Have been in Italy for two weeks, lived in a youth hostel for a week and then moved into a single room in a house over the road from the university. The city of Ferrara is beautiful (some Danish person's photos at http://www.norditalien.dk/billedarkiv/ferrara/) but it's amazing how quickly you can get used to a beautiful place, especially when you end up having to spend most of your time in lectures rather than out exploring. Lectures in a foreign language are hard, and I can never be sure that I'll know if there's homework, but I think the staff are quite sympathetic to us and expect a lot less of us in the exams. Any of you who ever thought foreign students had an easy life, try doing it yourself sometime.

Going to Venice for the first time at the weekend. Was surprised to find that I'm not after all the only student here who's never been to this country before. Feel better about that. Spend most of my time with the handful of other British students I've met, one of whom helped me find the place where I'm living now. Advice to future year abroad students, or to people going abroad for anything long-term: arrive earlier rather than later, as it will only help you to find a place to live without serious problems. I think it'll be difficult to make more than a few Italian friends because universities here (in fact, it seems, anywhere other than the UK and US as far as I know) don't have clubs and societies, and most students live with their parents.

Jostein will probably be the only person to visit me here before the new year, unless anyone from Exeter fancies it. There are some very cheap Ryanair flights! I might even be able to come back for Microcon.

User info page horribly outdated, but I don't care very much at the moment. Livejournal has been at the bottom of the priorities list so far, considering how rarely I even look at BBC News online.

Please send me emails! It's very lonely being away from home! My address is on my info page.