Dates:  August 4-11 , 2005.  Arrival Noon Thursday, August 4. Departure 11 A.M., Thursday, August 11.

Location:  we will reside and conduct our workshop sessions near the Napa Valley wine country in Petaluma, California at Silver Penny Farm.  The Farm is a retreat house and seminar facility managed by the Roman Catholic diocese of San Francisco. 

Costs:   The total overall cost for regular participants is $650, full-time students $575. This fee is all-inclusive, covering room, board, all instructional materials and field excursion(s). A $250 deposit is required from all participants at enrollment, balance payable on arrival at the Farm. In case of cancellation, all deposits will be fully refundable until Friday, July 1, 2005. For cancellations after this date, the management will retain $50 for each full or partial week elapsed before notice of cancellation is received. No refund will be available after Friday, August 5, 2005.

Participants:  enrollment limited to 15 participants.  Participants in past years have included university faculty, high-school Latin teachers, advanced college students and members of the general public who have completed a minimum of one year of traditional college-level Latin.  This program is well suited to people who have never tried speaking Latin before, but applicants are urgently requested to come with a basic passive knowledge of Latin vocabulary and grammar already in hand.

Essential equipment:  bring a good Latin dictionary, your favorite reference grammar, your own hand, bath, and beach towels, a bathing suit, stout walking shoes, a musical instrument if you play one, and plenty of enthusiasm!  We’ll take care of the rest.

Accommodations:  We will be staying in the huge, comfortable and beautifully restored main farmhouse at Silver Penny.   The house is next to sheep pasture and vineyards in beautiful, walkable countryside, and has its own pool and hot tub.    Pairs of participants normally share a twin-bed room with its own bath, and enjoy the large indoor and outdoor common areas downstairs on the ground floor. 

Food: Food and wine at Silver Penny are excellent and abundant.  There will be three meals per day, a simple breakfast and dinner bracketing a substantial lunch – the main meal of our day.   We will all take turns assisting our Latin-speaking cook-in-chief in preparing and serving meals.  Menus will include some delicious kitchen-tested Roman recipes.

What you can expect to get out of it:  This seminar is a perfect opportunity to get started speaking Latin if you’ve never spoken before and are interested in using Latin actively, either in your classroom or just for the enrichment of your own experience with Latin.  It is also designed to give experienced conversationalists plenty of opportunity to practice, because it offers a total-immersion environment in Latin.  Speaking Latin is a uniquely effective means to the end of all Latin teaching – reading Latin texts – because the experience of hearing it spoken and expressing yourself in Latin stimulates the brain’s linguistic centers in ways that “traditional” Latin-teaching methodology cannot do.  On completing the workshop, you can expect dramatic improvement in your listening-comprehension, your sight-reading comprehension and reading speed, and you will discover the joy of self-expression and communication with others in Latin!

A typical day:  Each day's schedule will normally contain between four and five hours of group work, including two hours of oral drill: high-energy and carefully structured practice speaking Latin in a supportive, team-spirited environment. These practice sessions use repetition, rhythm and drama to help you relax, engage with the material, and overcome the self-consciousness and timidity natural to beginning speakers. We make no assumptions: if you can hear a word and repeat it, you can succeed!

Special stuff:  Our evening hours will afford us opportunities for singing, reading and board games (all in Latin, naturally!) We will also make an afternoon wine-tasting tour to the Napa Valley.

How to enroll: print out the application form and send it with your $250 deposit to

Application deadline: July 15, 2005, or as soon as all 15 places are filled!

Nancy E. Llewellyn (Lead Instructor) is a Visiting Instructor in the Department of Classics and Archaeology at Loyola Marymount University and a doctoral candidate in the Classics Department at UCLA. She holds her B.A. cum laude from Bryn Mawr College and a Licenza (M.A.) magna cum laude from the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome, where she also studied at the Gregorian University with Reginald Foster. After teaching at Phillips Andover Academy and in a California public high school, she taught Introductory Latin for three years at UCLA, which awarded her a Distinguished Teaching Fellowship in 2001. Currently President of SALVI, Nancy has led workshops on spoken Latin for students and teachers in California, Oklahoma, New Jersey and Virginia.

Andrew Gollan (Assistant) holds a B.A. in Classics from the University of Sydney.  A member of SALVI's Board of Directors, he sometimes tutors Latin and Greek at the Menlo School in Menlo Park, California and is a highly accomplished cook and wine connoisseur.

Contact info for questions: send e-mail to Nancy Llewellyn at nel@latin.org.  You may also call SALVI toll-free at (866) SALVETE.