Study abroad students are an audience so near and dear to my heart since just three years ago I boarded a plane to leave my mom, home town and everything familiar for the longest stretch of time to date. I look back on that baby version of myself with compassion often. I loved Florence, I … Continue reading Surviving a Semester Studying Abroad
Italy is a beautiful, sometimes confusing, country. As embarrassing as it is to admit this now, I knew really nothing at all about Italy when I first went. I'm talking about "what's the Ponte Vecchio" and "is this the Duomo" (when passing Santa Croce) nothing. However the things I wish I knew before I first went … Continue reading 10 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I went to Italy for the First Time
When I took my first art history class, I didn't really know what art history was but I was pretty sure that I wouldn't like it. Five courses later, hours memorizing titles, artists, years and mediums, and countless visits to museums all over the glob in search of seeing the works I learned about in … Continue reading Not an Art Historian? A Beginner’s Guide to the Uffizi Gallery
To highlight the life and energy of Puglia, Italy amid current environmental devastation, I will be posting photo-essays about southern Italian cities I had the chance to visit in 2015. On-going protests wouldn't stop me from visiting the region again, but to each his own. Travel consciously. Ostuni — a small town near Bari known … Continue reading Rainy Days in Ostuni, Italy
(A Bar for Everyone) (I hope that's what I said....) So you're in Florence, you've seen all the museums and gawked at the Duomo and ate as much pasta as your stomach can handle. So now, let's get down the the real important stuff: drinking. Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, is also a … Continue reading Un Bar Per Tutti Quanti
Last fall I wrote a few posts about Melendugno, a rural town outside of Lecce, Italy. Read this to learn what you can do in the fight between citizens protecting their beautiful seaside town and those profiting by building a natural gas pipeline. Or this, about my experience farming three years ago in this land of … Continue reading Salento’s Changing Landscape: Learn More About #noTAP
Just before I left New York to study abroad for a full semester in Florence, Caryn introduced me to Girl in Florence - American expat ( & immigrant, as she often points out) who wound up in Florence and has become guru for all things Italian. I scoured through her blog, soaking up all of the recommendations … Continue reading Escaping Crowds: Going off the Beaten Path while Traveling
I've been applying to jobs semi-regularly lately and after I get a rejection letter from a job I didn't even really want in the first place/after an especially trying round of applications, I say "wait why don't I just teach in Italy? What's stopping me again?" Then, I remember............. The Visa (dun dun dun). So … Continue reading What’s a Girl Got to Do to Get a Visa Around Here?
I wish the title of this blog post could end with "from Mindy Kaling" period, as in I actually met her and didn't just read her second book "Why Not Me?" But sadly that dream is not crossed off my bucket list yet. I devoured her book in two days when I desperately needed a … Continue reading 4 Lessons from Mindy Kaling’s Memoir
Drunk and on my way home from my friend's house in Oltrarno to my house in Santa Croce, I stopped to sit on the bridge and look at the Ponte Vecchio while I FaceTimed my friend. A man on a bike rode by and we greeted each other and then he stopped. I hung up … Continue reading “You are not like other American girls; You are not scared.”
