I can’t believe we’ve been in Firenze for almost a month now, the time has flown by! I have definitely settled into a routine here and it has started to feel like home. My apartment is in a good location, it’s a 25 minute walk from classes which really gets my steps in every day! I like it because we do not live directly in the city center, instead we’re located in a more residential area. While it is a little far from where most students live, we have had a much different experience without as many tourists around. Our favorite spot so far is a restaurant called the Taverna Degli Artisti. It is located right down the street from our apartment, and we’ve made friends with the owner, Tony and some of the other staff. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming when we first tried the restaurant, giving us free foods to try and everything! It was such a great experience that we decided to bring the rest of our friends from Pitt there for dinner one night. With direction from the staff, we were able to go into the kitchen and make pizza dough which was so much fun! This is definitely going to become a regular spot for us in Florence. 

Our CEA CAPA program is a lot different from Pitt because there are so many other schools that partner with them, so we’ve met students from all over the US. Most of the students in our program go to Cal Poly which is located in California, so it has been interesting to meet them and compare how different our schools are. The class sizes here are also much smaller than at Pitt. The smallest class size I’ve had on Pitt campus was about 30 students, but here my class sizes range from 9-15 students which has been so different. I really enjoy the smaller class sizes and feel like I’ve been able to connect with my classmates a lot more as well as with my professors. I’m forming much better relationships with my professors here in Florence than I have in my two years at Pitt so far which has been really cool.

I am enrolled in five different courses here, three are business-focused for my major, and two are language and art. Because my business classes are much smaller than at Pitt, I feel like I have more opportunities to participate in my classes, and these classes specifically incorporate a lot of presentations. I’m building more confidence in my presentation skills and speaking in front of a group of people which I think will be really helpful for my future career.