Here’s to the beginning of something new and I think the hardest part of this process was picking which program I wanted and which country I wanted to study in. The rest of the hard decisions were left up to API, the affiliate program I chose. With API making decisions on my behalf it left some unknowns: who are my roommates, where will we be living, and what does our living situation look like? For me I was fortunate in both. I was able to choose my main roommate who is my best friend from home but my other two roommates were randomly chosen and luckily I got great ones. They’re upcoming seniors but at the University of Arkansas. The living situation exceeded my expectations. We have two bedrooms with two twin beds in each room. We are lucky to have good AC and a nice water heater. Additionally we have a full kitchen and living area. With the rooming and living situation already taken care of this enabled me to move into my new home, Florence Italy, and jump right in. Between API hosting welcome dinners, guided tours and cooking classes we were instantly able to get a better feel for our new city and the people we’d be exploring it with. As if orientation week wasn’t enough fun from all of the group activities that got us acclimated, API then took us on our first excursion of the summer, exploring around Tuscany! Between the guided tour of Siena followed by the thermal baths. A guided tour of Cortona and a lake day at Trasimeno lake and then a Wine tasting at Tenuta Torciano followed by exploring San Gimignano the first week in Florence was an absolute success and I cannot wait to see where the next three weeks take me.
