T-L Photo/ROBERT A. DEFRANK Italian exchange student Marco Martella, who is attending school at St. Clairsville, is welcomed at the Bellaire Sons of Italy by members including Frank Fregiato.

BELLAIRE — The Sons of Italy welcomed a foreign exchange student from the Italian Republic on Thursday.

Marco Martella, 16, of Rome will be a guest in America until the end of the school year through the International Student Exchange Program. He is a senior attending St. Clairsville High School. This is his first time in the United States. He is staying with hosts Scott and Alicia Jones in St. Clairsville.

Martella visited the Sons of Italy lodge in Bellaire on Thursday with Kim Clifford, a teacher at the school.

“I’m his English teacher, and he’s my Italian teacher,” Clifford said. “He’s an excellent student. His educational background is very good. They have five years of high school. He’s well-versed in a lot of things. I admire him for being so young and being so knowledgeable.”

Martella said he is getting used to the differences between the American and Italian cultures — and to the more rural atmosphere of Belmont County, compared to the city of Rome.

“I think it’s very, very different,” he said. “It’s more peaceful, more quiet. … If you want to do something, you have always to get the car. In Rome, if I wanted to go to dinner, I go downstairs, I walk five minutes, I go to the restaurant. Here, I have to get the car to move, even if it’s not far.”

He said he was surprised by some of the more casual American attitudes. He mentioned that having a meal with one of his teachers would be unheard of in Italy.

“In our school, the teachers are very strict” in terms of respect, he said. “What we are doing now would be almost impossible.”

Martella also is getting used to the abundance of firearms in the United States.

“In Europe, it’s very hard to get a gun. Here, I went to a store and there were all (these) guns that you could buy. I was (like), ‘Oh my God that’s strange.'”

He said the presence of a shopping mall in St. Clairsville, where goods and services can be obtained and social gatherings held, is convenient. And he said such a facility would not be found in a fairly small community in Italy. In general, he said he has found the school and community very welcoming.

“A lot of people are interested in being friends,” he said. “I felt like I was very welcomed here.”

Martella is working to start an Italian club at the high school. He said more than 60 students have expressed interested in learning more.

“I did a slideshow about Italy,” he said. “I present a little bit of my own culture, my own history and some interesting facts. For my next time I plan to do some lunch meetings with typical Italian food and play traditional Italian games. A lot of people have joined it,” he said.

In terms of sports, Martella plays soccer, but with the school’s soccer season over he looks forward to playing tennis in spring.

There is a large community of people of Italian ancestry in Belmont County, and Martella has been meeting some of them. He said he is impressed with organizations such as the Sons of Italy.

“I think it’s very cool to know people that have your same ancestry, your same traditions. Maybe with the passing of the time you forget a little bit of your traditions. For me it’s important you continue to do what you used to do, your ancestry,” he said.

“One of the main purposes of the Bellaire Sons of Italy is to preserve and promote the Italian heritage, and we do that in a number of ways,” Belmont County Common Pleas Judge Frank Fregiato, a Sons of Italy member, said. “We’re very pleased and proud to have Marco here.”