Day 10- Florence

Today is Saturday the 24th of May. Today we had to ourselves and we used it to explore a place of our choice. Some girls went to Venice and they said that they had an amazing time. They took a gondala ride and made the Gondalier sing to them. They fed the pigeons and had a great amount of fun! The girls who didn't go to Venice, decided to go to the Boboli Gardens. I chose to go to the gardens. I am so glad that I chose to go the gardens because they were absolutely gorgeous. There are many statues and greenery. In the city, where my house is, there is hardly any greenery. It was nice to go to a place and see trees and plants and flowers. In the gardens there are many museums and for only ten Euro you can spend as long as you want and go into the museums. There was a family who actually used to live in this house and they made it into a museum of clothing, fine china, and art. I will be posting pictures of the gardens on so that you can see what I am talking about. I was not able to take pictures inside the museums, but I could of the scenery.

Yesterday, the ninth day of our trip, we all went to Reggio Emilia which is a city in Italy. Reggio Emilia is a famous place in Italy for how the schools go about teaching their children. The children and teachers are on the same level and basically the children come up with the curriculum. For example, the kids were worried that the birds didn't have anything to do and the kids didn't want them to get bored, so the kids designed a bird amusement park and presented their ideas to Architects and the architects built the bird amusement park. The community is heavily involved in the childrens lives inside and outside of school. While we were in Reggio Emilia, we were able to see a model of a play area in Reggio Emilia schools. The schools in Reggio Emilia are very conscience about who they let in their school because the technique they use on the kids is highly liked by many and the people of Reggio were taken advantage of many times by outsiders who claimed in books or articles that these ideas in Reggio schools were their ideas. So we were not able to visity with the kids at the schools. In Loris Malguzzi, the center that teaches outsiders about Reggio Emilia schools, they have photographs of some work that the children have done and we were able to see that. We spent the majority of the day in Reggio Emilia and when we arrived back in Florence we were all so tired that we went to bed.

Thursday, the eighth day of our trip, we had nothing planned except for class. We had class from 9 to 1 and then had the rest of the day for ourselves. We usually have two classes in a day and they are usually from 8 to 10 and again from 1 to 4. Dr. Morrison decided that since we have been working hard and going non stop every day that she would give us the night off. I was so tired from going everyday from early morning to late at night that I came home and took a nap. Around 6pm we all met at the others girls' house for dinner and a discussion about Reggio Emilia. Then we were off to bed because we had to be at the train station at 7am Friday to catch the bus to Reggio Emilia.

A word of advice for future students who study abroad. Check out several exchange places before you choose one because they all charge you different amounts for exchanging. I had a bad experience as well as one of my room mates that really made us angry. I found the best way to exchange money or to get money is to use the atm machines because they don't charge you any extra fees.