I am now done with my study abroad program, Software Engineering in Rome. Through this program I had the amazing opportunity to live in the Trastevere neighnorhood in Rome, which showed Italian culture better than any sort of vacation could. Actually getting to live in the city, explore the corners of it, and have a routine allowed me to get a feel for how life is in Italy. Rome as a city is also much bigger than anywhere I've ever lived before, so I learned alot through that new exposure as well.

During these 10 weeks I studied Software Engineering by condensing two courses of it into one quarter. To accomplish this accelerated learning, we had to put in a lot of work, which came in the form of developing a piece of software in a team of 4. My team created the 'Eat & Greet' app, a way for people to create events, attend them, and make connections with people in their area. You can find out more about this app and see a demo video on my portolio page. Besides these two, I was also enrolled in an Italian language course, which taught me more Italian than I ever could've expected in 10 weeks through immersive learning. Despite having 0 experience with the language, the class was taught almost fully in Italian (unless we asked 'che significa ____?' to understand what an Italian word translates to in English). I learned a lot from these courses, but I also learned plenty of valuable lessons outside the classroom. These include navigating foreign public transportation, how to keep myself company while traveling alone, and ways to spend as little money as possible on a weekend trip. Having had many unique and unfomfortable situations while navigating foreign areas, I've come to learn a lot about myself as well.

My favorite parts about life in Rome were the food, the public transportation, and a bike path that ran along the Tiber river right by where I lived. Enjoying the food was expected, and I'm going to miss it a lot. It was super delicious, and cheap too so I got to eat out a lot more often than I do while in the US. The public transportation was amazing, Rome had busses, trams, a metro system, and a bunch of trains to get around. It made it super easy to get to where we wanted to go, and was almost always quicker than it would've been by car. It really puts into perspective how bad the public transport is in the states, and how reliant on cars most places are. Lastly, the bike path by the Tiber river became the place I frequented most besides my school. Without a gym to go to, I decided to pick up running, and fell in love with it over the course of the quarter. I really enjoyed going up and down the side of the river, and had amazing views of old and historic buildings the entire time I ran. After running so much, I've decided to keep up with it when I go home and will be running my first ever half marathon in January!

I had so much fun over the course of this quarter, and couldn't be happier with how it went. Thank you so much to my Professors Davide & Raffiella, the AIA program for hosting us, my classmates for being such amazing people, and my parents for making this trip possible.