Arcadia Abroad in Italy

You're studying food in Italy in a historical city. You get to live in an apartment and make your place your home. The program is filled with awesome field trips, workshops, and tastings! Worth every penny and the memories you make are priceless! Highly recommend this program especially if you are majoring in either. Even if you're not, these courses are insightful and fun! The anthropology class is highly recommendable with full dinners every so often. Overall this program is fantastic whether this is your first time abroad or not.

I absolutely loved every part of studying abroad in Perugia. It was amazing to get to live in a very real part of Italy where tourists were few and far between and you could get to know your local shop owner. I wish I could be back there now eating at my favorite restaurants and having an afternoon gelato. The city of Perugia is absolutely beautiful and filled with so much history, I loved walking around in the afternoon and exploring all it had to offer.
My classes at the Umbra Institute were also incredible. I learned so much about Italian history and culture, wine, sustainability and even felt comfortable speaking Italian before I left.
I highly recommend this program to anyone who wants an authentic Italian experience and is passionate about food. I wish I were there now!

The best part of Umbra's program in Perugia is the city itself. It's beautiful, charming and historical but isn't dangerous like bigger Italian cities can be. By the end of my four months, I was recognizing different people on the streets. The program itself is great, with one of the highlights being the weekly, hour-long tandems to improve our Italian and also make friends. One of the downsides washow late some of the cultural immersion programs startes and a lack of clarity about the language levels that were offered. Overall, I loved my time here and all the opportunities to connect with the community that Umbra offered.

Ever since I heard that studying abroad was an option I had my heart set on Italy. It didn’t really matter where exactly in Italy, just as long as I was there. When I first met with my advisor we went over the different programs and I began looking at pictures of the town I had chosen. I had no idea at the time how much that city would come to mean to me. I studied in a small town called Perugia, which is located between Florence and Rome in the region of Umbria which borders Tuscany. Little did I know, this would turn out to be the perfect city to call home for a semester. We all quickly fell in love with this town because of its small size and large student population, both local and international. My friends and I quickly adapted to the Italian lifestyle and met for a cup of coffee every morning before class and would attempt to use our broken Italian as we built relationships with the locals. The first class every morning was our Italian class, then we would all meet for lunch on the steps of the center of town. After lunch we attended our other classes, which all had an aspect of community involvement. Luckily we only had class Monday through Thursday which left us a long weekend to explore. Some weekends we would stay in town and walk around and really get to know the city we were living in. Other weekends we would take the train and visit other cities. I got to visit Venice for Carnival; I saw Florence in spring and stopped in Bologna for a daytrip. In addition we got to see the Amalfi coast and swim and cliff dive in Capri. I visited the Vatican while we were exploring Rome and explored countless cities during my semester abroad. Living in Italy was an unforgettable and life changing experience which not only broadened my worldview but also deepened my love of cultures and languages.

Every morning, I would wake up to a beautiful view and there was always ongoing action. Perugia is a beautiful and quaint city that is perfect for college students to immerse themselves in the culture and feel safe at any time.

Studying abroad in Florence, Italy was the best experience in my life. From living so close to the Duomo, being able to walk to my school and experience the culture firsthand was amazing. I felt extremely safe as I would always travel in groups, and the staff provided us with many useful tips on how to get around. I would wake up in the morning, go to the local bakery outside my apartment to get an espresso, walk to school, complete my classes, and walk home and cook dinner with my friends. At night, we would often go out to the clubs. Florence had an amazing social scene. As for school, my teachers all were extremely nice and helpful and seemed to care about they students. I would study abroad again in one second.

In September of 2013, I landed in Florence and did a full academic year at Accademia Italiana. Being a fashion major, this was an amazing fit for me personally but I was also able to connect with students from a diverse range of concentrations, including graphic design, interior design, and art history. I never realized how fully I had immersed into my life in Italy until a comment from my wonderful Pattern Drafting professor caught my attention. She responded to a request for me to move my seat by saying: "But she always sits there!" Having been there only one semester, I was already a fixture in university life and always found the staff welcoming and helpful.

In addition to their great art and design courses, Accademia Italiana offers Italian language courses to all of its students. I've studied Italian since high school and this was an amazing chance for me to practice
my skills and really dive into learning conversational Italian. Though my speech still isn't perfect, after spending a year in Florence I can understand almost everything I hear, which is a huge improvement from how I was when I landed. Accademia also offers separate weekend trips that are free for students and go to different cities including Rome, Sorrento, Siena, and more; independent travel is also extremely easy to organize.

Summing up an entire year of living in Florence is incredibly hard to do. All in all, Arcadia and Accademia Italiana gave me the opportunity to really establish a life abroad. I was not simply a student going overseas to party and mingle only with other American students, I became a resident in Florence and learned more about the city and its culture than I ever expected and made lasting friendships that are still going strong almost another year later.

The program at Accademia Italiana, Florence was wonderful. I was a junior in college when I decided to study abroad so I didn't have enough classes available to take a full semester, I did however get to take this shorter two month program. It is shorter than the full semester programs but the staff made sure to pack in so many wonderful experiences. Traveling as a group, and visiting local restaurants and sights, the staff made sure we were safe and having a great time. Since it was a summer program we were allotted a great amount of free time to travel around europe, the staff was always willing to help us arrange trips and give us tips and resources. As an art student with a minor in art history my favorite part was my art history class. Although our class was solely focused on Michelangelo our teacher took the opportunity to take us to a ton of museums and show us all of the important pieces central to florence and italy as a whole. This was a life changing experience I loved every second of it!