One Thing To Everything

Hi everyone! It’s been a while since my arrival in Florence, but I have been on a whirlwind of adventures and honestly just needed to rest before reflecting on it all. I have seen a lot sights, met many great people, and, with no shame, eaten A LOT. To name a few my adventures, I have:

1. Climbed the 450 steps to the top of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore–or as we like to call it, the Duomo–and saw the beautiful view of Firenze from up high
2. Chowed down on and relished in the beauty that is Italian cuisine, from the decadent gelato from the Gelateria Dei Neri (on my street), to the pre-dinner Aperitivo Spritz at a local café, to the wonderful hot chocolate that is basically melted brownie-batter
3. Explored across the Arno river to the Southern neighborhoods of Florence, discovering beautiful quiet houses and a dog-park filled with puppies so cute we thought about becoming dog-walkers. 

I have gotten settled in with my four roommates–one girl and three guys!–and have tackled the thrills that come with grocery-shopping without speaking Italian (“Ciao”and “Grazie” don’t get you very many places), living with old fuses that leave our suite card game reliant on a small candle, and accepting the fact that yes, people will stare at you if you look different and speak another language. While I call these thrills, they are not negative, just humorous aspects of adjusting to life in a different country. I have enjoyed every minute of my experience so far, despite being sick for a bit, and am still in awe of the scenery around me–especially since my daily walk to class consists of walking across the Arno river near the Ponte Vecchio. The food is amazing, and I think that soon enough my friends and I will have hangouts where we know the locals and feel comfortable. In fact, we have deemed a nice man working at the Cafe Fiorenza, where we enjoyed cafe lattes and caprese sandwiches, to be one of our “language partners” to help us practice our Italian throughout the trip. My roommate and I have also just vowed to win a free lunch via the Instagram competition at the sandwich shop “Pino’s”, which we discovered yesterday, by eating there once a week and taking snazzy pictures of our sandwiches (even though we’ve already been there twice this week haha!).

Classes began a couple weeks ago, and they are all so interesting! I was excited to find the correlations between the Italian and French languages in my Intro to Italian class, and am loving my first Art History class over the Renaissance period, especially since the art and architecture is literally all around me. Today I had Italian and European Politics, followed by my Food and Culture in Italy class, where, in the last hour, we went to small café bar and ordered cappuccinos and espressos of various sorts. Overall, I think they will teach me a lot about the scenery and culture around me, and help me appreciate my experience abroad.

This trip has already inspired me in many ways. On the plane ride to Germany, I read a Balanced Life magazine, and loved a notion found in one of the articles. A mother claimed that, “the way you do one thing is the way you do everything,” and it really stuck with me. What she means is, if we aren’t consistent with our values in all of our actions, then we are not living a balanced life. I am definitely trying to use this to guide my actions abroad, since I know the small things, like playing thumb-war with my nephew over Skype and writing postcards to dear friends, are just as important as traveling to Paris on my free weekends and living in the moment.