Written by Italy & Greece Overseas Students, Ben Torregiani & Stavroula Skandalakis
This week the Terra 2024 group went to Matera, a town carved out of stone. We started the week by visiting a school where we would be teaching kindergarten students English. In the afternoon, we made pasta in a house carved into the mountain and ate it with a view of the Sassi di Matera. The next day, we hiked through the Sassi di Matera, which is a village over a thousand years old that was carved into the mountain. We took a day trip to Bari to soak up some sun and spend time in the ocean. Then we spent time in a school for two days teaching students English and planting flowers with them.
Top Highlights of the Week:
🏖️ Beach day! We spent some time on the beaches of Bari. We spent the day playing in the water and lying down in the sand.
Later in the week, we made lasagna and tiramisu with some volunteers for another program! It was, in my opinion, the best food we’ve had on the trip so far.
📔 Teaching the kids! We spent two days teaching, playing with, gardening with, and singing with kindergarten students. Even though there was a language barrier we managed to get around it and have a lot of fun!
Challenges Faced:
Our biggest challenge was our language barrier with the Italian students. Our group doesn’t speak much Italian, and the kids were learning English, so naturally there were some communication difficulties. So with the help of the teachers (and a bit of Google translate), we used our language knowledge as efficiently as we could to get the tasks done.
Surprising Discoveries:
What surprised us most about Matera is just how recently the cave structures were used. The houses dug into the mountain have been around for over a thousand years, and have been used for the entire time. The caves were used up until the 1970s when everyone moved out of it to the main town.
