An official month in Italy has passed and I feel I am able to call Rome “home” now. The neighborhood of Rome I am staying in is called Tesstacio and lies between the Tiber River and the Capitoline Hill in an area that is very residential, but is not overpopulated with tourists. Trinity’s program includes two main parts the first being the “main campus” which is actually a convent and where the majority of the students live. The second part is a small and very nice hotel about a five minute walk from the convent, where I am living for the semester. This hotel has been wonderful so far and I have become great friends with the other nine students here along with the rest of the students in my program.
It has already been a month and I have made some amazing new friends and thoroughly enjoy all of my classes. The classes I am taking are Introductory Italian, Michelangelo and His World, Art Conservation, and Ancient Art of Rome. As you can see, I am taking mostly art history courses which works perfectly for me and my major since I am an art history major. For all of my courses, except for Italian, there is a walking component where once a week we go to different sites in Rome so we have a hands-on and interactive part to our classes. For my Michelangelo class we even went to Florence for the first three weeks and I was able to discover that city without having to use my own money to visit a city I already wanted to visit while abroad.
So far for September I have stayed within Italy and have not done any outside travel yet. I have gone to Florence, Orvieto, Venice, Capri, Pompeii, and Naples. I did not realize until recently how fast one month has gone by and how much I have done in that time already. It almost does not feel like I am studying abroad because I get to experience a new place every weekend. Doing school work during the work is actually a nice break and I do not feel like any of the work is tedious because it is so exciting to learn in a new country on very specific subjects I already have so much interest in.
What do I have planned for the remaining two and half months I am abroad? October I am more calm with the amount of traveling I am doing, however, I am going to Lisbon, Portugal and Madrid, Spain for the last week of October for our fall break and get to see my mother which makes me very excited since I do miss home. In November I am going to a few more Italian cities along with Budapest and in December I am going to Amsterdam before heading back to the States. I am excited for the rest of my time in Italy and I will check up in another month with my new adventures! Ciao y’all!