University Starts

So on Friday I had a meeting at university. I did my very first commute. This involves leaving the house, out past the artists gallery, past the café already full of old men getting boisterous and the calmer café across the street with the women sipping cafezinhos. I follow the cobbled hill down past the cathedral until I com near Praca do Comercio. Here the bus 60, filled with students, old people – in fact every kind of person – picks me up and takes me through Santos and Ajuda (best tree in Lisbon – great umbrella of green over tables where old men are playing cards) until it drops me off at the Uni. It is an odd place – on the edge of the biggest park in Lisbon, with no other houses, just university buildings. They are all very futuristic, white, with corners that cut into the blue sky. The meeting was brief but comforting. They seem supportive and eager to welcome Erasmus students. Our group is rather small, with French, Italian, Slovakian, German. Two Italian guys are clowns, they are very outgoing and funny. The professors, all speaking in English, are very dignified and look like Roman Gods. After the presentation we took lunch together and found out a little about everyone. It was a surreal situation – my summer has been so long and diverse and tiring in that sense, to be plonked down among new Erasmus students, my friends for the next 6 months, was very surreal.
The uni seems very posh and there is wireless internet everywhere, café tables, an endless hubbub of people talking, diverse students, etc.