Spring

One of my biggest worries about going to live abroad was did I had the self-discipline to not waste my money and end up broke in a foreign country. I was in Florence Italy, and my program made me have at least 1,000 euros a month. So, I looked up the prices of food and other things not provided (like shampoo). Then I made a very rough estimate of a weekly budget in euros. For me my target was to spend less than 100 euros a week. If I did that, I could save the extra and take little trips on the weekend. The first few weeks I exceeded my budget.

You might be thinking to yourself right now how does one even establish, a quotidian routine as a foreign student, well allow me to explain. Moving to an unknown city may seem like a stressful and intense experience, let alone an unknown city that is also known to be as one of the world’s largest megapolises. I like to consider myself a pretty adaptable individual, but I will admit that it took me a while to achieve a so called “routine”.

Aside from the expected British accent that all professors obtain, there are many other factors that differentiate a classroom environment at Pitt to the one I experienced during my study abroad program. First of all, my course schedule was completely different as opposed to the one I had at Pitt. Classes would take place once a week, each being three and a half hours long aside from the internship course which would only go for an hour and a half. Most of my classes were in the afternoon from 2:00-5:30 however, I did have one class in the morning from 9:30-1:00.

 
Food is definitely the window to the soul, especially in Paris, one of the largest cities in the world. I met a lot of new friends at ENSEA through a shared love for trying food and eating. Every time we made a trip to Paris, we either went to shop or eat out and usually the latter a few times per trip.