All Roads Lead to…Studying Abroad in Florence
By Bella, a Peer Tutor
As part of the COVID-19 generation, my transition to college was different from what I envisioned it would be. Because of the pandemic, I chose to go to college closer to home than I might have otherwise—though, with UNC being my close-to-home college, I lucked out. Then, when I eventually made the short drive to my first college dorm, I made the same drive right back to my house two weeks later when everyone was sent home because of UNC’s Covid outbreak numbers. To put it lightly, my journey to college was underwhelming.
Luckily, I was able to come to campus my sophomore year, build strong relationships, and put down roots at UNC. Chapel Hill may not have been a big new city for me, but I made new friends, discovered new study and hangout spots in town, and overall built a home for myself here. I am so grateful now that circumstances led me to UNC, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I chose a “safer” college experience than what I imagined for myself.
I wanted to do something about that feeling, so I decided to study abroad in Florence, Italy for the first semester of my senior year. This would be my big opportunity to challenge myself and my independence, as I always hoped I would in college. I knew it would be hard to be away from UNC and the people and places I love here, especially for a large part of my final year, but I was up to the challenge. I arrived in Florence determined to try new things and see as much as I could, while still making myself at home, like I had at UNC.
For the first few days in Florence, I survived on excitement alone. Jet lag had taken away my appetite and sleep schedule. I walked to and from orientation sessions with no concept of where any of the buildings were in relationship to each other (thank goodness for Apple Maps). I was tired, hungry, and confused, but I was happy just to be there.
Luckily I had my roommates to navigate with, even if they were strangers. We were all American college students (but from different universities) and we met for the first time as we were moving into our shared apartment in Florence. We tried new restaurants and coffee shops together and tackled our first grocery store trip as a group. I had never gone so quickly from not knowing someone to spending all of my time with them as I did with my roommates in Florence. It was on the fourth night, as we found ourselves lying on the floor together and talking until 2 am, that we decided we weren’t strangers anymore.
The second week there, classes started and jet lag subsided so I set out to form routines for myself. At UNC, I always meal prepped one day of the week so that I wouldn’t have to cook every day. So I bought some containers from the grocery store to keep that routine. Knowing I couldn’t stay up until 2 am every night talking to my roommates, I started reading before bed again. In Chapel Hill, I always preferred doing my homework outside of my apartment, so I started trying out local libraries and coffee shops to find my places in Florence. I also cultivated a group of friends so that I could have a source of hugs, understanding, and laughter, all things I left behind in the US.
I also embraced some habits that were unique to Florence. There is no air conditioning in most Florentine apartments — including the one I lived in — so I spent a lot more time outside than I typically did at UNC. I lived for the breeze that came off of the Arno River. I received and made many phone calls to keep up with the people from home and I took up what I called “walk and talks,” during which I walked around new places or my favorite places in the city while I had long catch-up conversations. I started eating out more often. I lived only a two-minute walk from a cute square with delicious and affordable restaurants. Florence also does not have many green spaces, or even that many trees at all growing inside the city. So one of my roommates and I started walking to the park outside the city once a week.
I was loving every second of being in Florence. I didn’t start to travel outside of Florence (other than a short trip to the beach) until about a month into my time abroad. Looking back, I think that worked out well. When I did start traveling to other countries in Europe, coming back to Florence honestly felt like coming home. Even though it was still a foreign country, it was more familiar to me than places like Spain, Austria, and Hungary.
My program had a week-long Fall break about halfway through my time abroad. During that week, two of my roommates and I spent three days each in England, Ireland, and Scotland. It was probably the best week of my life. Against all odds, it was sunny almost every day. But almost more exciting, everyone spoke English. After months of butchering Italian in everyday interactions, we were finally able to order meals and navigate transit without a second thought.
When we returned to Florence, I hit a personal low of my time abroad. There were many reasons for my sudden bout of homesickness. The biggest reason was that we were at the halfway point, so it had been a long time since I had been home, and it would still be a long time until I was home again. Another reason was the return to a language and cultural barrier. You have to work just a little bit harder to catch up to every task and interaction when you are not intimately familiar with a place or its language. Those barriers had been smaller when I was in the UK and Ireland, and they hit me all at once when I was back in Florence.
Being aware of why I felt homesick did nothing to alleviate it. I didn’t even realize before my experience how powerful and painful homesickness could be. There were minutes, sometimes hours, during which I felt as though I could never take a satisfying breath or I could burst into tears at any moment. I couldn’t even lose myself in books because I was so stuck in my own grief over being away from home. But I hated feeling that way, I knew I wanted to be in Florence and that I should be making the most of it, so I started trying things to combat my homesickness.
I started reaching out to people who could remind me that I was still connected to home, even with the physical and temporal distance. I reached out to another UNC student, whom I flew to Florence with, for breakfast and we ate at an American-style restaurant where I had fried potatoes and ranch (for those of you who do not know, ranch is not common in Europe, even this place’s ranch was not really what we would call ranch here, but I appreciated the attempt). The other student and I caught up and talked about UNC and things we were excited about before and after we went home. I also made the effort to FaceTime anyone and everyone from back home. Seeing the faces of my friends and family really helped. I wrote and sent postcards too, which I found to be a good way to feel connected to home in the morning when the time difference meant most people from home would be asleep. I also started a countdown to the day that I would leave Florence—which I admit, could have backfired on me as a strategy. But I found the countdown helpful because it reminded me that I would be home soon (and so I shouldn’t worry too much), but also that I would be home soon (and so should make the most of every day I had left).
So with a pat on the back from myself and all the friends and family I had been talking to, I went into the rest of my semester abroad reassured that I could and would do it.
In the second half of the semester, I had a cannoli almost every day. I walked to Piazzale Michelangelo to watch the sunset and the sunrise. I sat on the bridge over the Arno to just enjoy the view and the sun. My roommates and I got even closer and started having family pizza nights so I could practice making sourdough pizza Napoletana as my final for my breadmaking class. I continued to travel to new countries on the weekends.
By the last few weeks, I was able to get through all of my small interactions in Italian. I ordered my daily cannoli in Italian, spoke to the grocery store worker in Italian, and even made friends with an old Italian man who I would talk to in Italian over coffee—until we ran out of things I could say in Italian and he would switch to English for me.
I became a regular at all my favorite spots and would smile at people I recognized on the street. I remember the exact moment I realized that I had become a local. I was walking home from a market I had been to a few times—without using my GPS—and I stopped at a souvenir stand to buy a snow globe for my best friend. The vendor was very kind, we chatted a little in Italian and he jokingly said “Ciao, Bella” after I told him my name (“Ciao, Bella” means “Hello, Beautiful” or in my case “Hello, Bella” as Bella is actually my name) and he complimented my pronunciation in Italian. As I walked the rest of the way home and dreaded the packed tourist areas I had to pass to get back to my apartment I realized that, at least in a small way, Florence had become my home. A part of Florence seemed to belong to me and I belonged to it.
Now that I am back in the United States, Florence feels a bit like a childhood home my parents have moved out of. I have so many memories of this foreign place that will likely never be mine again as it once had been. If I am lucky, I will have the means to go back and visit it someday, and perhaps share it with the people I am close to, to give them a glimpse into part of my history—part of me.