Skip to main content

My Favorite Places




















When I visited Europe with my dad a few summers ago, I thought my favorite country would be France. By the time we left, however, I found my new favorite country: Italy. I returned the next spring on a school trip and had a chance to see more cities throughout the country. On my first trip, I visited Rome and Venice; on the second, I returned to those cities and also got to see Florence, Assisi, and Ravenna. Although I can honestly say I love every place I've visited in Italy, the two cities that particularly stand out are Florence and Venice. "Firenze" and "Venezia" are both filled with history and culture, and yet they are vastly different from one another. I love them for very different reasons. Florence is filled with red brick buildings, random plazas, and Renaissance architecture. Venice, on the other hand, is filled with canals, bridges, and storefronts lining the small sidewalks. Thanks to my two trips to Europe, I have found my favorite country and favorite cities.


Image of Florence Duomo taken by Shawn Harquail. Source: Flickr
Labels:

Comments

  1. Laura GibbsAugust 23, 2018 at 3:20 PM

    I am such a fan of the cities of Italy too, Shea! I did my graduate degree with a professor who taught at the University of Siena and also at Berkeley (where I went to school)... which was a great excuse to go to Italy! And if you are interested, there are so many Italian possibilities for projects in this class... even a whole collection of legends about the city of Florence itself: Legends of Florence by Charles Godfrey Leland. That might be something fun to explore when you are brainstorming project topics next week! Here are some more Italian story resource books online too!

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownOctober 25, 2018 at 11:01 PM

    Italy is such a beautiful country. I’m glad that you had such a great time there! I just read your introduction and saw that you are minoring in Italian. It is great that you were able to visit a place and create such a passion for it that you wanted to study their language. That will definitely be beneficial the next time that you visit. Any plans in the near future for another visit?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Wall

Visit my Storybook to read my stories and then leave comments here! Constellation from  Max Pixel
16 comments
Read more

Introduction to Shea "Campus Involvement" Penning

Hello! My name is Shea Penning and I'm excited to meet you! I am a junior majoring in Advertising and minoring in Italian. I was born in Texas, have lived in Nevada and California, and was raised in Edmond, Oklahoma. I don't know exactly what I want to do once I graduate, but right now I think I'd like to continue my education at a portfolio school and study graphic design. One of my favorite parts of college has been getting involved on campus! I got involved in Soonerthon Exec my freshman year in the Ambassador (aka fundraising) committee. I joined the same committee the next year as a team captain. If you are unfamiliar with Soonerthon, it is OU's official philanthropy for the Oklahoma City Children's Hospital Foundation and ends with a huge dance marathon in March. Last year, we raised over $1 million FTK (For the Kids)! Picture of me at Soonerthon 2018. Personal image. Soonerthon falls under Campus Activities Council, which is the programming branch ...
29 comments
Read more

Story Lab: TED Talk Videos

For this Story Lab, I watched Ted Talks about stories and storytelling . The first video is the TED Talk of a woman named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Nigeria. From a young age, she has been a storyteller. She read foreign books for much of her childhood and based the stories she wrote based on what she read in these books. She eventually discovered books and she learned that writers could look like her. When she came to university in the United States, her roommate was surprised to learn Nigeria has English as an official language and that she was familiar with many of the comforts of American life. She believes people like her roommate have a view of Africans because of writing that portrays them as living in a dark place. When Chimamanda wrote a book, her professor told her the book was not "African enough" because the characters were similar to him, a middle-class man, and they drove cars. When she visited Mexico, she realized she saw the people there as poor immigran...
Post a Comment
Read more