Hello and welcome back to Andrea is on the go, go, go but has the time every few weeks to update a blog! I’ll admit that I could be a lot better about updating this but, truthfully, every time I’m given the choice between sitting down and writing a new post or exploring a new aspect of the city I’m in, I choose the latter. So, here I am updating 3 weeks worth of exploring.
In these past 3 weeks, I’ve visited Lisbon, returned to Paris for a short stay, visited Athens and Chania, Greece, and traveled to Sorrento, Italy where I’ll be staying for the next 5 weeks. Needless to say, the past 3 weeks have been some of the most eventful of my life. Therefore, I feel as though to do each place I’ve visited justice, I’ll have to talk about each one by one, starting with Lisbon. I apologize in advance, this will probably be a long post.
I was lucky enough to be able to plan a short stay in Lisbon, Portugal with one of my roommates, Dani. It was something we had been talking about for a good bit, as both of us were planning to study abroad over this summer in Europe. When I left our Gainesville, Florida apartment at the end of the spring semester on April 30, she said to me, “see you in Europe!”. In that moment it was hard to process that the next time we would see each other would actually be in Europe. It then felt quite surreal when we met up in the Lisbon airport for our four-day stay on June 10. Lisbon was absolutely stunning with its bright colored buildings, red rooftops, and ocean views. The people were equally as wonderful and I was incredibly impressed with their English-speaking abilities. Dani and I visited the Belém neighborhood and saw both the Jerónimos Monastery and the Belém Tower. We also tried Belém’s signature tart pastry: the Pastel de nata. In addition to that, we visited a beach about 30 minutes outside of Lisbon called Praia de São João. We learned the hard way that day that there are plenty of Uber drivers in Lisbon to take us to the beach but very few in the small town of this beach to take us back. After about half an hour though, we were able to get an Uber driver to take us back to Lisbon and now it just makes for a funny story. I would say both the high and low point of our trip was related to our hostel. We stayed in a hostel in the heart of Lisbon, walking distance to an endless amount of shops and restaurants. The highlight was the pub crawl that the hostel hosted where the two of us got to travel around to various Lisbon pubs while meeting other tourists of our age from around the world. The low point was most definitely that we shared a room with quite possibly the loudest snorer I’ve ever heard in my life. Needless to say, we did not get much sleep during those four days. All in all though, it was an amazing trip and other highlights included visiting the Castle of São Jorge and taking a sunset boat cruise along the Lisbon shore. Mostly, I’m so grateful to have been able to experience another new European city and country with a great friend.
I flew directly from Lisbon back to Paris where I was able to stay with my French host family from high school for four days. My stay there was quite relaxing and a nice change of pace from my typical on-the-go schedule. Having known this family for almost five years and having stayed with them three times now, they really are like family to me and it was lovely to spend quality time with them. My parents and sister then arrived on that fourth day, June 18, in Paris to meet up with me. It had been a little over 5 weeks since we’d last seen each other. I then moved to stay with them in a hotel for a few days and began my family vacation. During our three days as a family in Paris, were able to visit the Louvre and the Opéra Garnier as well as eat some amazing food at various cafés. Our favorite experiences, though, were ones spent with the French families we have all come to know. We spent our second day with my high school host family touring the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte and being treated to a lovely French meal at their home. The next night, we ate dinner with my sister’s host family from the same high school exchange I had participated in. On our last night, we ate dinner at the home of the host family I had been residing with for my study abroad program. To say I’m thankful to know so many wonderful French families is an understatement. As I’ve said many times in these blog posts, (and perhaps you may be tired of hearing about it by now) my experiences with the French have always been and continue to be what sparks my passion for International Studies. The French will always have a special place in my heart and it was simply wonderful to be able to be so immersed in the culture with my family.
On June 22, we flew from Paris to Athens, Greece. Visiting Greece has been a dream of mine ever since I read my first Percy Jackson book back in fourth grade. Additionally, I am a quarter Greek and have always had a strong interest in learning more about the Greek language and culture. I finally had the opportunity to do so when I came to UF, where I finished up a minor in Greek Studies this past semester. Through this minor, I was able to study Modern Greek for four semesters and take a handful of Greek culture electives. My Greek is no where near as strong as my French but what I noticed immediately after arriving to Greece was how surprised and excited the Greeks were to hear an American attempt to speak their language. As I know it’s not a very common language to learn, I imagine not many tourists speak Greek. English was pretty much spoken everywhere and, like the Portuguese, the Greeks spoke phenomenal English. The look of surprise and excitement on their faces when I spoke a few sentences of Greek truly made the past two years of Modern Greek classes all worth it. It reinforced in me how learning a foreign language can provide you connections with people you would not have had otherwise. Additionally, the other thing I noticed immediately after arriving to Greece was just how welcoming and gracious the Greeks are. I truly enjoyed each and every interaction we had with a local. During our time in Athens, we, of course, visited the Acropolis and, let me just say, it fully lived up to fourth-grade, Percy Jackson loving Andrea’s expectations. Especially as the citizen of a country that’s only 246 years old, it’s quite impossible to fully wrap my mind around viewing a structure that is over 2,400 years old. Similarly, the artifacts of the Acropolis Museum, which we visited after the Acropolis, are nothing short of mind-blowing. It was a bucket-list item that I was able to check off and even despite the fact it was nearly 100 degrees outside when we hiked the Acropolis, it was one of my favorite experiences of the summer.
We spent two and a half days in Athens before flying to Chania, Crete, Greece on June 25, where we stayed for 6 days. Chania, a city on the largest Greek island of Crete, is where my great grandfather was born and lived before moving to the United States. Visiting a Greek island is incredibly cool within itself, but it’s especially cool to visit a city where you have family origins. Chania is simply stunning with its colorful buildings scattered along numerous little cobblestone streets, its crystal clear waters, and its mountain ranges everywhere. It’s the perfect place to relax and forget about life for a while. So, during our time there, my family and I did just that. In addition, I ate some of the best food I’ve had in my entire life. I’m still dreaming about the warm goat cheese on toast with honey, nuts, and fruit that I had for breakfast one morning. Most importantly though, it was a week of great quality time with my family in a city that holds such special meaning to us.
This past Friday, July 1, we flew from Chania to Naples, Italy in order to travel to the final destination of both our family vacation and my summer adventures: Sorrento, Italy. We are now officially caught up to the present, as later today I will move into my dorm in Sorrento and will say goodbye to my family until August. This means that I am officially more than half way done with my summer abroad, with 7 out of 12 weeks behind me. The Sorrento chapter of my summer will be different from any of my experiences thus far, as I will be working an internship along with taking a class. My dorm and class will be at the Sant’Anna institute here in Sorrento but my internship will be a little over an hour away in Naples. I’m both thrilled and nervous to begin this second study abroad, as I know it will be an incredible experience but also quite challenging at the same time. My internship will be with a non-governmental organization that provides social inclusion services to refugees and asylum-seekers in Naples. I’m nervous for the long commute that I will be making but I’m also nervous because this type of work will be unlike anything I have ever done before. However, what I keep reminding myself is, I was equally as nervous for the unknowns of my study abroad in Paris before it started and that experience turned out better than I ever could have imagined. I also know I will learn a lot about Italy, about Sorrento and Naples, and about myself during these next 5 weeks, and for that I am immensely excited. I will, additionally, discover a lot about what it is like to work for an organization that does humanitarian work. I hope during these next coming weeks I will be able to use my internship experience to learn more about what I would like to pursue following my graduation from UF this next spring. Needless to say, it will be a great learning experience, through which I imagine I’ll have a good deal of fun along the way (my 21st birthday is in 3 days and I have already scoped out a karaoke bar that looks like it could be a great place to go and celebrate!).
It’s very hard to believe 50 days have already passed since I first arrived in Europe at the beginning of May. As I reflect on those 50 days, I experience a lot of different emotions but the one that is the strongest is gratitude. I feel so incredibly thankful to have made so many amazing memories so far this summer. To each and every person who I’ve spent time with this summer, from the other UF students on my Paris study abroad, to all of my French friends and their families, to my roommate from UF, and to my family, thank you for brightening up my experience!
This extremely long blog post has now come to an end (a big thank you to all those who’ve read all of this as well). I look forward to updating how my experience in Italy is going!
Until next time!
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