Amanda Earley

 My name is Amanda Earley and I am a student in the class of 2010. I am a Fine Arts and Sociology double major from New Ipswich, NH. In 2008, I spent my junior fall semester studying abroad in Florence, Italy.

Being a Fine Arts major, the Italy program was ideal for me. While in Florence, I lived with a wonderful host mother who was great about immersing me in the culture and helping me with my Italian.

I took one semester of Italian before studying in Italy, but Italian is not required for this program, in fact many of my classmates were quite new to the language. While in Florence we were all required to take an intensive course in Italian which met eight hours a week. This helped us with our language skills and prepared us for speaking Italian outside of class when walking around the city.

I took four courses while abroad. To my surprise I especially loved my Italian Arts: Antiquity to Michelangelo course. We met for this class twice a week - one lecture class and one fieldtrip. In art history classes in the States I would listen to lectures and stare at slides in the dark for a few hours, but being able to visit museums and piazzas with the original artworks was a dream for me; it was incredible.

Classes did not meet on Fridays, so we were able to travel both with the school and on our own. I learned a lot about how to find my way around cities and countries unfamiliar to me. This experience was my first time traveling outside of the States and I was able to see many places in Europe.

I strongly recommend looking into the Florence abroad program, especially if you are interested in the arts. I love St. Lawrence, but studying abroad has been my favorite college experience thus far. Please feel free to contact me with any questions. Ciao!