My name is Lauren Ollis. I am a sophomore at the College majoring in Marketing and International Business, with a minor in Italian Studies. This spring, I am studying in Taormina, Sicily at Babilonia Language School. I chose this specific program because I wanted something different. I wanted to live in a small town that didn’t have too many tourists and be able to work on my language skills. While…
The easiest way to describe Carnivale is basically as the early-spring Halloween. Everyone is dressed up as their favorite movie character or animal, there’s food vendors with sweet treats barely visible due to the mass of kids surrounding them, and colorful decorations line the streets symbolizing the occasion. In reality however, Carnivale is much more chaotic and definitely much more fun. Instead of kids running from house to house trick-or-treating,…
Most days in Siracusa, Sicily (or Syracuse) if I don’t feel like making breakfast I start my morning by going to the local cafe next to my apartment called Cafetiamo. Here I always order an espresso or a cappuccino, and a croissant filled with Pistachio Crema. After breakfast I head to the school for one of my two classes either Mediterranean Food Systems or Marine Ecology and Biodiversity of the…
For our first excursion as a group from Syracuse Academy in Sicily, we journeyed about an hour and fifteen minutes north to hike Mt.Etna. Mt. Etna is the largest active volcano in Europe and has a huge daily, agricultural, and geological impact on life in eastern Sicily. In my Mediterranean Food Systems course we learned of how Mt. Etna is the reason why the surrounding farms are able to produce…
