When I visited my brother in Italy five years ago, I instantly fell in love with everything Italian. After years of hoping and months of planning, my departure for Florence is finally here! For the next four months, I’ll trade cheese curds for gelato, Johnny O’s oversized Coronas for lots and lots of vino and walking (struggling) up Bascom for strolling through Mercato di San Lorenzo.
Since I spent the first three and a half weeks of my winter break basically doing nothing, the last week has been filled with endless abroad tasks. It seems like every time I think I finally have everything I need, I realize there are still a few more errands to run.
If you’ve read any of my previous Her Campus articles, you know that I love lists, so I have about seven different ones going in my head right now: advice people have given me about studying abroad; things that are giving me anxiety about living in a foreign country; cities I planning on visiting; gifts to buy friends and family at home; what I’ll miss about Wisconsin; food that I need to eat before I leave America.
It only seems appropriate that my first abroad post includes a list, so I’ll leave you with a very minimal start to my abroad bucket list:
1. Keep a journal
I’ve gotten this advice from multiple people and thanks to my incredible little in my sorority, I already have the perfect journal to start documenting my trip!
2. Speak Italian
After taking Italian for five years, and dropping my first semester of college Italian after day one, my goal is to speak at least one sentence of Italian a day. I already have my go-to phrases: “Tu parli Inglese?” (Do you speak English?) And “Dov’é il bango” (Where is the bathroom).
3. Travel
This is a given and probably the best part about studying abroad. I’ve only been to Europe once (Rome and Florence) so I already have a list (duh!) of everywhere I want to visit.
-Italy: Rome, Pisa, Venice, Cinque Terre, Sienna, Naples
-Spain: Barcelona, Seville, Madrid
-Germany: Munich, Berlin
-Amsterdam (already booked!)
-Prague
-Budapest
-Paris
-London
4. Eat
The only thing worse than the freshmen 15 may be the abroad 15…or 20…or 25. Besides being thousands of miles away from home and in a country where I don’t speak the native language fluently, the thing giving me the most anxiety is gaining weight. I’ll let myself freak out for the next few days but once I land in Italy I know that I’ll have to let this go. The food is half of the experience and I plan on sampling every gelato café in Florence.
5. Befriend a local
Studying abroad is all about being immersed in a different culture and I can’t think of any better way to do it than getting to know someone who lives Italian culture first hand.
Stay tuned for travel adventures, lots of food reviews, additions to my bucket list, and the daily life of a foreigner in Florence!
Ciao a tutti!