I am so excited to finally introduce my summer 2011 Study Abroad blog to the world! I have been so excited for this moment for so long that I actually started creating and designing this blog page in October of 2010 J The image in the background is of the town of Castellammare del Golfo, Sicily, where my great-grandfather Luca Fontana hails from, and where I will get to spend a week during my stay in Italy this summer J
Tomorrow (June 1) is the day I finally leave the United States to spend eleven weeks studying (and traveling, visiting, etc.) abroad in Italy! I will arrive in Zurich, Switzerland with my friends Maria and Alvaro, where we will meet up with our Italian professor from GCSU, and then poke around downtown Zurich for a few hours before taking the train into Italy. Although I’ve been planning for this trip for about two years, both in my head and with all the logistics on paper, this trip has actually kind of snuck up on me! Before I go any further, I will backtrack so all of my family and friends who I may not have seen in person a whole lot since I first started my Italian studies can understand the how, why, and when that brought me to the place I am at today – physically, academically, etc.
I am actually a French major at GCSU, and listed myself as such when I sent out my college applications in 2008-2009. The summer before I started college, however, I was looking at the courses on the GCSU website when I noticed that my school offered four semesters of Italian courses! Coming from a big Italian family, with a great-grandfather who had himself come to America from Sicily, I had always been exposed to Italian family life and culture and of course, being the foreign language buff that I am, had always wanted to learn the Italian language. I had always said that if I was given the opportunity to learn it, I would take it, because I don’t know when or if it would ever come again.
So I dropped my French 2001 class and signed up for Italian 1001, and also switched my major from French to Mass Communication. I think that was because since I had dropped the French class and added the Italian, I didn’t think I would ever go back to French and thought at that point that a degree in Mass Comm would be more marketable, or something. I really don’t know what I was thinking. But over last Christmas break, after having taken two introductory Mass Comm courses in the fall, I realized I didn’t have the love for that subject that I always had for foreign languages – especially Italian and French. So I picked French back up this past spring semester – as a class and as a major – while still studying Italian.
This study abroad opportunity that I get to take part in this summer goes along with the four-semester Italian language program at my university. I have taken my four semesters of Italian at GCSU and now to further my language study and competency, I am heading off to the motherland to study at the University of Siena for four weeks and University of Milan for six weeks, where I am planning to take a total of four intermediate and advanced Italian language and culture courses, each worth 3 credit hours! I am excited to meet the Italian students and citizens of Siena and Milan, where I will be living, and also the other international students who will be in class with me! It is so strange to me (but pretty cool) that I will actually be considered an international student! I will also be taking part in weekend excursions to places like Cinque Terre, Florence, Pisa and Rome while I am in living in Siena, and to Venice and Verona while I am living in Milan! PLUS a week in Sicily to go visit my extended family in between the Siena and Milan programs! I know, right? I can’t believe this is actually my life!
But I’m not just doing all of this for the heck of it. Like I said before, I am a French major, so I will graduate in 2013 with 42 credits in that language, and hopefully a summer study program in Montréal next year under my belt as well. After I earn my bachelor’s degree in French, I want to do the Master of Arts in Teaching program my university offers, which will give me my teaching certification and a master’s degree in one year. As for my Italian, after this summer I will have taken eight college Italian courses, which will make me eligible to earn teaching certification in that language as well (up north, that is; I don’t think there’s a single high school south of New Jersey that offers Italian), as well as satisfy the prerequisite 24 undergraduate credit hours needed to earn my master’s degree in Italian at a university I am looking at in Connecticut, should I choose to do so. I would really like to work at a high school up there, where I could teach both Italian and French. If I could do that for the rest of my life, I would probably be the happiest person in the world.
So there you have it! I hope you enjoy reading about my summer abroad as much as I am already enjoying sharing my experiences with you! And the Italian/Italian-American music I have incorporated as well J
