Hello Everyone, it’s Sara here. Hope you are all doing well, I know I sure am:) Florence, Italy is treating me and my peers just great and we have learned and explored so much in the couple of days that we have been here. Today, we had the opportunity to go on a walking tour with our wonderful tour guide Fabio, who works at FUA which is Florence University of Arts. During our walk, we got to take a deeper dive into classical music. Fun fact if you did not know, Florence is actually the birth of opera music. Of course, we know art goes way back to the very beginning, but music hasn’t always been a mix of all forms. With that being said, during the Renaissance, that was the revival of classical art. During the second parts of the 1500’s, artists created artworks of various forms such as statues and so on. This then started to reflect the ancient Greeks and they wanted to combine the ultimate show which included art, acting, music, singing, and all forms of music into one. In 1581, guidelines were created that these shows had to include all sorts. I noticed a quote that Fabio kept mentioning during our tour was that there are no lyrics without music. So lyrics and music should be hand and hand and that lyrics should express the feeling as so does the music. This laid down the basics for the new show which is where music started to begin. Opera became the most important form of entertainment in European culture and suddenly composers were demanded all over.

During my stay here, my peers and I have been taking a course at FUA, which again, is Florence University of Arts. The course that I decided on taking was Fashion Retail Management, which is a class that is completely different from anything I have taken, which has really made me realize how much I enjoy the fashion industry. For the first week of class, I have gotten to visit the Gucci Gardens and to understand the layout of luxury stores such as Gucci Gardens. This was such a neat experience to see how a designer store operates and how it attracts its customers to buy such expensive products. My professor, Livia, who is from Florence, is truly such an inspiration to me and in these short few days here, I have grown a relationship with her as well as some classmates that I have met while taking the Fashion Retail Management class with. It’s so nice to be able to meet these students that are from all over the United States and hear stories from the places that they grew up in. I think that my favorite part of meeting new people is hearing their background stories and learning about who they are.

For my peers that I came with from IUE, it has truly been so fun learning about each and everyone of them. I have noticed that day by day, I am starting to see everyone open up and connect with one another. We are almost a week down and they say time flies when you are having a good time and to never take anything for granted, which I know every single one of us are soaking everything we can up and to truly merge ourselves into the Italian culture.