Even though I have only lived in Italy for one month, the JSB program has allowed me so many unforgettable experiences. Here are a few of the important lessons I have learned thus far: how to navigate a new city using only a paper map, learning survival Italian is completely essential, I unknowingly needed 14 new best friends, and travel on the weekends with  abandon.
For our first free weekend of personal travel, my friends and I decided to pack up and head to Paris. We woke up at 4:30am to catch our flight, and arrived to our wonderful hotel at the mere hour of 9:00am. We almost had an entire three days to explore the city, and we were not going to waste it. We immediately began wandering with our new best friend- the map of Paris. We explored boutique shops we could never afford, stopped in hole-in-the-wall antique stores, and drooled over the amount of pastries in every bakery window. Paris was everything I imagined and more. We visited sights that I had longed to see such as Monet’s paintings, Notre Dame, and the Eiffel Tower. Spending the weekend in Paris with my best friends is something that I will never forget.
JSB trusts us to travel on our own, and I am extremely grateful for that freedom. I am not only gaining learning experiences from the Italian culture, but from the other countries I visit as well. Personal travel while studying abroad has opened my eyes to what the entire world has to offer.
Taylor Moore

Friends at the Eiffel Tower – Paris, France