Italian trio keen to soak up coastal life

Italian triplets (from left) Luca, Gioele and Giacomo Panato will be spending the next three months as Mount Maunganui College students. Photo / John Borren

Identical Italian triplets Luca, Gioele and Giacomo Panato have made Mount Maunganui their home for the next three months.

The 17-year-olds have together travelled to New Zealand to study at Mount Maunganui College for a term as international students after falling in love with the country during a seventh-month family vacation.

The boys chose Tauranga as they thought it was "quite a nice place for surfing", with good weather and a warm climate, Luca said. "All three of us fell in love with the country. We love nature and animals and we also wanted to improve our English," Luca said.

"We plan to have fun, meet new people and make new friends, and play sport."

The brothers are all staying with different home stay families.

"We usually stay together, but while we are here we prefer to split up so we aren't speaking Italian to each other."

Yesterday was their first day at the college and they were yet to discover how their fellow students would react to having triplets in their classes.

In Italy, all students had to chose a career path from age 14, which determined which school they would go to and what subjects they would take. Luca chose computer science, Gioele chose electronics and Giacomo chose architecture.

After graduating university, the trio plan to travel and Luca would like to return to New Zealand to live.

Triplets are uncommon even in Italy, but in their home city Verona, Luca, Gioele and Giacomo are friends with a set of girl triplets.

Mount Maunganui College's international manager, Allan Goodhall, said this term, the college has almost 60 international students including nine Germans, 11 Italians, 10 Chileans, five Brazilians and six Mexicans.

"The students we get reflect how Mount Maunganui is perceived as a coastal environment within walking distance to the surf beach. It's a total New Zealand experience these students are getting, and I think they are incredibly brave to come half way around the world to live with people they've never met."