Elisa Ceriani prefers a certain type of breakfast.
Ceriani, an Italian student living in Starkville for the Rotary Youth Exchange program, said her usual breakfast is a cup of cappuccino with some cookies.
“I just found out that’s weird here,” she told Starkville Rotary Club members Monday, to a chorus of laughter. “I was shocked.”
Ceriani is from Milan, Italy. She’s attending Starkville High School while the Rotary Club hosts her. On Monday, she told the club about herself and her experiences in the United States.
The U.S. is not a new destination for Ceriani — she said her parents, who are big country music fans, regularly travel to Nashville, Tennessee.
Still, she said, moving to the U.S. has brought some surprises, the biggest of which is in the differences between its schooling system and the one in Italy. Notably, Italian students spend five years in high school, rather than four.
She also said the schools, beginning in junior high, are based around a particular subject and students choose where to attend. For example, she attends a graphic design and fashion design school in Italy.
“It’s pretty hard to choose what you’re going to do when you’re 12 years old,” she said. “A lot of my friends didn’t know what they were going to do, so they changed schools.”
Ceriani ran cross-country with Starkville High School — and made it to the state championships — and is now competing in track and field. She said Italian high schools don’t have team sports.
“I really like team sports,” she said.
She said it was hard to remember all the foods she’s tried in her time in the U.S. But one stood out as she finished her talk with the Rotary Club.
“I really love fried chicken,” she said.
Ceriani is staying with Sam Strickland and his wife, Ann Brett. They’re her second host family and have hosted since before Thanksgiving. While in the U.S., Ceriani will stay with three families total.
Brett said hosting Ceriani has been “great.” They already knew her before hosting her, because two of their four daughters ran cross-country with her.
“They get on really well,” Strickland said. “They play cards almost every day and have a good time doing that. She rides with our daughters to school and runs indoor track with our second daughter. They’ve been pretty close the entire time.”
Brett also said Ceriani’s taste for cookies for breakfast, which she called biscuits, was a bit surprising.
“She said ‘biscuits,’ so I made biscuits one morning,” Brett said. “Then we went to the store one day and she asked if she could pick up some stuff for breakfast and she went and got Oreos. I’m surprised the rest of my kids haven’t caught on.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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