The Best Semester of My Life!

My experience at the IES Milan - Music: Voice, Composition, and Instrumental program was life-changing, filled with amazing opportunities to learn about Italian music, language, culture, and social issues. I studied opera there and received the finest instruction from music professors like Patrizia Zanardi, Anna Fre, and Stefano Pintor. I was able to apply what I had learned in recitals and one-act operas that my fellow students and I presented at IES.. Not only that, but I was also able to learn by attending five La Scala opera productions, four of which were paid for by IES. My Staging Italian Opera class also got to observe a rehearsal at La Scala for Mozart's Idomeneo and tour the opera house's workshops. These opportunities shaped my abroad experience, and I am very grateful to IES for having provided them.

Not only was my music education wonderful, but my other classes were stellar also. For example, I took Service Learning and gained insight into the European migration crisis by volunteering at the Municipality of Milan's immigration office, putting the skills I was learning in the seminar (and in my advanced Italian class) to action. I also volunteered as an English tutor to the social worker I shadowed at this office, helping him better serve the English-speaking migrants who came to the office.

I found all of the staff at IES Milan to be extremely helpful. Whenever I had a question about anything, whether it involved an upcoming IES-sponsored trip or a personal health concern, they always answered my questions and showed that they cared about me. I felt that I was in very good hands for the entire semester.

I lived in a homestay with a very kind and loving Milanese family, and I wouldn't trade that experience for anything, as it was so fun to have younger Italian siblings and to truly immerse myself in the Italian language. My homestay became my home away from home, and in difficult moments I was so grateful to have Italian parents to give me homemade gelato. And the food was incomparable, of course! Nothing in this world is better than a home-cooked Italian meal.

I hope that anyone who reads this will be able to study at IES Milan, especially if you are an undergraduate music student. It was the best semester of my life!