Jan 30 -- University

About the University of Perugia: Shelly and I are working with a group at the Ingegneria (DIEI) which is not at the downtown campus but rather in Santa Lucia which is on the outskirts. We have found a walking route there which takes about 40 minutes each way (uphill on the way home, so a bit longer).
Shelly will start teaching a PhD course there this week on proof techniques and logic, so that will keep her out of trouble. Late this week I'm off to Barbados for a workshop and in March we will both go to Bertinoro for a workshop. So, work is going well -- the group we are visiting here (Beppe, Emilio, Walter and Carla) is very accommodating and productive. And hard-working. They are now between semesters and don't have serious teaching duties again until late February. We go for lunch together every day to a local pannini bar and usually manage a quick coffee or 2 during the day. The Italian system is quite different from what we are used to, for example on a recent first year programming final exam, only 20% of the class passed -- and that is considered normal! There are 2 reasons for such a low success rate: students are allowed to retake final exams up to 6 times, and there are no entrance requirements allowed for engineering -- any student has the right to try to succeed. Tuition is very low and there is high unemployment for young people, so there are lots of students. There are also deep cuts happening to universities and research grants.

the cappuccino brothers

probably not what you are thinking....

between DIEI and the coffee shop

DIEI

Jan 17

flaming dessert

soaking up sunshine

northwards

a quick coffee on Corso Vanucci

Settling in to the Italian lifestyle now. Suppers at 8 and quick coffees throughout the day. Lots of very wonderful restaurants -- we had to take a break last night from all the pasta so we went to the only Greek restaurant in town.

Perugia is a lovely little town with an elevated metro system that connects 1 end to the other. We've been walking mostly, sometimes for 2 or 3 hours per day. And it is a hilltop village, so one is always either going up, or down -- not many contour lines to follow. Most of the paperwork is done now, but we still need a visit to the police to get fingerprinted and to another office to get our "permesso di sigorno" -- then we will be legal.

Some friends visited last week -- partly for work, but also gave us a chance to explore. Shelly and Karen took a bus to a nearby town -- Todi, and enjoyed the excursion. Henk and I worked at the university and discovered a new route to walk to there -- about 45 minutes.

Made it safely to Perugia -- a long trip but no delays. The apartment is nicer than we expected with only a few nuisances: some traffic noise, hard cold marble floors, no internet.
Had lamb cutlets and ravioli for supper last night and our landlady took us grocery shopping today, so we are stocked up and eating well.