First Week in Florence

Well I’ve been in Italy about a week now, and life has finally slowed down enough to write something. Between the jet lag, meeting new people, and all the beautiful sites to see I’ve barely had time to breathe. Ok, some quick history about me, I just finished my sophomore year. I am an Accounting Major and after this trip I’ll be well on my way to an International Business Minor. My program is through the College of Business so I take one class through the school here in Florence (ISI) and one class through a Penn State professor.

I left for Italy on Wednesday May 13th, and I had quite the journey to get here. I flew from New York to Berlin, and then Berlin to Vienna, and finally Vienna Florence. Luckily I was flying over with my friend so it wasn’t that bad. Our overnight flight was very good but neither of us slept a wink. That night of no sleep caught up to us on the second two flights, but they were only an hour each so we really didn’t get much shut eye. By the time we got to Florence we were exhausted but too excited to care! We took a taxi to our apartment and met our roommates who were all super nice.

All I wanted to do at this point was crash but I knew that I had to wait until Italian night to sleep if I ever wanted to get over the jet lag. So we unpacked and went out to explore. I read once that the best way to get to know a new city is wander until you don’t want to go any more and then find your way back, so that’s what we did! We walked around until we hit a ton of the main sites including the Duomo and the Ponte Vecchio. Finally, we started making our way back and stopped for dinner. The first of many meals of pasta and gelato 🙂

After that we made our way back to our apartment and crashed. The next morning we had orientation at nine and then we went out to dinner with our roommates. Since then we’ve been going nonstop trying to hit all the main stops as soon as possible! Tomorrow I’ll try to get in a post tomorrow about the first week of classes! And then this Friday I am off to Brussels for the weekend!!!