March 20, 2008 - If you are aiming for Florence Italy, the absolute best the ultimate way to experience this city is to enroll in a language school. After the Koine Institute there is no other language school in Florence. The innovative and creative teaching methods will stuff knowledge and a vocabulary into your head while you are having fun. With classes averaging six persons while I studied, learning is accelerated. If no one shows up at your level, private lessons are yours without the invoice.

The possibility for success under these conditions increases wildly. Additionally there is no dull conjugating, or memorizing, no nuns rapping knuckles and not once in the whole month was I bored or wishing for classes to end. Teachers are innovative, imaginative and entertaining. Encouraged to use instincts to extract meaning, one’s whole being is engaged. Newspaper articles and surveys contribute to classroom content, even opera is in the curriculum. Knowledge of writers, musicians, politicians, indeed political, and geographical facts are absorbed. One begins to comprehend the passionate Italian persona.

I had the distinction of being the oldest in my class but made fast friends with students younger than my children. From Korea, Germany, Holland, Argentina, Japan, the U.S. and me from Canada, we formed fine friendships. Friendships that go on because of the richness of shared experiences.

Affordable housing, savoury lunches at Koine's little jazz cafe, reduced prices for certain theatrical performances, inside information on Italian eateries, cooking classes, plus day trips into the Tuscan countryside, after school excursions to galleries, churches and museums, essentially the services of a concierge is all available at Koine. Because the teaching body has been at it since the school’s inception, the school is a family and the warmth of family is what you will find. Koine also offers art classes.

So why be a tourist when you can be Italian?