I decided to take a painting course while studying abroad in Florence, Italy. I have always been interested in creating art, but I never felt like I had the opportunity to pursue it. My class was small—less than 20 students—and we were all on an introductory level. On the first day, the professor took us out of the studio and into the city to buy our own art supplies. While it is typical to purchase your own textbooks in college classes, it was a new experience to go out with my classmates and buy what we needed for the class; it almost felt like a field trip. Trips like this ended up... Read More
Pitt Global Experiences Students' Blog
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As a picky eater for the first nineteen years of my life, I would agree that food is the window to the soul. My particularity about what I eat definitely reflected my stubbornness and specificity for my life choices. Like with my food preferences, I was always a bit rigid and stressed out easily when things outside of the norm occurred. I am so glad to say that this experience in Berlin changed that. I felt that as I grew to be a more open and flexible person, my food palate also expanded. Something that remained the same, though, was my affinity for eating out much too often. Even in... Read More
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For Engineering the German Way, everyone in the program stayed in the Living Hotel in Munich. The rooms were meant for two people to share, with each person having their own twin size bed. We all stayed on the same floor only a couple of doors away from each other. Each hotel room had two twin beds, a bathroom, small kitchenette, closet space, one desk, and a safe. The kitchenette had a mini fridge, stove, sink, pots and pans, plates, and utensils. This was very convenient for being able to cook meals in our room without needing to buy any cooking ware ourselves. The hotel also had a... Read More
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I was really nervous about talking to people in Belgium because I had never been abroad. Plus, I didn’t really know their languages too well. I took four years of French classes in high school, but that wasn’t terribly helpful because we were mostly in the northern part of Belgium that spoke Dutch. However, there wasn’t really anything to be afraid of.
I was hoping to at least make it to the meeting with my class without having to talk to anyone or make a fool of myself. Sadly, that didn’t even happen. I didn’t even make it to Belgium before it happened. I landed in the... Read More -
The housing for my specific program was all apartments. My program leaders saw it as a way to fully immerse us into the culture and lifestyle of Italy, so we lived in apartments all across Florence. I had 7 roommates, which was the most that one could have. At first this overwhelmed me, as I had never lived with a roommate before—much less 7 strangers. When we arrived in Florence, we stayed at a hotel the first night while our apartments were being prepared for our arrival. It was there that I met 2 of my eventual roommates, and we instantly got along very well. They were just as nervous... Read More
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When planning to travel abroad, the essentials always come to mind first. Whether it's your favorite pair of socks, a specific kind of toothpaste that you always have to use, or a hoodie that holds significant value to you, everything has its place within your suitcase. Things like your passport and ID will always travel with you, but I’ve found that it’s mental preparation that catches you off guard before something you forgot to pack. For example, while traveling to Belgium, I accounted for the six hours of sleep I would lose by staying busy all day and crashing hard onto the hotel bed... Read More
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One of the main reasons my trip was so memorable was because of the amazing people I met on the trip. For our program we were assigned 4 German buddies that helped us explore and be familiar with Munich and take us to the activities planned for us. Our 4 buddies were students in the school we were attending in the master’s program. From the first day when they picked us up at the airport, we quickly became friends with them. They were so much fun having around and took us to the best activities such as a day trip to Austria, eating döner for the first time (best meal of the whole trip!),... Read More
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Ever since I was a freshman in high school, I have wanted to travel the world. That year, I took my first French class, and I started really getting into European soccer. I was already fascinated by Roman and Greek mythology from history and literature classes as well, and I loved my world cultures class in middle school. Freshman year was when I truly recognized how much I wanted to see of the rest of the world.
I thought I was going to get my first chance to go abroad to France in high school with my French class, but staffing changes prevented that from happening. I thought I... Read More -
Not only is food the window to the soul, food is the backbone of culture and will define your experience abroad. Every culture develops a cuisine influenced by the environment and tastes of the people and cultural groups who call the area home. While we often think of things like barbecue and burgers as “American” cuisine, a trip down any street will display a variety of restaurants and eateries with roots all across the globe. Every culture develops its staples based on what is available and can be made into a delicious meal, or what warms the heart and soul while providing nourishment to... Read More
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The best thing about Engineering the German Way Program was that everyday was completely different and exciting. Every morning we would get up early and either cook breakfast or walk to the bakery close to our hotel to pick up croissants and pretzels and other delicious pastries. Munich also had the most delicious orange juice I have ever tasted, and I craved it every morning. During the week our class schedule was different every day, but we would usually start class at 9am. We either had one, two, or three lectures and whenever we had few lectures in the morning it meant we had a very... Read More