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. |
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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