News & Blog

Firenze
by Student, Meghan K. , Virginia

July 6, Monday

We’ve only been in Florence three days but it has felt like weeks. The first day was mostly spent sleeping, recovering from jet lag, and meeting late arrivals. I’m sharing an apartment with eight other girls and we had fun unpacking and exploring our new home for the month (or two or three weeks). Sunday, our first real day together, saw the planned activities scrapped in favor of a cooler afternoon at a public pool. 

The heat wave has the temperature hovering at around 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and living and sleeping in apartments without air conditioning was a challenge. We are all very grateful for our new fans!

This first weekend has been about getting into the swing of things, and now that we know Florence a little better I look forward to furthering exploration and our classes. Already we have learned to navigate by the Duomo and find the major piazzas, helped by the photo scavenger hunt on Sunday night. The food is as amazing as promised and there is gelato on every street corner. We look forward to getting to know Florence and each other even better. 

July 8, Wednesday

We had our first morning and afternoon classes, which have been great. I am taking Italian as my major in the morning and even on the first day of class, when half of the kids knew absolutely no Italian, we left the classroom and went exploring. At the Mercato Centrale we expanded our vocabulary by reading signs and menus and guessing the translations. It was way more fun and hands-on than my language classes at school.

Grocery shopping was certainly an adventure.

It is hard to get nine girls to agree on what food to buy considering all the different preferences on a limited budget. What we could agree on was the necessity of fruit, which is great because for some reason fruit is really, really cheap, especially for those of us who come from big cities like New York. Some people have been making eggs and pasta, but most of us stick with cereal. Still, we are almost out of food and I look forward to another adventure at the grocery store.

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