COVID or not, Italian student wanted to see America

Berwick High School almost didn’t get to meet Ilaria Sabatini.
Her host family, Gary and Ambre Wilson of Bayou Vista, originally had selected a female student from Spain through the Council on International Education Exchange. The agency gives students the opportunity to experience what it’s like to live in the United States.
However, visa issues prevented the Wilsons’ Spanish student from coming to America.
While the entire process was hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wilsons learned there still were students available to come to America, all from Italy.
After reading five to seven profiles, they were drawn to a young lady from Rome named Ilaria Sabatini.
While COVID-19 was raging in the United States, things were bad in Italy, too.
Ilaria originally was supposed to come to America in September of last year and leave in June of this year, but because of the pandemic, her stay was shortened from January until June.
Before she was approved to go, she said, she was concerned about not being able to make the trip. The reactions she got from others beforehand didn’t dissuade her.
“Are you serious? You really want to go in America now?” she recalled them asking.
Of course, Ilaria told them.
“I told them. ‘I don’t care. I want to go’,” she laughed. “So here we are.”
Once she arrived in America, Ilaria realized things were much different than in Rome. She went from a city with a population of nearly 4.3 million to a community with a population of just more than 4,300.
While the big-city atmosphere always brought with it something to do and everyone was in a hurry, that wasn’t so in St. Mary Parish.
“Here, everyone is calm,” she said. “There is no traffic. You go to Walmart. You talk with people.”
Ilaria loved the area’s people.
“I always say that people make the experience, and here I’ve met lots of lovely people,” she said. “So I really enjoy the experience.”
To fill her time here, she turned to her passion for sports.
Berwick track and field coach Paul Gilder was told there was a foreign exchange student interested in track, so he introduced himself to her. He found out she did middle distance. She told him her best time and asked him if it was good because she didn’t want to finish last in races here.
“I said, ‘Well, if those times are true, you’ll be the best ever that Berwick High School’s ever had,’ which is true,” Gilder said.
Just days after arriving in America, she was running at the indoor competition at LSU representing Berwick.
Less than two months after touching down on American soil, she finished second in the 800-meter run with a time of 2:23.85. Ilaria just narrowly missed a state title in the event. She also ran as part of Berwick’s 4x400-meter relay, which finished eighth at state with a time of 4:56.63.
The success continued outdoors where she won the Class 3A state title in the 800-meter run with a time of 2:20.37 and finished fourth in the 400-meter dash with a time of 1:01.84. She broke the school records in the 800- and 400-meter runs, and she is part of the school’s record-breaking 4x400-meter relay.
She also tried softball here, something she had never played before and doesn’t have the opportunity to play back home.
“I really enjoyed softball,” Ilaria said.
Away from sports, she has tried local cuisine, which she said she likes. She said that Ambre is an excellent cook.
While pasta is consumed often back home in Italy, in south Louisiana, it’s rice.
She also noted that there are not many fast food restaurants in Italy.
“Just McDonalds and Burger King,” Ilaria said.
She also has tried Italian food here, which she said is not bad.
But there is some curiosity about Italian dressing.
“That is not Italian,” she laughed. “I love it, but I don’t know what it is.”
In the classroom, she said that while things were maybe more difficult at the beginning with the language barrier with people speaking English here, she said now there isn’t any problems.
As for her host family, this is not the first time the Wilsons have hosted a female foreign exchange student. Ilaria is their third student from Italy, while they also have hosted one from Germany. This coming school year, they will host a female student from the Czech Republic. All of their host students have attended Berwick High.
“We started four years ago just to kind of test waters, and we absolutely fell in love with it,” Ambre said.
She said she has enjoyed her time with Ilaria.
“It’s been a fantastic experience with her,” Ambre said.
While the students they host may go home, Ambre said they are still family.
“They’re my daughters, just they happen to live in a different country,” she said.