This week I finally arrived in Florence! It has been a whirlwind the past few days, but I have loved every moment!
I moved in with my host mom the first day that I arrived, and she has really made it easy to adjust to being 4,000 miles from home. She is even more kind than she was in our emails from the months leading up. It has definitely been a challenge to converse with her solely in Italian, but I already feel myself learning and understanding the language better.
When I’m not at home, I am attending class for my pre-university class, which is in a building in the center Florence. After the first day of class, I finally got to explore the city. Just when I had thought that my neighborhood in the outskirts of Florence was pretty, the heart of the city took my breath away. Seeing the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, or the “Duomo” as it is referred to here, in person every day is magical, as it was something I only ever saw in my school textbooks. I also got to visit the Palazzo Vecchio Museum with my class, where we viewed breathtaking art and got to see a stunning view of the city.
Last, but not least, the food. From the night that I got here and tried my host mom’s homemade gnocchi, I knew that the food here was on a different tier. It truly puts any Italian-American meal to shame- even Kimball’s famous chicken parm.
There is so much about Florence that I have fallen in love with so far, and I am so excited to continue to explore the city and wherever else my study abroad experience takes me!
