4/10/2022 0 Comments HousingCiao ragazzi!
This week I will be talking about options for housing while abroad, particularly in the Sorrento GO Long program. While abroad I decided it would be best for me to live in an apartment, but I wanted to take a moment to discuss the other housing options as well as the pros and cons for each. Here in Sorrento we had three options for housing: dorms, apartments, or host families. I have friends who live in each of the three categories and today's article will be based on both their experiences and my own. First, I want to talk about living with a host family! I know sic girls in my program who live with host families, 2 to each house, and four of them have had the best experience. They love their families, they love living completely immersed in Italian culture. Two of the girls have a dog and a cat in their host family, which they have said makes them feel a little less homesick for their pets. The also have host siblings in their mid-twenties which is so fun because they are close enough in age to really become friends. One of their host sisters is even pregnant and has invited them back to meet the baby when it is born! Both sets of girls in these host families have formed immensely strong bonds with their host parents. They eat home cooked meals with them every night and have come to think of them as a true second family. Along with these obvious positive aspects to living with a host family, there are of course a few negative. My friends living in host families do live a bit further away from the school and town, sometimes making it hard for them to do things with the rest of us. They also have not gotten the experience of living independently in a foreign country as much so as the rest of us have. The two girls who did not have an ideal host family experience ended up switching to an apartment early on in the semester, but they said they were glad they tried it out. Despite a few possible downsides, living with a host family seems amazing and I would absolutely try it if I ever went abroad again. Next, the apartments. This is the option I chose for my living arrangements. There are apartments scattered all around Sorrento, each entirely unique from the others. My apartment sits about twenty minutes from school, but close to the grocery store and the train station. One of the largest perks to living in an apartment is independence. You really learn how to live, cook and clean on your own. I live with four other girls in my apartment and I got really lucky with how well we all get along. Another good aspect of the apartments is that there are singles available so I live in my own room, but even if I didn't I think I would be fine since I love my roommates. Another perk of the apartments is how close some of them are to the stores or the train station, or even the center of town. People in the dorms and host families have to walk a lot farther to go shopping or go to the bars. This being said, the apartments can be a hike from school. It takes me about ten minutes to walk to my internship and twenty to walk to class. The independence aspect can sometimes be a negative as well. When appliances break in the apartment it is up to us to call our landlord and walk them through the issue and see if they can fix it. We also do not have a meal plan in this program so without host parents to cook for us we are in charge of making all of our own meals. This has definitely helped me mature and grow though and while the other living situations also seem amazing, I think the apartment was just right for me. Finally, the dorms. The biggest positive of the dorms is the social aspect. In the dorms there is one large communal kitchen so people really get to know each other even if they do not live in the same room. I think living in the dorms definitely would have made making friends easier, however it is always possible to make friends as long as you put yourself out there. Another largely positive aspect of the dorms is their proximity to classes. They are in the same building as every class so all you have to do is walk down the stairs. As with the other two options there are, of course, some negative aspects. Sharing a kitchen as well as washing machines can get frustrating. The dorms are also a hike from the train station snd grocery store so any time you travel you have to haul your bags the twenty minutes to the station and and any time you go food shopping you have to carry your groceries the twenty minutes back home. The dorms are still an amazing place to live though, and all of my friends who do live there love it. After going through all of the options for housing in the Sorrento program, the general consensus is that no option is better or worse than the others. They all have positive and negative aspects and you really just have to pick the option that is best for you. I hope this helped anyone struggling to choose a housing option abroad! Thanks for reading! ~Meg
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