Classes Begin

    For the past several days we have been on a crash course on the Italian language. In all, we will have devoted ten days (straight through, including weekends) to learning the language and culture as quickly as possible. Hopefully, by the end, we will have enough to get us started so that we can spend the rest of the semester learning from casual conversations with the locals. Our teacher was sent over from the main campus in Clemson to live here in the guest room while she teaches our class. She is acting as the interim chair of the school of language and is also an Italian professor for Clemson. With 4 hours of class each day, we have had plenty of time to go out into the city and explore. That will probably end today (well, at least during the week days) because studio is kicking off. Prof. Sill (our studio professor) is a German engineer who has worked all over the world under some big name engineers. He will be focusing our architecture studio on the details and technicalities required to produce good design. I'm looking forward to this because many of our studio classes in undergrad focused so heavily on design that we didn't learn much about the art of design the small parts of the building. These minute details are what separates the "act of building" from "architecture" itself.

We will find out today what the focus of the semester will be about (as far as a specific project is concerned) so I will post about that when the time comes. 

    Also, we have been taking lots of pictures, and have several albums to post to Facebook (both Lindsey and myself) as soon as we get the chance to do it. When we do, we will post links on our blogs to those albums so you will know when to go check them out (and so that those of you who do not have Facebook can view them as well). In the meantime, here is a teaser:

(I took this shot on one of the first days we were here. 

This is one of the old gates of the city.)