my trip across the pond

This past summer has been a wild one. After the spring semester this year, I was only home for a week or two and then I left the country. I was going off on my own to study abroad in Florence, Italy. Studying abroad is a big part of my fashion program at school and I could not be happier that I chose to do it this past June.

There is the semester study abroad option, which is what most people think of, but I have really extreme FOMO (fear of missing out), and mentally I don’t think that I could miss an entire semester of school. Unfortunately, I had already missed the spring semester of my freshman year because I had to stay home, and since I felt like I already missed a big part of school I didn’t want to do it again. The one-month summer program in Florence was the perfect option for me.

June was filled with some of the best moments of my life, and I could not have been luckier because I got to share it with some of my closest friends. Of course, we were in Italy for school, but I took a bigger interest in traveling and seeing what the world is like 5,000 miles away. I was very pleasantly surprised.

When people talk about Italy and the coast they always say, “It’s like a movie, it doesn’t seem real” and I wasn’t very convinced before I left. But, after a bit of traveling to the Amalfi Coast, Lake Como, and Lugano, I can confirm that it does feel like you’re in a movie. There is one moment from the Amalfi Coast that I will never forget. We decided to do a boat day with our group in Capri and when we stopped to jump in the water it was unreal. After jumping in the water I swam to the other side of the boat, and then I looked up. This is the moment I understood how truly amazing and beautiful our world is. The sky was so blue, the clouds so white, the cliffs so high, and the water so refreshing.

I experienced so many moments like this throughout my trip, where I felt like I was watching the world and just existing. I will forever be grateful for this experience that I had. The culture in Italy was slow, they want to take their time with everything and not rush because then everything passes them by. In Florence, I was able to walk around and genuinely enjoy the time I had with my friends and even myself, and I will never forget that.

k…now rage