Italian Classes
Meet The Instructors
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All courses taught by Eleonora Mella. Pranzo: 12:10-1 p.m, May 23- June 27: Pranzo italiano is our Italian "table" - a conversation hour, free and open to the community, often taking shape as a brown bag lunch. It is facilitated by teachers and our advanced students-gratuit! It supports the school's secondary mission of promoting cultural exchange. Thank you for supporting Pranzo by making a donation (biscotti, kaffe, cash for gas, etc.) and inviting in friends new to the school, who have yet to discover the magic happening inside (and outside) our doors. Mille grazie. |
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| Italian, level-1 (Pronti, Attenti, Via...!), 6 Thursdays, 1:15-2:45 p.m. A class for all levels of beginners, working on building vocabulary and conversation patterns. |
$115.00 Register |
| Italian, level-2 (Buon proseguimento), 6 Thursdays, 5-7 p.m. An intensive, continuing-level class, for students with past study, who are building speaking ability. |
$150.00 Register |
| Italian, level-3 (Di bene in meglio!), 6 Thursdays, 3:15-4:45 p.m. Taught primarily in Italian, building conversation ability, in present, past and future tenses. |
$115.00 Register |
| Advanced Italian (Facciamo due Chiacchiere), 6 Thursdays, 10:30 a.m.-noon Our highest level, this is a conversation class set on a variety of topics about Italy, including current or historical events and cultural trends, both popular and traditional. | $115.00 Register |
Instructors
Eleonora Mella, from Padova, Italy, earned a Masters in Foreign Languages, (German and English) from the University of Padova in 2009. Her thesis topic was the Bayeux Tapestries. She speaks fluent German, as well as English and Italian, and some Norwegian. She loves to travel and has lived and worked in Nuremburg, Oslo and Dublin, to name a few places, making her living tutoring, waitressing and as an au pair. From January to June of 2011, she taught English to kindergarten students in Padova, then relocated to California with her American husband. She taught Italian for an online language school for several months there until the couple decided to move to Maine. She has been teaching Italian classes at the school since October, 2012.
Ezio Romeo was Penobscot School's Italian exchange teacher for 2012. He is from Acirale in Sicily, where he took a degree in Italian Literature from the university there. Then he earned a masters in Teaching Italian as a Foreign Language from the Univeristy for Foreigners in Sienna in 2008. Ezio, we discovered with delight last year, speaks 4 languages: Spanish, French, Italian and his native Catania. He is working on his Portuguese. He has taught Italian and Spanish in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, India and the USA, and now, we hear, he is in Sri Lanka. If you meet this man there, say hello from all of us here -dans le Maine- and you will meet a terrific gentleman! Bravo, Ezio, our best man in black.
Through world travels during his 26 years in the U.S. Navy and twenty-eight years of residing in Castine, he has harvested recipes and ideas from kitchens representing a wide variety of the world’s cuisines. He was raised on a mixture of Armenian and Turkish cooking. “After growing up on such things as kuftah, pilaf, stuffed grapeleaves and baklava, I was surprised,” he says, “to find out that I had eaten gourmet food for most of my life.” Traveling and dining around the United States, South America, Japan, Europe and the Mediterranean, Harry gained an appreciation and love for a wide diversity of cuisines. He grew up in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and has subsequently lived in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Illinois, and Newport, Rhode Island, In addition, he has lived in Italy, Greece and Korea where he raided kitchens for recipes and techniques. He has returned to Italy on two separate occasions to learn the secrets of Italian cuisine from a Michelin one-star chef.
When we can convince Harry to offer one of his series of classes on the whys and “hows” of preparing Italian food, we feel very lucky! Please inquire at 207.594-1084.