How Studying Abroad in High School Has Helped Me Connect With My Italian Heritage

Post written by CIEE Global Navigator alum Giulia P. from Pennsylvania, who participated in the Global Navigator Marketing Internship in spring of 2025. In this post, Guilia shares her experience of participating in high school abroad program in Italy, living with a host family, and connecting with her Italian roots.

Growing up I always saw my dad and his side of the family trying to learn about his grandfather’s journey of moving to Brazil from Italy. Some stories were passed down while others were lost in time. My dad spent many years searching through documents from the family lineage to try to find a written trail of our ancestry’s move across an ocean. However, it was a long struggle because documents were handwritten back then and many were based on what the person heard, leading to misspelling of names. My dad hired a private investigator to find and connect all the documents to prove our lineage so we could start the Italian citizenship process.

As his daughter, he would tell me all about his progress and the stories his grandfather told him. My dad’s passion to reconnect to our Italian heritage became mine too. But I wanted more than just to learn our family history, I wanted to learn Italian, live in Italy, and experience the culture there. 

So I began my research for study abroad programs in Italy and found CIEE. I looked at their program pages and found their high school semester program in Italy. 

We also made sure to look at what to expect from the program and realized this experience would make my dream and my dad’s dream become a reality—I was going to get to connect with our heritage. 

In this high school abroad program, I grew so much as a person and connected with Italy in beautiful ways. Here is how it happened:

1. Immersing Myself in Italian Language and Culture

I lived with a phenomenal host family who welcomed me with open arms. They wanted to share everything about their language and culture. 

At first, I was really shy about speaking in Italian because I am a bit of a perfectionist and didn’t want to make mistakes; but my family helped me embrace the entire learning process. They also gave me several books and magazines telling the history of the region. Moreover, they brought me to multiple cities across the country and taught me some history of each place. 

As a family, we would watch some Italian TV shows together. A few times, we went over to the grandparents’ houses and would sit at the dining table eating and talking for hours. 

2. Learning Italian Recipes

To be completely honest, when I first started my high school study abroad program, my cooking skills were extremely limited. But throughout the semester, my host mom taught me how to cook so many different traditional foods. 

One of my favorite dishes she taught me was ragù alla bolognese; it was so delicious but took so much time and effort to make because it had to stay on the stove for many hours. 

Another recipe was tiramisù, and we made it so many times until we perfected our recipe. 

Lastly, my absolute favorite dish we made was cappelletti in brodo. This dish was an entire family effort; my host mother, grandmothers, aunts, cousins, and siblings, and I all made a team effort to get it all done before Christmas Eve. My host mom was in charge of the brodo, the grandmothers were in charge of making the meat inside and making the pasta from scratch, and all of us together assembled the cappelletti. 

It was such a wonderful bonding experience, and it made me so happy that I was able to experience this important part of my Italian heritage.

3. Discovering a New Sense of Identity

As someone who now has three citizenships, I have had to rediscover myself. 

After moving to the United States as a seven-year-old child, I struggled to fit into both the Brazilian and American category, and at times, not feeling like I was fully enough of either. Then, adding my Italian heritage to the mix made me rethink my identity. 

After a lot of reflection when I came back from the program, I realized that I have to wear all parts of my identity with pride. I reclaimed all of the parts of myself that I struggled with and can now call all of those places home.

You Too Can Connect With Your Heritage

One major thing I realized was that studying abroad can be so much more than just traveling. It can also be transformative and a great way to connect with your family’s heritage.

Explore CIEE’s high school semester abroad programs. You never know what part of yourself you will discover!