I have arrived!

I arrived in Milan Malepensa Airport on Sunday evening and from there slowly made my way into the city~ It was a very strange feeling to finally be in the place I had researched for so long and it sort of felt like I was about to meet an old friend and a stranger at the same time...

I am staying with a lovely Italian family for the first few weeks, lodging in the hostess's daughters' room. The NABA course does not start until February 28th. so I am here studying an Intensive Italian course at the Scuola de Leonardo before the semester begins.

It has been very amusing to communticate with the people here and to overcome the language barrier. Even though I am a fluent Spanish speaker (which is quite similar to Italian) there are still alot of words and frases that are compleytely different.  I have to admit that my Italian is still pretty poor but I am only on my 4th day and am confident that I can grasp the language by the time the NABA course begins.

Because I am going to be living here for quite a long period of time,  I feel it is a very different approach to when just visiting a city. Even though I am in one of the most cultural cities of Europe, the first things I did when I arrived was to work out the metro system, find my way to the school campus and adopt a local supermarket. For me, it was about first immersing myself in the everyday life here and then I could begin to discover its more cultural side like the Duomo cathedral and all Milan's art museums.

I feel that I have stepped into the rythm of life here very easily. Milan is a wonderful city and the people I have encountered so far have made me feel very at home already. I have found that the city has a great mix of people from all over the world, there is a great diversity in the students and that gives the whole place a very rich feeling.

I am very much looking forward to my five months here, integrating myself within the artistic community, meeting and interacting with people from all over the world, and exploring my artistic practice in a completely different culture!