At School and at Home.

So! – Update . . . At this point, Uni is 3 weeks underway. I’m taking four subjects, a design subject, an environment and building subject, “urbain sociology” and “geometry of surfaces.” – All four of the subjects at this point seem to be doing the right things – (at least I understand them to be doing the right things)

I’ve got professors that can slowly tease out their sentences, bringing their ideas to the classroom over a matter of hours. Others that have so much to say all at once, that they seem to be in a perpetual state of verbal outpour, and others still, who passionately uphold their right to smoke in class, casually emphasizing their phrases with an angled cigarette in hand - the room gradually filling with smoke.

As for the school itself, the architecture faculty is nestled in a very impressive network of carved stone buildings, just across the Seine from the Louvre.
Just about any stone surface that could have been intricately carved on the buildings has been. The walkways are covered in mid-nineteenth century mosaics, and to clean the marble-carved walls, upwards of 5 conservators are brought in to the school monthly to flit away the dust and cobwebs with short-haired paintbrushes.
-It really is another world!

Home life has turned out to be just as amusing as school. After all the hassles involved in finding a place to stay, I’m now living in a great share-apartment for the next 4 months with Silvia, Paola and Tillia. Silvia and Paola are two girls who have come from Rome, and Tillia from the south of France. –While we don’t really have a very big living room (more of a space in a hallway between the kitchen and bathroom) – the common welcome as you open the door after a day of uni is half a dozen heavy italian accented “Ciaos!” and another 3 or four voices echoing the first group in French with Saluts and Bonjours from the other rooms and kitchen.
In the 2 weeks that I've been here, I've only ever been alone in the apartment once, and even that was only for half an hour. The smell of fresh, strong coffee is always thick in the air, and is usually fighting with the stale cigarette smoke from the night before. The fridge is always full of fresh tomatoes and bottles of green and black olives. And every night there are fresh coffee stains on the bench from the communal kick start of the morning.

All in all, things are going well - but weeks are already starting to disappear quickly, and I've already been here 2 months - Must be having fun:)
Cheers,
Tim.