As I sat at my desk studying for final exams, I couldn\u2019t help but look forward to summer. No class, free time, hanging with friends. Except the summer before senior year isn\u2019t like that. I\u2019m taking a summer class, working a job, and most of my friends are staying at their colleges for class and job opportunities. I miss those carefree days in high school were we were blinded with happiness and boredom.<\/p>\n
But this summer will be different from the last. I am studying abroad in May in Cortona, Italy on the Viticulture and Enology trip. I had the pleasure of being taught by Dr. Frank in my FYOS where he talked about the Cortona trip and I thought \u201cYep, I am gonna do that.\u201d Freshman year flew by and I was too nervous to take the dive across the pond. Sophomore year, my brother was getting married so I kinda had to be there. This was the time to do it. When I asked my parents and told them it was about winemaking, they laughed but also agreed that it would be great experience for my career path.<\/p>\n
Over Spring Break, I had the incredible opportunity to travel to Scotland. Our class in food insecurity explored food poverty issues in Dumfries as well as Athens. There were 10 students and 2 professors, giving me a huge comfort since this was my first time out of the states. I loved every second, even the haggis.<\/p>\n
But Italy was different. I knew no one going on the trip. Italians speak Italian. A whole new currency. The only kind of familiar thing was knowing I already liked pizza. It was daunting realizing I would be gone for 3 and a half weeks. The longest I had been away from home minus college was a week. How do you even pack for a month long trip? I had so many questions, so much worry. But I knew this would be good for me. I am not a risk taker. I like routine, I like comfort. Taking a risk for me is trying chicken tacos when I normally get shrimp. But after a hard junior year, I realized it was good for me to get out of my comfort zone. I want to see the world and find secret places. I may not ever want to go sky diving, but this is a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I sat at my desk studying for final exams, I couldn\u2019t help but look forward to summer. No class, free time, hanging with friends. Except the summer before senior year isn\u2019t like that. I\u2019m taking a summer class, working a job, and most of my friends are staying at their colleges for class and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":227,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,35,28,32],"tags":[67,74,79],"class_list":["post-1757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-faculty-led","category-italy","category-viticulture-and-enology","tag-cortona","tag-maymester","tag-pre-trip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/227"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1757"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1763,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1757\/revisions\/1763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}