Almost two months into my stay in Copenhagen and it feels like home. I suppose that halfway through the semester it should feel like home, but as I’ve said before, I doubted that I would ever feel comfortable so far away from what I have called home. Finding a routine took a lot of work, but it puts everything into perspective when you do normal activities, such as grocery shopping or the weekly ritual of cinnamon rolls on Wednesdays. A…
I’ve come to my last blog post and realize that I’ve had yet to post about the beautiful city, which I’ve lived in these past four months. Roma, Italy is a place I’ve grown to love, not for the wonderful historical and tourist-heavy opportunities it promises, but for its God-awful bus service, businesses that are never open between the hours of 12pm-3pm, crazy Italians, crazy Americans, aggressive selfie-stick vendors, and the food. The food the food the food. I won’t…
Magna Graecia First off, I just want to impose, upon everybody, the national symbol of Sicily. This is the Sicilian Triskelion, or the trinacria. Anyone who has been to Sicily is already familiar with this, but for someone who had never been there before, it was rather unnerving to see that ridiculously creepy thing everywhere the first day or two. It grows on you though; now I have an obnoxious red hat with the symbol stitched on the front. My…
Cinqueterre. Cinquestair-re. Cinquemontagnegiganti. Cinqueeverythingwillhurt. Apparently it is possible to get PTSD from looking at a flight of stairs. On October 26 and 27, a few of my friends in my program and I decided to do the famous Cinqueterre hike. The trek is amazing, and the coast legitimately looks like Crayola puked on a mountain— it’s gorgeous. Vernazza, La Spezia, Italy. Fourth town from the bottom (starting at Riomaggiore). Unfortunately for us, the main trail going from Riomaggiore to…
JOURNAL RAMBLINGS #1: En Route to Umbria (Orvieto) Note: The cheapest flight from the Philippines to Rome, Italy, was scheduled about a week before I was allowed to move into my program. Considering the fact that I was going to be living in the Ancient City, I decided that I would travel around the region of Umbria in the extra week, meaning that I could not easily wander around rolling a giant suitcase. Thus began my weeklong backpacking trip carrying…
Tips for going out in Paris and the best secret gelataria in Rome I’ve been going out every weekend in Paris since I’ve gotten here and I have discovered an undeniable fact: every weekend that my friends and I go out, we get a little bit better at it. Here are some of the lessons we’ve learned so far: -Pregaming on the subway at night is slightly socially acceptable, the same can be said for drinking in parks in…
How is it that I have only one week left of my JYA experience? I’m not ready to say goodbye to Italia yet! This past month has been absolutely fantastic. To start, I took two amazing trips: one to Venice and the other to Rome. Venice is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. There are absolutely no cars or vespas. Instead, there are tons of boats and bridges to connect the city and its inhabitants. I loved getting lost on the tiny streets…
Home Sweet Bologna Last night as I Skyped my mom, she asked me what my favorite Italian city has been during my study-abroad experience. I had to think about it for a second, and found it rather strange that the obvious answers of Florence or Rome didn’t come to mind. I then recalled last Sunday night when I was getting off a four-hour train ride from Napoli and the Amalfi coast, bone-tired and freezing cold in the December air. As I climbed down the three…
I honestly don’t know where the past three months have gone. Yesterday a friend told me that we have less than 50 days left in Italy. How did that happen? On the bright side, I do have about two months left of my stay in Bologna, and I definitely plan on making the most of them. Future excursions include sightseeing in Milan, spending the day in Ravenna, and maybe even returning to Rome. A lot of my friends in the…
Film Festivals and City Hikes During my program’s third week in Bologna, a friend from Vassar studying abroad in England visited Italy, and a couple of us joined him in Milan for a film festival. With the satisfaction of being the first students in our program to travel outside of Bologna, our group of friends hopped on a bullet train on Friday after classes and arrived in Italy’s fashion capital within an hour. The train station in Milan was gorgeous and inspired in me nostalgia of Grand Central. As for our hostel, we somewhat expected…