While I did enjoy this past semester, with all the experiences, travel, and people met along the way, I would most likely not study abroad again. As someone who didn't even apply for any colleges outside of Hawaii, spending 4 months away from my family and friends took an emotional toll on me that I don't want to go through again. If I was more experienced being away from home, I wouldn't have had this issue and would've enjoyed study abroad more, but I wasn't able to adjust during the 4 months.
With all that being said, I would definitely recommend study abroad to other students. Even if you're not able to get over being homesick, it will teach you independence and further your appreciation of your hometown. If you're someone who's able to be away from home for an extended period of time, I'd recommend it even more so. Throughout my time, I've compiled a list of tips that I find most useful:
As it's not only finals week, but my last week here as well, I want to share what I've experienced the past 4 months. I'll start by saying that while I've enjoyed my time here, I'm very much looking forward to be home again to see my family and friends. That being said, being homesick was the most difficult part about being here. I've never been away from my family for more than a couple weeks, and when I wasn't with my family I had my friends, so not having either for an extended amount of time took an emotional toll on me. This has helped me grow, as I experienced what it was like to be independent, for better and for worse.
I don't feel as I made any mistakes culturally here. Given that I'm the foreigner here, I made sure to follow what everyone else did to make sure I didn't cause any trouble or inconveniences. The most eye opening moments for me was just learning the history, not only about Italy but Europe as well. Having only been to school in Hawaii, much of the history I've learned is centered around Hawaii and Asia, so to learn about the architecture, art, and history of the European Union was astonishing. This last of the semester has been much busier for me than the first half, with this past week being the worst of it. Due to the way professor schedule semester long presentations by last name, I had to give 3 presentations last week, as well having 2 tests and a paper due. It wasn't all bad, as the presentation topics I was given were all interesting and different. The topics of my presentations ranged from cross analyzing different cultures, canned wine, and piracy in China, which was by pure coincidence interestingly enough. With professors giving either instant feedback or email the next day, the way I present worked well for me here, as I was worried professors here may have different criteria than those at UH. The main part that was difficult about the presentations were that my professors gave the topics to us only a week before we present, so I only had a week to research all the topics, but I was able to survive it all and start preparing for finals in a couple weeks.
Despite the semester being almost finished, the past week has shown to me how different my cultural background is from everyone else, and how little people know about Asian culture here. It started on Monday, when I was talking with my communications professor, and she noticed I had nearly opposite values of the other American students in the class, based on Hofstede's cultural dimensions. I then explained to her that despite being classified as "American" in the class, Hawaii is far different than the rest of the US, due to both Asian and Hawaiian having stronger collectivist values.
In my economics class, a portion of the time was discussed about relationships within Asia, and I could tell that the professor was calling on me more often than the other students, as I'm the only Asian person in my class. I actually appreciated this because I likely have the most knowledge about Asia, and it showed she respected my opinions. Finally, the other day my home stay family noticed I walk around the house barefoot, so I explained to them that it's just a reflex, and I didn't realize other cultures don't take off their shoes when they're indoors. While I didn't expect people to know much about Asian or Hawaiian culture, it was just surprising how much of my culture I had to explain this past week. Fall break came at a good time, as I had gotten a little sick and needed the rest. That's not to say I didn't do anything during my week off. Being that I've already been to London and Paris, I decided to just stay in Italy and explore more, as school started to take up more time. On one of my days off, I took a train to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Overall, it was what I expected, but there were cathedrals next to it that aren't talked about as much. If traveling to Pisa from Florence, it's about an hour train ride back and forth, and I would recommend only staying 2-3 hours, as there's not much to do in Pisa aside from this. I also visited the 2 most popular museums in Florence, the Uffizi Gallery and Galleria dell'Accademia. The Uffizi Gallery is most known for the "Birth of Venus", pictured on the left, but also houses many artworks by Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. While the Uffizi Gallery may have some of Michelangelo's paintings, the Galleria dell'Accademia has his most famous artwork, "The David", pictured on the left. While I don't have a huge appreciation for art, it's easy to tell that these artists had talent that very few people will ever have.
As midterms take place this week, I thought it'd be a good time to look back at the past month and a half. While this has been an amazing opportunity, and I'm grateful for it, I find myself missing home a lot. There are many reasons for why I'm not enjoying myself, many of which are specific to me, so it won't be a worry for most people studying abroad. While these complaints may seem minimal and unimportant to any readers, it's a big deal to me because my friends are a huge part of my life back home, and negatives get magnified when you miss friends and family.
This is not to say I haven't enjoyed any part of being here. Boiled down, Italy has many similarities to Hawaii. The culture is family-oriented, it's mostly run by small businesses, the locals are very nice and the food is great. Aside from friends and family, food is the biggest thing I miss back home. After 4 weeks of classes, I've finally gotten a grasp of how school here operates, as it's quite different than UH. As mentioned before, there's no campus for LdM here in Florence, so all of my classes are spread out within the city. The picture above is located outside of my Wine Business class, but my other classes are roughly 10 minutes away from this location.
Classes are different than UH in many ways, with not being able to use my computer in class being the most life changing. Since being in college, I've rarely had to take hand written notes, but due to most professors having a strict no electronics policy, I've had to write notes for all of my classes. LdM also takes attendance much more serious than UH. Not to say UH doesn't take attendance seriously, but LdM has school policy to severely lower grades depending on how many classes were missed, whereas at UH there's no strict school policy for missing class, but your grade will usually be lower if you do. So far, my class assignments and projects have been similar to what I've been used to from my ITM classes, with most revolving around group work and presentations. Midterms are coming up in a few weeks, and if it's anything like how classes are ran, I expect it to be more writing intensive rather than multiple choice. A couple weeks ago I was able to visit the historic city of Pompeii, and it did not disappoint. I started off by getting some pizza, as I was told Pompeii has the best pizza in Italy. I can confirm the hype is real. Once there, I explored part of the city that was devastated by Mount Visuvius. There was a lot more to the city than I expected. To my surprise there was a large colosseum within the city, which I found out is older than the Roman Colosseum. Of course the highlight was seeing the aftermath of the eruption. It was quite painful to see people from nearly two thousand years ago molded into rock, as I can't even fathom what they must've been going through. If you plan on traveling to Pompeii from Florence, be prepared to stay at least one day in the area. The bus ride there is roughly 6 hours, so back and forth is already half the day. It should be noted that I went as part of a school trip, so the transportation time may vary. Despite the length of the bus ride, I would highly recommend making the trip out, because you really have to see it to believe it.
It's been a week since I've arrived here in Florence and so far, the transition has been smooth. The home I'm staying at is roughly a 20-25 minute walk from the city center, but as the weather cools down the walk won't be as rough. I was provided a monthly bus pass although I probably won't use it much around the city as it takes just as long, so it gives me a chance to burn off the carbs. The Study Abroad Center made the housing registration extremely simple, as I just had to submit the registration, and I was informed of where I'd be staying the week before I left. While exploring the city, one of the problems I've noticed have been that buildings can share the same address, but have color codes to differentiate, and the buildings may not necessarily be near one another. The class registration process was simple, similar to the housing registration. All I had to do was submit my first and secondary choice of classes, and received my classes about a month later. The campus layout will take awhile for me to get used to because there's no main campus of the school. The school consists of buildings that are spread out throughout the city. While confusing at first, it gives me a chance to explore around the city while walking to my next class. Classes just started yesterday, so I'll be giving more updates on how it's going as the semester progresses.
After being accepted into the study abroad program, I had to fill out many forms to the Study Abroad Center, ranging from copies of my passports, agreement forms, and a physician report. This was all due during the final month of school which made the end of the semester more stressful than usual, but proper planning on my part could've prevented much of this stress.
Before leaving to Italy, I had to obtain a student visa, as you need a visa if you're staying longer than 90 days. The visa process was time consuming, but not difficult, as I already had most of the documents I needed, such as my passport, proof of residence (driver's license), visa application, financial guarantee (bank statement), and declaration for mailing passports. The aspects that were time consuming was getting a notarized signatures for copies I made of my passport and drivers license, and affidavit of health insurance. I also had to interview with the Italian Consulate here in Hawaii to assure that I'm going there for school. Once I completed all these tasks I sent the forms to the Italian Consulate in San Francisco and waited for approval. It's important to note that I sent it to the Consulate in San Francisco because Hawaii falls within its jurisdiction, so the Consulate location could differ. There are many options to exchange currency, but I chose to exchange at First Hawaiian Bank. Another currency exchange would be Duty Free, but I've gone when they've ran out of the currency I was looking for, so I didn't want to risk going there. I didn't exchange too much money as American Savings Bank only has a 2% transaction fee, so I can just go to an ATM in Italy if I need more money. Flights weren't difficult to book, but there are many layovers when leaving from Hawaii. My first layover is 6 hours in Seattle, and then I have a 2 hour layover in Paris. The layover in Seattle could've been shorter, but I chose the 6 hour layover in case my flight gets delayed. For reference, I will be leaving Hawaii on Sunday night and will land in Florence on Tuesday afternoon. As of now I don't have any travel plans, but I'm sure that'll change as I meet people. If I had to go through this process again, I would've turned in my forms earlier than the days it was due, as I took off work more days than I should've. Other than that, it was fairly easy preparing to leave. |
AuthorThank you for visiting my blog. The purpose of this blog is to document my time while studying abroad in Italy. Archives
December 2019
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