My name is Carlie Lingefelt, and I visited Italy to study abroad during the summer of 2014.  My favorite part of the trip was meeting people from Italy who I thought would be totally different from me, but instead we shared the same thoughts and opinions about life we just communicated them differently! A communication strategy that helped me while communicating with the Italian people was listening. Listening played a huge part in being able to understand the Italian people. If I were to give advice to anyone studying abroad it would be: Go in it with an open mind! Don’t let preconceived thoughts get in the way of your communication skills. People would be really surprised about what they could learn from others in different cultures. If you go into the experience with an open mind you can learn so much more! Also, try everything you can and live it up, you may never get that experience again! I did not experience a lot of culture shock, which allowed me to enjoy my time in Italy even more.