Summer job in Italy

So to start from the beginning, I'm currently in my first year undergrad studying MSci Physics with International Study at Birmingham. When I went to uni I thought naively that I could learn Italian to a high enough standard from scratch in two years, but when I started language lessons it became increasingly obvious that this was overly optimistic. Nevertheless, I still want to learn Italian, even if I'll have to go somewhere with at least an English-speaking university for my year abroad.

Therefore (this is the important bit, for all those who want to skip the boring part) I thought it'd be exciting to go to Italy for something around a month this summer doing some form of menial work that requires very few language skills but that will mean that I am immersed in Italian culture - being thrown in at the deep end so that I have to learn some Italian!

Where can I look? Is my best bet just to email loads of hotels and places asking for waitressing jobs etc.? Or is there some website that I can look at? Any advice from people who've done similar things?

Thanks in advance for all your help!

Hi, thanks so much for your reply!

I've been half-hearted-ly looking at this for a while, hopefully with the easter holidays and the (small amount of) extra free time i have i can really sort myself out... All the volunteering-y things look great, and so much fun, but being a girl travelling alone it'd be good to have something slightly more official!

Looking at the language assistant course on the website you linked me seemed perfect, but unfortunately they only accept over-21s

I'll keep looking... keeping my fingers crossed!

Thanks again for all your help!

Oh cool, that'd be really helpful! Thank you so much for all your help, it's really appreciated! So you went on the language assistant course? What's it like?