little_details

So I've tried googling this but given that it's more of a subjective thing, i haven't had much luck. Mostly just ads.

I'm trying to figure out how hard it would be for a person to learn Swahili. The character has a moderate aptitude for learning languages, but is by no means a savant. This would be in a loosely structured college environment, self study and about 3 hours of class a week, if that helps. Has anyone had any personal experience with the language?

I've done some basic Googling using medieval + university + elizabethan + daily life and variations thereof and have found a few websites (and the Wikipedia entry on medieval universities) that tell me about general university structure and curriculum, but no concrete details on how the students actually lived. This website had an excellent list of links, but half of them were broken. :/ Other websites give me information in medieval university life in the 11th and 12th centuries, which is a little too early for what I'm looking for.

This is a fantasy setting, vaguely European. I've got a 15-year-old boy who's just started university (Wikipedia tells me that they started attending university around 14 or 15; let me know if this is wrong), and I just need to know what his usual day would be like. How large are the classes/lectures? Where does he eat? What's the housing situation; does he have a roommate? Multiple roommates? The story is pretty short and, as I said, it's a fantasy setting, so I can fudge some details, but I don't want to be completely off the mark.

Thanks so much.

Hello, this is another question on one of fiction's most used plot device, amnesia. Kind of long and thorough, this post is.