U.S. is a really big country, but it is kind of all the same throughout. Having the experience of going to another country to learn the language that they speak in that country can definitely help.”
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