Classes

I have 5 classes in total. I have only been to 3 of them so far. I’ll explain why, shortly.

1. Communicating in Italian: I love my Communicating in Italian class. At first, I wished that I was in Italian Language Beginning (those are the two options for beginner Italian classes) But I soon was grateful to be placed in Communicating in Italian. I feel like I know so much more Italian then everyone who is in Italian Language Beginning. Their class is more grammar based while my class is more, well… Communicating based. My class is focused more on speaking and I think that I am able to understand more in conversations during daily activities. The grammar class is more focused on spelling and sentence structure. When picking between the two options: it depends on what you want to learn. My professor is super nice and really understanding. She really pushes us. We stopped using English directions in class the second week. At first, I thought that was way too early but it has forced me to remember what a lot more words mean.
2. Fashion Marketing: I’m learning a lot about marketing. At Central, I am both an Apparel Merchandising and Apparel Design concentration major but I tend to lean more towards the Apparel Design side. So this is different than what I am used to. We are currently working on a project for this company called Exclusive Fashion Tours. We are helping them construct a blog and writing blog posts for their clients. It is fun because I get to see places in Florence that I wouldn’t have normally gone to or even known about without this assignment. My first assignment was going to Scuola del Cuoio, which is a leather school that has been around for many years. The students and artisans work side by side to learn how to make a variety of different leather products. My professor is really nice. She owns an accessory company called Nannini Accessories. The class is actually supposed to be taking a tour, there in a couple of weeks.
3.  Fashion Photography: I’ve learned so much about a DSLR camera in such a short amount of time. I now understand what the terms aperture, shutter speed and ISO are and how to adjust them. We have had an impromptu photo shoot for a Chinese designer for department store advertisements. One of our assignments is called Street Style. We walk around Florence taking picture of people street style that we like. The key to the street style photography is to have a connection with the subject. It is challenging because when you walk up to a person to ask them, you’re not exactly sure what language they will be able to speak. Sometimes they do speak English, sometimes they only speak Italian and sometimes they do not speak either of the two.

My last two classes are Florence Food and Culture and Magazine Editing and Publishing. I have not started these two classes but I can’t wait to start them. They are intensive classes, which means they will begin on November 17^th and go for two and a half hours everyday Monday through Friday for three weeks straight.

I was originally supposed to be taking Shoe Construction and Handbag Construction but because there was not enough students to run the class. Both were cancelled, unfortunately. So my two alternative classes are Magazine Editing and Publishing and Fashion Marketing. 

I am a firm believer that everything happening for a reason so there is a reason why my schedule was changed. Even though, I was super sad that those were cancelled. I was going to be having class Monday - Friday every day for the whole semester. So in a way it was a blessing because I have been able to travel on the weekends and see some amazing places. 

Addicted to the Internet

A big part of my study abroad experience has been to get out of my comfort zone. I can successfully say that I have been getting out of my comfort zone very frequently and I’ve been trying a variety of new things that I wouldn’t regularly try.

If you know me well, I always try and play it safe. I calculate the risks of each situation and I try to calculate every single possibility of results that could occur. If I can’t calculate the outcome or the risk is too high, most of the time I don’t end up doing the activity. I also like to be very much in control of each situation. If I can’t control the outcome, once again I won’t participate. For example, you won’t find me on a roller coaster or any rides for that matter, walking outside after dark unless I absolutely have to or talking to people that I don’t know in foreign countries.

By doing things out of my comfort zone on this trip, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I usually psych myself out in situations; I overthink a lot of things. I am stronger that I thought I was and I am grateful that I had the guts to try new things. There hasn’t been one thing that I’ve tried that I’ve hated. I have been thankful that I tried them. All of them. In the past, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what if. What if about certain events, once in a lifetime opportunities, and what if I let go of my fears and just had fun.

I also have been letting go of controlling every situation. I’m learning there is no sense in me trying to control every situation especially when a lot of situations that have presented themselves to me are out of my control.

For the past two weeks, I basically lived without constant Internet access. I haven’t lived without 24/7 Internet access since I was 8 years old and at that time, I was not dependent on using the Internet as my main source of communication. I had no control over the situation nor did I have control of when it was going to be fixed.

The wifi in my apartment broke on Wednesday night right before I was going to sleep. No big deal, I was going to sleep anyways. When I woke up, I tried to do my daily check of social media. I clicked on my Facebook app realized that wasn’t working so I decided to check my twitter app, that didn’t work as well so I moved on to Instagram. It wasn’t until waiting for Instagram to load for a couple of minutes that I remembered that our entire Internet was down so nothing was going to work. I continued this same routine every single day, when I woke up and before I went to sleep, until our wifi was fixed.

Thursday morning, it really hit me after I put in a request to get the Internet fixed. This was the weekend before midterms and while I was concerned with communicating with friends and family. I also had a terrible time trying to study for midterms because everything that I needed to study was online. Talk about the irony and terrible timing. We don’t even buy books over here. We go to the library and scan all the pages and email them to ourselves so even our books are technically online. Since when did everything for classes switch over to being online?

A man came Thursday afternoon to look at it and said that he would give me a call the following day, Friday. He did not call me on Friday and I was devastated. Getting the Internet fixed was my number one priority. It was my lifeline: communication, schoolwork, general knowledge, and entertainment. The Internet is not as important here in Italy. That is definitely low on their priority list. If something happens to the Internet, you are extremely lucky to have it fixed in a week. When I walk around or go to a restaurant, I do not see Italian’s glued to their phones. They are actually having conversations with each other.

 In the states, I am constantly connected to wifi and if not wifi then I have a data plan that allows me to use Internet on the go. There is never a moment when I am not connected.  The school is closed on Saturday’s and Sunday’s but I hoped that he would call on Saturday even though I knew that it was going to be a long shot.

I had a birthday dinner right before I left for Italy. At one point of the dinner, I remember I put my phone down and looked around the table, there was not one person who was not on their phone. Everyone was glued to his or her phone scrolling away. It stayed this was for a good 10-15 minutes and all the while, I just silently watched everyone. It actually shocked me that we could sit at a dinner in a restaurant and not have any conversations for a good 15 minutes. At the time, I didn’t think that it was that bad. I just started a conversation and most people put their phones down and we started to talk again.

Chat Pals

Starting today, we will be taking midterms. The sad part about that previous sentence is it feels like I just got here. So that means that time is going by way too quickly. I only have a month and a half left.

I signed up for this program called Chat Pals. The Chat Pal program at FUA is where you get paired with an Italian person trying to learn English or your native language (There are some students who speak Portuguese and other things here.) You are supposed to meet with them at least once a week and speak 30 mins in Italian and then 30 mins in English.

My Chat Pal’s name is Martina. She is super nice and around the same age as me. I am very lucky to have her because she knows English pretty well. She has been the United States a couple of times, to larger places like New York, Las Vegas and some cities in California. We talked about a great deal of things like her family, what types of food she likes and what her and her friends do when they hang out. She says that the amount of Italian that I do know is very good because I told her that I came here without ever taking an Italian class. I feel that there is still so much Italian that I have to learn and she understands English like perfectly. I only need to help her with her English when she forgets a word or provide her with an alternative word or phrase for saying something.

Dante's Rock

Michaelangelo's Self Portrait

For our first meeting, I met Martina, in Piazza della Repubblica and we went for a walk around the city square. She showed me things that most tourist don’t know about like the rock that Dante would sit on and watch the Duomo being built and a self-portrait of Michelangelo scratched into the side of Palazzo Vecchio, which is actually the town hall in Florence. We also went to see Dante’s church and house. She was surprised that I didn’t know much about Dante and hadn’t read any of the books such as Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. That only made me wish that I had read Dante’s Inferno in high school.

Dante's Church

I learned a great deal by just walking around with her, aside from more Italian. She told me about history in Florence and also about other things about Italy in general. I didn’t know that different cities in Italy had different dialects depending on what country they were under until they became a part of Italy. Other countries such as Switzerland and Austria controlled different cities in Italy and that affects the ability of a person from Florence from being able to talk to a person from Naples (they can barely understand them. Only a couple of words are similar,) I also learned that they only started teaching English in schools approximately 20 years ago. Before that, children were taught French in school, so that is primarily why older generations don’t really know English. 

My main goal is to be able to understand what people are saying during daily activities but I know that it is going to take lots and lots of practice. Hopefully, this Chat Pal partnership will help me speed the process up. I also hope to gain a lifelong friend as well.