Featured image: Ponte Vecchio in Florence during one of the 10 seconds it was not raining. Hello again and welcome back to Thao Does JYA. This week we’ll be covering parental visits and final exams. It’s been quite a while since my last post and I’m just a mere 11 days from departure. We’ll begin where I left off, I suppose. Just as I had settled into my routine it was over, or so it felt. I volunteered about ten…
Featured image: Canale Grande in Venezia It’s hard to imagine that I’ve been here in Italy for over two months now and have just under two months left. It’s not that I’m particularly apt at staying here or particularly attached to going home. There’s just a vague sense of comfort to finding a routine, but here, I’ve found, my routine is very easily disrupted. In late February, my boyfriend found his way across the Atlantic and stayed in Bologna for…
Featured image: Castello Estense in Ferrara TW: mental health and sexual harassment Almost two months into my adventure in Bologna, Italy, I’m still very wary of my adjustment to this place. First off, there’s the constant presence of the language barrier. I’ve taken Italian since sixth grade, but I’ve never been really confident with speaking. Obviously, this experience is not too unique, but I don’t know. I feel like my past teachers’ ears are ringing every time I butcher the subjunctive…
Featured image: Cloudy Centro di Bologna, with the the historic Due Torri in the background and Piazza Maggiore in the foreground. [TW: this article makes mention of racial discrimination and sexual harassment.] I felt nervous about my arrival abroad, but “terrified” was never in my vocabulary. I had prepared mentally for changes, and I obviously knew it wouldn’t be “The Lizzie McGuire Movie.” But the culture really set in when it came to my POC identity and consent. Adjusting…
Featured Image: Nyahvn in Copenhagen At this point in my abroad career I have taken the opportunity that being in Europe has afforded me and traveled to a number of European cities. Some places are better for certain groups than others—at least based on my own experiences. In addition to Bologna, some other cities that I’ve visited include Barcelona, Brussels, and Copenhagen. When I was searching for something to write about for this article, my boyfriend thought that I should talk…
Featured Image: Building in which my neurobiology course it held. Last week I began a new phase in my abroad experience when I began my course at Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna. Thus far I have been taking various courses in the Italian ECCo program itself, but now I am in the midst of working through a course that is not only taught in Italian while being surrounded by Italian students, but at a university generally just far different…
Venice. It’s that iconic city used as the setting of countless films and novels, whose panorama is depicted by painters from the venders on its streets all the way to Van Gogh. Because of its reputation, Venice stirred emotions and even some concerns during my little trip. I was met with feelings that were expected, and but also some that caused me to take a more realistic approach to the magical city. Upon my arrival in Venice, taking the train…
As much as I have missed starting the new school year with the energy that accompanies Vassar in August, the transition to pumpkin spice lattes or to the autumn colors of the Hudson Valley, I must confess that I do not regret my choice to spend the first semester of my junior year in Italy! I tried to think of a great way to start this series of Far and Away blogs but since one of the most common questions…
I have always wondered about the origin of the seemingly illogical term “flying off the handle” indicating absurd anger. Actually, I have never thought about this, but it is at the very least a tenuous transition into the subject of this blog post, in which I detail my experience flying off the boot shaped peninsula of Italy to Sicily, the soccer ball the Italian boot seems to be kicking. In a way, I sort of jumped onto the trip to…
A Tour Guide in Italy March here in Bologna has been a month of visitors and midterms, which both have presented an opportunity for me to pretend I know more than I do, albeit to two very different audiences. The first audience consisted of my girlfriend visiting during the first half of Vassar’s spring break and my mother and brother, who arrived a few days ago. The other, of course, included my professors, hoping for verbose and accurate explanations of…