Florence, Italy; Like Living In A Dream :) Past Review

Academic rigor, intensity, resources, etc.

I found that the classes I took abroad were significantly less challenging than the courses I would have taken at my home university; this mainly concerns my photography classes. The photo classes I took were open for anyone to take, therefore, a beginner photographer could take a class with more experienced students. This meant that the course work had to be made more simple and easier to understand in case a beginner didn't know specific things, i.e: how to change a color photo to black and white in Photoshop. For me, this was just frustrating more than anything.

On-site administration of your program

How satisfied were you with your living arrangements?

I was super lucky when it came to where I lived and who I lived with. The apartment I lived in with three other girls (from the same program) was NOT a student apartment. We were so lucky to get the apartment we did; it had two floors, two bathrooms, two separate bedrooms, a washer AND dryer (the oter apts. didn't have dryers at all) and many other nice commodities. And the apt. came basically fully stocked with anything we needed; if we figured that we needed anything, we would just go out & buy it. Our neighbors were a tad unlucky for us to draw; on either side of us we had children living in the apartments, and below us we had an older couple, so the noise level had to be kept down quite often; this proved to be a problem for us whenever we were going out for the night. The nightlife around our apartment was really easy and handy; there were two clubs literally steps away from the apt. and there were also bars readily available for us to get to. The bar directly outside our apartment made for some tense and grimy situations (when we would be coming home at night or what-not) but for the most part, the neighborhood and the entire city of Florence was very safe; I never felt unsafe when I was in Florence.

It's Italy; you can't really go wrong with the food anywhere in the entire country :) But if you get vouchers for Ganzo, use them! They are free meals and the food is awesome.

How integrated did you feel with the local culture?

Venice for Carnivále is a must do experience, and other than that, just traveling anywhere and everywhere is a cultural experience that you should take advantage of. EuroAdventures usually has a trip going somewhere different every weekend; they might be a little pricey (it depends where you're going) but for the most part, they are always worth it :)

How well were health issues addressed during the program?

I never felt unsafe or scared in Florence, end of story. There was almost always police officers around, and there were always people around that would help you if you ever needed it.

(1 = not very easy/$200+ on food & personal expenses/week, 2.5 = $100/week, 5 = very easily/minimal cost)

For the most part, everyone in Florence spoke English; that's not to say they Liked to speak English to you, but they would if they had to. I found that so long as you Tried to speak Italian to them, the locals were very understanding and always willing to help you. I tried to speak Italian whenever I could. If I didn't know how to say something specific, I would ask (in Italian) "How do you say...?" so that next time I needed to use that phrase or whatnot, I would know it; that helped me learn a lot more "everyday Italian." I practiced Italian a lot with my room mates; I had one room mate that was almost fluent in Italian, and another who was more advanced than me (but not fluent) and they helped me out quite a number of times when I didn't know exactly what to say. Just being around the language everyday also helped significantly when it came to learning the language. Even though just about everyone spoke english, Italian was the language you would hear most often. And like I said before, the locals, as long as they saw you trying, would always be willing to help you say what you needed to say.

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