Caterina Righetto is an exchange student from Pesaro, Italy, who arrived in New Hampshire last August to live with a host family and attend Concord High School for the year.
Active and outgoing, Righetto is rarely found without a smile spread wide across her face. People have come to know her as friendly and approachable.
Righetto participated in Crew during the fall season and now competes as a member of the lacrosse team. “I am very proud of being on the lacrosse team,” she said. “I have never played before but I am doing my best to learn and I am making big progresses.”
Righetto will return to Italy soon with many memories. “I will definitely remember the people I met here. I made a lot of friends in my time here.”
She will also remember being able to choose her own classes. “Because in Italy you don’t choose what you study. Being able to choose what I want to study and be free was really cool.”
“Coming to Concord High definitely changed me and helped me to realize what I like to do and don’t like to do. I realized I like to study science,” Righetto said. She believes that science is something that she will get more into after she graduates from high school.
Settling in at Concord High was not without its challenges. Though she herself is fluent in English, understanding how other people used the language meant that making friends took time. She overcame language difficulties by staying positive, she said. “I always have a smile on my face. I try to be very outgoing and talk to everyone and the more I did that the more people talked to me.”
In Italy Righetto lives very close to the ocean, on the east coast of the country. “I can see the ocean from my house,” she said. Once she returns home in a few weeks she will go to the beach with friends and get back onto the water.
“There is a relation between me and the water, being in a boat or a kayak. I just absolutely love it,” she said.
Righetto will return home to Pesaro the day after the June 18 CHS graduation ceremony at Memorial Field. She is “very excited” to get home and see her family, she said. “I miss them so so much. It has been hard but I can’t wait to see them.”