UGA at Oxford - The Oxford and Cortona Partnership : Reviews (Cortona)

The workload was very challenging, especially coming after Oxford directly. I do understand that it was a semester worth of work in 3 weeks, but at time it felt really difficult to finish/do anything with quality given the time. I think this would have been a bit different if I had any background in the subject my class was on, but everything was new so I really didn't have much to go off of. I also think it would have been great if there was more continuity between the three tutors teaching the European History class. Everything was kind of disconnected so it made the crunch time assignments even harder because they were done with very little context.

The house in Cortona was very nice. The Angels were amazing and even drying our clothes on the clothesline was fun.

Cortona was a great city to get to know the locals and learn about Italy. One lady also gave Italian lessons which was really cool.

I participated in the Italian conversation tables, but this was not advertised enough to Oxford students, so I was often there alone.

There aren't a ton of young people in Cortona so it was a little hard to build a network outside of UGA.

Future participants should be aware that they will be instructed by Oxford Tutors while in Cortona, in some instances with the same amount of work in a shorter time frame.

Learn at least a little Italian. Showing that you are putting in effort to interact with people and their culture goes a long way to making your everyday experience more pleasant and fun.

Be sure you take time to explore where you are and enjoy Italy.

Every student who attends the UGA at Oxford program should take this amazing opportunity to spend an additional three weeks in Cortona, Italy. This program did an incredible job at showing us the cultural differences between the U.K. and Italy through group excursions and other cultural experiences.