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London & Florence: Arts in Context

London, England & Florence, Italy

Living arrangements

Accommodations in London

In London, students are housed as a group in dormitory-style rooms with separate kitchen facilities. Students will be free to arrange lunches in accordance with each day’s activities, to take evening meals at local restaurants or pubs, or to share cooking with fellow students. The location is convenient to transit, food stores, bakeries and coffee shops. It's central to all of the city, with easy access to London's theatres, parks, markets and cathedrals.

ACM Florence student Stephanie Nordstrom,

on her host family experience

Video courtesy of Kellie Griffin

Homestay in Florence

In Florence, students live in Italian homes, where they take breakfasts and dinners. Host families reflect the diversity of Italian households and include parents with children as well as widows whose grown children have left the home. Some live closer to the city center than others, but few live in the old center itself.

London & Florence: Arts in Context

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Mariko Conner While I've discovered plenty about myself, my academic interests, and the world on my home campus, Florence taught me something that I think I had to leave the academic pressure cooker in order to learn: the good life. The classes on the off-campus program were interesting and engaging, of course, but so many of the most valuable experiences I took away from my experience happened outside the classroom: chucking the tourist guidebook in favor of street art south of the Arno; hopping on a train for a spontaneous day trip and finding the best gelateria (hint: it's in Prato); three-hour dinners, senza guilt. To my deeply-ingrained, American sensibility of "hurry up and overachieve," it was challenging, disorienting, strangely and wonderfully aimless. I didn't realize how deeply my sense of what I "have" to do with my life would be challenged, and how eternally grateful I am for that.

—Mariko Conner, London & Florence, Spring 2010

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