Oh Italy! | Education Abroad GeoBlog

As of today I have been in Italy for 17 days (Wow! It doesn’t even seem like it’s been that long). I am staying in a neighborhood called Trastevere in Rome where I live with 14 other girls at the Santa Maria in Capella apartments. So much has happened in the past two and a half weeks, I don’t even know where to begin!

When I first got to Rome, so many places reminded me of New York City, and it didn’t really feel like I was in Italy for a while. I’m still not exactly sure when it hit me, but now I have fallen in love with this country. During the second week of my program, we had a field trip to Venice and Florence. After Florence, I went to Cinque Terre with two of the other girls in the program. That was probably one of the best weeks of my life. In Venice, we rode on a gondola across the Grand Canal and bought Venetian paper mache’ carnival masks. In Florence we bought leather purses and bags from the leather markets, saw the David at the Accademia and visited the Duomo during our walking tour of the city. In Cinque Terre (which means “five lands”) we hiked through the 5 towns on the coast and watched the sun set as we lay out on the rocks by the water. At the end of the week, I couldn’t wait to get back to Rome because I truly missed it.

The third week of my program is coming to an end already and before you know it I’ll be back at home in the Bronx. I’m trying to enjoy this experience as much as I can while still managing to stay on top of my work. This past week the work load was pretty heavy, but I’ve gotten through it. Our readings and papers for class coincide with our many field trips, so it’s really interesting to be able to apply what we’ve learned from our readings when we see the historic monuments in person. Last night we had a reading about the Di Veroli family, who lived in Rome’s Jewish ghetto and today we took a field trip to visit the Jewish ghetto. While we were there, we actually saw the site where Umberto Di Veroli had his shop in Italy sho many years ago.

Rome has become my home away from home. I will continue to gorge myself on pizza, pasta and gelato as much as I can until it’s time for me to say arrivederci to this place. Here are some of the amazing pictures I’ve taken so far.

Sunset in Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre