Firenze

I have since moved into Florence to live with a gorgeous Italian family near Porta Romana. After a few weeks of just enjoying the city, seeing the sights by day and going out for drinks with my new Italian friends in the evenings, I finally found a part-time job! I have been working now for a few weeks for a small events and PR company which is a complete dream, I've been helping to organising parties for high-end fashion brands and given that the company is so small I've actually been given a lot of responsibility and my Italian has improved massively.

Florence itself is completely beautiful, it doesn't seem to have changed much since the Renaissance, the father of the family I live with, Donato, told me that Florence is one of the only major cities that hasn't had a big fire (like London 1666 etc) and as a result, there hasn't been much change at all, and the roads are all still only wide enough for horses, having obviously not been built with cars in mind. While this gives the city a real sense of history and is great for tourists as you can actually picture Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo walking down the very same streets, it's not so practical for every day living...think ambulances in rush hour.

One of the best things about living with an Italian family, apart from the obvious language benefits, is that I'm really getting a insight into real Italian life. Especially at the moment with all the political developments, it's really interesting to get an Italian's point of view. Every evening after supper, when everyone else has left the table, Donato and I sit and watch the news and discuss Italian politics. Before I came out here, my best friend's boyfriend told me that the best way to learn Italian was not by getting an Italian boyfriend, as others had suggested, but by befriending someone older as they will be full of interesting stories and won't speak English. While Donato isn't the elderly gentleman that Ben had in mind, more like a surrogate Italian father, he certainly is full of interesting stories and refuses to speak English with me so it does seem to be going to plan!