On April 19, NHP’s senior Italian classes explored Eataly, an Italian marketplace and restaurant advertising a variety of Italian-made products.
“From my point of view, Eataly is kind of an all around cultural experience of Italy and Italian culture,” Italian club president Joe Reo said. “I wouldn’t just categorize it as a grocery store, or a restaurant, or a food court; it’s kind of all of those things in one. You can get gelato. You can get coffee, sit down and have a plate of pasta. You can buy groceries. It’s an Italian fever dream… if you will.”
While members of the Italian club participated in the excursion, the field trip was not orchestrated by the Italian club. Rather, Italian teachers planned the trip with the help of Italian club officers.
“Honestly, we were looking for the entirety of the Italian classes’ general opinion. I did have a say in it, but we more or less wanted to cater to everyone else’s opinion and what everyone else wanted to do,” Reo said. “It wasn’t necessarily considered an ‘Italian Club’ trip, it was considered a ‘senior trip for people who are taking Italian.’ What Signora Mannino, Signora Caliendo and I wanted to do was to see what everyone else wanted to do, and just go with that.”
“We decided every year that the New Hyde Park Italian department plans a senior trip for the Italian students,” Italian teacher Signora Mannino said. “We had different ideas in mind; we weren’t sure which ones to go with, so we decided to ask the students. Ultimately, after talking to the students several times, we narrowed it down to Eataly as being a culturally fun trip that was also fun and affordable.”
In Eataly, students participated in a variety of activities to explore the marketplace and familiarize themselves with the different resources it has to offer. Students engaged in a scavenger hunt through an app called “Goosechase” which awarded points to players that find specific items throughout Eataly.
“I wanted to make sure that students could experience as much as possible,” Signora Mannino said. “Not only does it have the market where you can buy Italian products and different types of restaurants, but it’s evolved a lot since the first time we went years ago. Now, you can actually see them making pasta in front of you which is really cool. In order to make sure that everybody explores as much as possible, we thought… ‘why not do a scavenger hunt?’”
