i have an apartment for the fall, a place that i suspect americans would call 'cute', that being the default euphemism for anything not obviously horrid yet too hard to describe. it's a studio in a quiet neighborhood three blocks west of where the frat houses are (a sufficient buffer, i hope). the first few apartments that we viewed were more suited for undergraduate living -- and those who have been to college in the states will know what i mean. the mother, however, was quite unprepared for the squalor, and quite mortified that human beings could live under such conditions. it's a cultural thing. there's a magic window somewhere in the transition from undergraduate to graduate life where students suddenly discover that possessions don't have to be kept in piles on the floor, and that vacuum cleaners, well, exist. most students, anyway.