WANTED: Bernards Watch.

Moving into a new bedroom has become quite routine for me over the last year or so (this being my 4th since July 2011), and so moving up to Lancaster into a new house didn't seem anything out of the ordinary.  My parents left, and I've got on with things like I have every other time.

Taking a walk to Williamson Park with my parents felt like I was on holiday, or discovering a new place for the first time again.  The trip to the supermarket to get everything stocked up could've been in Brussels, or even Spain (if it wasn't for the weather...).  Even standing on Alexandra Square yesterday in the rain as the fire alarm rang and rang I don't think it had all quite sunk in... Maybe that has something to do with the fact that, similarly to on my year abroad, I've found myself on my own getting on with things as my housemates aren't arriving until the weekend.

But it's not my year abroad any more is it?  No it's not, and the moment when it really hit home was this evening when I was sat on my bedroom floor surrounded by exec t-shirts, posters, flyers, timetables and plans with a job application open on the screen, my dissertation text open on the desk and my rota for the next two weeks on the fridge. Oh yeah, I'm back alright...

My year away from Lancaster made me appreciate everything that is on offer to me here and only served to fuel my determination to be involved in everything and make the most of every opportunity, a determination that I've had since I started here anyway.  The problem this year is going to be time, I have to face the fact that I simply can't throw myself into everything.  Well, I could, if I had no intention of getting a 2:1.  What I actually need is Bernards watch...

I have a friend from school that this week began her first year of Uni and is blogging her way though being a fresher, (take a look at it here) and also blogged about the lead up to Uni (also here), and it got me thinking about my final year.  If I find Bernards watch I might try and blog my way out of university, what do you think?  I think my road out of university is going to be quite a contrast to her first steps on the road through it, but let's see shall we?

My Stansted Summer, and my last summer as an undergrad!

I realise I have really neglected this blog over the summer, partly through lack of things to write about and lack of time in which to do it!  For those of you that haven't read my last blog and don't know what I've been doing with myself this summer I've been working at Stansted airport on check-in for a rather well known low cost airline.  I weighed up the options of doing internships and getting jobs and even just escaping and going back to Spain for the summer but in the end the money won.  Now the summer is over and my experience at the airport has ended I'm really pleased with the decision I made, I may not have been working at some internship programme for a top graduate employer but the experience I have had I wouldn't have gained anywhere else.

Working at the airport played to the strengths I already had of working in a customer facing environment but took it to a level I've never quite had before.  The most conflict I'd ever had with a customer until now was an angry woman being refused alcohol at Tesco- passengers being asked to pay excess baggage are another kettle of fish entirely!  I've seen everything from tears to yelling, swearing and the contents of a suitcase being angrily flung around the place.  Over the last 12 weeks I have grown a thick skin to people shouting at me for things that aren't my fault and are just the result of the unfair policies held by the airline.

You'd think that after having spent a year abroad I'd be very used to communicating with people that don't speak the same languages as me, but this summer I have well and truly realised the benefits of speaking languages.  Every shift without fail I would speak Spanish, often having my colleagues call on me when struggling to communicate with a passenger.  I also had many an encounter with non English speaking Italians, obviously I don't speak Italian but I think my ability to speak other languages and empathise with them really helped me get on with them that bit better.

I've also been very lucky to have met as many new people as I have this summer and to get to know people outside of my normal home and uni friendship groups.  I've worked with such a variety of people too, from those that are students like me, those that have graduated, those between jobs and those just out of college.

This summer has also given me more of an idea about my plans for after graduation.  I'd been looking into translation previously but I was never 100% behind the idea, mostly because the work is mainly freelance I think, but there must've been something else holding me back.  Working at the airport and seeing how useful my languages have been has opened my eyes to working in travel and tourism, and if I can't find a job in that field I'm looking at some masters courses in London.  Amazing how one summer can make you change your mind.

So now it's back up to Lancaster for what is set to be a packed final year, I know that I'm going to have 10 tonnes of work to do as well as my job and everything else but I plan to make the most of this year, do as much as I can, meet as many new people as I can and take the opportunities that are given to me as I'm never in my life going to have these chances again!

Summer pocket money vs relevant work experience.

As some of you will know, this summer I am working on check-in for a low cost airline at a London airport (My attempts to anonymise this blog later on will be some what futile, but at least I'm making the effort...).  

Originally I was supposed to be working in catering for the Met Police for the Olympics but after waiting for nearly 4 months for my security clearance to come through and with little communication from my employers-to-be I gave up on hearing from them.  I was also offered a volunteer position at the 2012 Olympics, it was a great position as I'd have been paired up with a national team and would've provided support to them by sorting out tickets and things, driving them around and if paired with a Spanish/French speaking team I'd have helped with the language too.  I'd have loved to have taken this position, I know it was a once in a lifetime opportunity but two things stopped me.  Firstly the training was whilst I was still in Granada so I'd have had to have made at least 2 trips back on weekends which would not only be expensive but really inconvenient and also I'd have had to spend money on petrol just to get myself to the tube station everyday.  Watching the Olympics now and seeing other people I know in volunteer positions makes me wish I'd taken the chance, but it would've just been unrealistic.

Before all this I had been looking at internships at translation agencies, I'd been accepted by two, one in Swansea and one in London.  The problem with internships is that whilst you are potentially gaining all sorts of experience in the area you're interested in very few of them will pay you, or even cover your expenses.  When I started to look at how much money I was going to have to spend in order to take up either of these positions I realised that once again, it was just unrealistic.   

And with that the job hunt began again.  As any student looking for summer work will know, finding someone to employ you when you're going to leave them again mid-September isn't the easiest thing in the world.  I applied for jobs left, right and centre and eventually got a phone call from an agency staffing the travel industry.  I went along for an interview and found myself on a waiting list for the last training course of the season in a couple of days time, luckily for me someone else dropped out and so the job was mine.    

A month into the job and I have been shouted and sworn at (although indirectly), called a jobs worth, practised lots of Spanish and a little French and met a lot of new people.  But that's an entirely different blog post!

Bye Bye Facebook. Living disconnected from the social network giant that dominates the web.

Bye Bye Facebook.  Living disconnected from the social network giant that dominates the web.

This weekend I made the decision that others have only dreamed of a few follow through with.

I deactivated my Facebook account.

For me, the principal reason behind this decision was the realization of the inordinate amount of time I was spending on the site.  I’d check it on my phone in the morning, have it open on my laptop no matter what else I was doing it, and flick through it whenever I had nothing better to do.  I was constantly connected to Facebook, and I’m not the only one.  Don’t deny it, you probably do it too.  You’re sat at home, you’re bored, what do you do?  Many of us would choose to have a flick through the news feed, but it doesn’t stop there, we’ll spend ages scrolling right through, or checking out the profile of the new girlfriend of our best friends third cousin twice removed.  Facebook, as we well know, has become the ultimate procrastination.  But has it become more than that?  Are we addicted to Facebook?  If you had asked me this a while ago I would most probably have told you not to be so silly, and that we couldn’t possibly be addicted to the social networking giant.  Now however, I am beginning to change my mind.  If we weren’t hooked on the site, why would we dedicate such a large proportion of our time to it?

Another thing that concerns me about Facebook, although it can be said for any form of communication that doesn’t involve actually talking to people, is the difficulty in communicating exactly what you mean.  A rushed response to a wall post quickly gets misinterpreted and before you know it the situation has spiraled way away from where it began.  On Facebook it is very easy just to quickly reply to a message and put little thought into the words you use or how you may come across to a person that doesn’t know you or the context of what you said.  At least with emails you are more likely to put some more thought into what you’re saying and anyway, it goes directly to the person you are trying to speak to, without the world and his wife butting in and getting the wrong idea.

Deactivating my Facebook account is also serving as a bit of an experiment, I believe that we are now far too reliant on the site and that those that don’t use it are potentially excluded from many opportunities.  My experience with societies at uni is that they tend to use Facebook to set up their events and pass on important messages, few of these groups then back this up with emails, so what happens to the proportion of their members that don’t use Facebook?  These people do exist, I promise you!  They may be international students that have their own version, for example the Spanish tuenti (Looks just like Facebook in every way...).  How do those members know what is going on?  These days Facebook has pretty much eradicated the need to send emails/make phone calls to tell people what we are up to as once we have typed one post it is there for the world to see.  God forbid we should actually need to print our photos to share them, or send a nice email to a friend to catch up.  It’s all on Facebook, so what is the point?

I am almost certain that, like it or not, I am going to have to reactivate my Facebook account by the end of the summer.  Not only because I have a society to commit to, that will be making full use of Facebook no doubt- but also sending emails(!) but because I think that I might well miss out on things in my final year of uni by choosing not to use it.  This is wrong that we feel we have no choice in the matter, but would anyone dare to prove me wrong?  Or join me in saying Bye Bye to Facebook for a while?

I’m really interested in what other people think about this so please get in touch with me! Rebecca.nobes1@btinternet.com

So now what?

One of the biggest problems about coming home from the year abroad is finding something to keep yourself occupied for the 3 months before you have to go back to Uni again to finish it all off.  So far my feet haven't really had the chance to touch the ground, which is just the way I like things to be.

After arriving back in the UK on Friday 22nd I almost immediately headed up to Lancaster for the week for Grad Ball, Extrav (Big end of term event in each college), sort out some bits and pieces and of course see all the people I'd not seen in quite a while.  This didn't go as smoothly as planned as 1.5 hours into my journey I had to call out the AA... Long story short, my car is fine now but my Mum did have to come up in my Nanas car and swap with me so that I could continue my journey northwards.  Grad ball was a really good night, as was Extrav, as ever I think it's about the people that you're with as opposed to what has been organised, it's your night and it is what you make it.  I also attempted to visit the Lakes but managed to pick the day that Kendal flooded and had to turn round and drive right back again...

I got back to Maldon on Sunday evening and had an interview at Stansted airport on Monday morning. Today I've gone and joined the gym and had a call to say I've got the job and training starts tomorrow, as I said- feet never touch the ground for long!  Don't get the wrong impression though, this job hunt hasn't been quite as straightforward as it seems!  I had already been given a job in catering for the police at the Olympics but the company have been less than efficient shall we say and so that was beginning to look less and less likely.  I sent a lot of CVs and applications last week and luckily had this response.

I've also been thinking a lot recently about what I want to do when I graduate, I think this is because of the amount of people I know that are graduating this year and I'm seeing them make their plans and sort out everything for their jobs or courses that they're starting.  People tend to assume that because I study languages it means I'm either going to go into teaching or translation, and I'm not saying that I've not considered either of those options, but equally they're not my only options, in fact, I'm increasingly beginning to consider jobs that have no direct relation to my degree at all, watch this space, I guess I'll have to get looking at applications at some point...

They think it's all over. It is now.

That's it.  Done and dusted.  This time tomorrow I will hopefully be sat at home in Essex, the sunny climbs of Spain far behind me.  My year abroad began 350 days ago when I set off for Valencia in July 2011, it seems like such a long time ago and yet only yesterday...  Since then I have spent around 300 of those days out of the UK, the rest have been split between Belgium and Spain (with a couple of weekends in France and Luxembourg!)  I don't think it will really hit me that it's all over for a while yet, although I'm going home tomorrow I am heading up to Lancaster on Sunday for a week and at the moment I think it will just feel like another one of my visits, not that I'm actually back for good.  I guess it will hit me at some point in the summer when I'm stuck in the rain that I won't actually be coming back out to Spain just yet.

If you'd have asked me a few months ago if I could see myself moving abroad I'd have said no, I think that was because I'd been in Brussels, in winter, speaking my weaker language.  Ask me that question now and I'd have something different to say.  Hard as I have found it this year I think a lot of that can be put down to things not being on my terms, studying classes I wasn't enjoying and finding little motivation for them.  If the right job came along one day then I would certainly consider coming back to live in Spain again, and I'm surprised to "hear" myself say that.

Contrary to what many people will probably believe I have actually enjoyed this year, in my own way, and I've still got something out of it.  I may not have made loads of friends from all around the world and had "the best year of my life" but that's not to say that there isn't a lot of value in the year that I have had.  I have learnt plenty about myself, and I think I've learnt a fair amount about other people too.

Tomorrow afternoon I will return to the UK satisfied with my year, I'm not going to let myself have any regrets or things I wish I'd done differently, because let's face it, who is that helping now?

As for what's next?  Who knows!  I thought that by the end of this year I'd have a clearer picture of what I want to do with myself this time next year when I'm all done at Lancaster (This year better not pass as quickly as the last one has...).  However, I've probably just ended up with more ideas and confusion!  Oh well, nice to have options right?

I reckon that once I'm back in rainy old England I'll realise how much I liked being abroad and probably want to get out and see more of the world, let's just see though shall we?

I'm hoping to keep writing these blogs, although my life back home probably won't be interesting enough to write about unless you want to hear about my dissertation, going to work and writing essays, so I'll try and do them on languages/translation sort of topics as and when I can think of any.

So, that's it.  My year abroad is over. Thanks to those of you that have been reading this all the way along, and I hope I've been of some use/interest/entertainment to at least some of you!

The things I'll miss, and what I'm looking forward to at home.

This is in no particular order, it's just getting written down as things come to the front of my mind, so, here goes:

Won't miss having to use adaptor plugs every time I want to plug something in.

Will miss the lovely blue sky that is a pretty permanent fixture here.

Won't miss having to put sun cream on all the time.

Will miss the fact that it is always sunny enough to require sun cream!

Won't miss the disorganisation of the Uni here in Granada.

Will miss free tapas!  Whoever thought of that is a genius and paying to just receive a drink will never feel right again.

Won't miss studying courses that I don't enjoy and have little motivation to do well in.

Looking forward to: Roast dinner, cups of tea, not having to rely on skype/email to talk to people, getting back to work (I'll regret saying that...)

There are more things I wanted to put on this list but I'm drawing blanks at the second, might edit this later when I remember them!

The penultimate week of my Year Abroad and my final visitor.

This time next week I will be back in the UK, after having a touristy week of being able to fully enjoy Granada I have realised how much I really like it here.  If I could just relocate my family, friends, Uni and job to Spain I'd love to stay longer, I can see myself coming back to Spain in the future, got to go and finish off that degree first!


On Sunday I headed off to Malaga to meet Henry at the airport, before that though I decided to have a wander round, I'd have liked to have a bit more time as I just about had enough time to get down to the port, have a drink and then walk back to the bus station so I didn't really get to see that much.  We didn't get back to Granada until later in the evening so we went for dinner and then headed back to the flat.  I didn't have any particular plans for Monday so we spent it wandering round, the day was basically a series of moments sat in bars or cafes drinking and eating interspersed with walking round.  It was a lovely day so we walked up towards the Albyzin, on the way up I realised there was a part of Granada that I'd still not taken a lot at myself, the Sacremonte so we had a good wander round there too.  The views out over the Alhambra were brilliant!

After this we continued walking up the hill to Mirador de San Nicolas to enjoy the view and one of the best smoothies I've ever drunk.  The intention was to then walk to another view point but the map reading let us down and we never actually made it there!  

On Tuesday we went to the Alhambra, this was the second time I've been but I missed out a chunk the first time so it was good to get to go again.  Also, the first time I went it was raining and Tuesday was a lovely blue-skied day.

Wednesday was beach day so we headed off to Salobreña in the morning and stayed on the beach all day.  I, the ginger, got a little burnt on my back and on the tops of my legs but otherwise left the beach undamaged.  Someone however left resembling a lobster and has suffered the consequences of it since...  I had an exam on Thursday evening so I took my revision along with me.

We didn't do much on Thursday but I did go along to my penultimate exam and it wasn't too bad.  Very early start on Friday as Henrys bus left Granada at 7am...


Back to reality now and getting on with my revision for my final exam on Tuesday.  I doubt I'm going to have much left to blog about now as I'll just be revising, reading in the sun, cleaning, washing and packing over the next 6 days.  I'll probably write some sort of summary to the year on Thursday once I'm all packed up and ready to go!

Granada gets in the festival spirit.

This week is the main festival week here in Granada, it was the religious festival of Corpus Christi during the week and the people of Granada decided to take this day and build their whole festival week around it.  This means that there are things going on in town all week and there is a festival site set up on the edge of town.  I've not been over there but I imagine it is very much like the one I saw in Seville, lots of tents, people dancing, dressed in traditional clothing and I'm pretty sure there is also a fair ground.

On Wednesday I went and saw the first of two parades, this one was called La Tarasca and was all about this lady and her dragon:

It was aimed at kids so there were lots of people dressed up with big heads and there was even a pirate ship, although I'm not sure quite what purpose that served!

The main Corpus Christi parade was on Thursday, in typical Spanish style it started a fair bit later than it was meant to but that give me a chance to have a wander round and see what else was going on.  On Plaza Bib Rambla there were a collection of cartoon pictures that were generally all about Granada and things that had happened in the year.  My favourite one was a picture of a lady slipping over on the pavements down one of the main streets, we've said before that we'd hate to walk down them in the rain!

Eventually the parade got under-way, it started with parts of the parade from the previous day along with a group of women dressed in traditional flamenco clothing and playing castanets.  There was also a small group of men that were playing guitars and some horses.

These were then followed by what seemed like hundreds of people carrying candles.  I presume they were representatives from each of the churches as there were so many of them.  Eventually I got a little bored of this and decided to walk the route in reverse in the hopes of either finding the end of the parade or something else happening.  This was a good move as I came across groups of people in all sorts of different uniforms representing the military and the police etc followed by the main float at the end.

At the end there was also a band playing, I can't even begin to imagine playing in that heat, especially the guys that passed me that were playing tubas and baritone saxes, they're enough effort to play when walking without the 32 degree heat! 

Other than that I haven't been up to anything blog worthy recently, it's just been exams and revision.  Got a friend arriving tomorrow until Friday so I'll be doing the touristy things again, got our Alhambra tickets booked and I'm glad to go again because it seems I missed a part where you climb a tower and get a really good view of the city, how I missed that I'll never know!  Also got a trip to the beach planned, got to try and top up the tan (or get one....) before I leave in less than 2 weeks!

Year abroad choices, the ones I made and what I'd do differently. My summary of studying in Brussels and Granada.

Having come to the end of my classes once and for all here in Granada and so being just a matter of weeks from the end of my YA once and for allI think I am now in a good position to be able to write this blog about studying on the year abroad.  The study/work placement/language assistant debate is one that every languages student goes through when making their plans for the year abroad, and everyone has their own reasons for the decisions they make.  I personally didn't want to be a language assistant as I really wanted to split my year between the two countries without having to spend my summers away if I didn't want to.  Also, as a French intensive student my French tutor advised me that teaching would not be the best way to improve my French and strongly recommended that I studied.  I think she was right with her suggestion as the language assistants spend most of their time in school pretending they only speak English, meaning they have to find other ways of getting out and practising, which of course is fine for some people, but for those like me that as I said on a previous blog seem to have regressed into their shells somewhat this year it probably isn't ideal.  The other choice was to find a work placement, but I decided I didn't want to do this and was told repeatedly that placements in both countries would be very hard to come across anyway.  So the decision was made that I would study.

When it comes to French we had Brussels, Geneva, Lyon, Rennes, Poitiers or Montpellier, the first two are specialist translation schools which appealed to me and so I opted for Brussels.  Let's talk about that decision first, the main thing I'd not really considered when it came to Brussels was how international it is.  I'd considered the bilingualism with Dutch but did my research and found that French was the dominant language in the city anyway. What I guess hadn't occurred to me was that with the presence of so many international organisations everyone spoke English, it didn't matter if you spoke to them in French because 7 times out of 10 they'd reply to you in English, usually thinking they were being helpful not knowing they were being quite the opposite.  The other thing with ISTI was that because of the size of the school in comparison to the amount of Erasmus students they took on I found that I was in a lot of classes with just Erasmus students and it was very hard to integrate with the Belgian students and get any language practise.  I signed up for a tandem programme and met up once a week with a Belgian girl where we would speak for the first half in French and then in English, but in honesty this probably was no where near enough.

As far as Lancaster is concerned we don't have a huge amount of choice when it comes to where we can study for Spanish.  We can go to Mexico, Bilbao, Granada, Girona and Lleida.  So, that leaves you with the choice of going thousands of miles away, to two Catalan speaking Unis, to the Basque country where you may be faced with a second language as well or Granada.  I toyed with the idea of Bilbao but settled on Granada in the end.  My concern about Granada was that it is known as a really big party city because of the amount of Erasmus students and that isn't really my thing, but this hasn't really been a problem, I've found it's been easy enough just to do what I want instead.  Although there are lots of Erasmus students in Granada there is also a huge amount of Spanish students so I wasn't ever in classes with just foreign students.  You do however have a totally free choice of what you take and there isn't really any guidance on what is too hard for Erasmus students so I have found that two of the courses I've taken haven't really been suitable and I'm sure that is going to show in my exam results- it's a good job that they don't really matter!

Studying does have its pros and cons.  The good thing is that even if you're not speaking the language as much as you'd like you are hearing it, taking classes in it and writing in it all the time which has to be good practise.  It also keeps you busy, for me I need to keep doing things so I don't feel too homesick, so having a good amount of contact hours and work to do outside of that time kept me going and it wouldn't if I'd been teaching for instance.  The cons obviously are having to take exams, not really knowing what courses to take and the difficulty of integrating with native speakers.  It is also worth considering your unis rules on exams, as far as Lancaster is concerned we have to take them and the marks count towards our grade for the year, but we don't have to pass them, this works in two ways.  It is first and foremost a really good thing because there is no need to panic and stress about the exams, what happens, happens!  The problem with this is that my motivation to revise is pretty scarce so I find myself half heartedly revising and just wishing away the hours until they are over, possibly not the way I should be spending my final weeks here, but that's how it is!

Sometimes I do wish I'd worked, it would have given me a different experience for the year and I might have felt like I'd achieved more, but the issue with that for me is that I'd potentially be totally alone and unsure of how to meet people, especially other students because it is important to have that sort of "homely" contact from time to time.  I did however work for 6 weeks last summer in Valencia, I met all sorts of people and really enjoyed myself, but the work was boring because there just wasn't much of it so I spent a lot of time doing nothing.  That's the hard thing about picking what to do and where to go, unless you know someone that has done the exact same thing before it is all very much unknown.  I couldn't have spent the whole year, or even 6 months in that job, but it was good for the summer and to give me an experience of working in Spain.

So what am I concluding?  I'm not really sure if I'm honest with you.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing isn't it?  And maybe with it I'd have seriously looked into finding work placements that interested me and would be relevant to what I want to do in the future, but this time last year I didn't know that, and we had to make decisions in the November before we left!  For any future YA students reading this, it is important to remember that YA decisions are all about you, don't feel influenced by what other people are doing, and why they are making that decision, because they're not you!

Going back to being Bex.

In less than 4 weeks time I get to go back to being Bex.  I get to go back to being the "normal" me, and not the "normal" that I've become over the last 10 months.  Over the course of this year I'm pretty sure I've been a different person, and not one I particularly like I must admit.

They say that you'll come back from the year abroad a different person, but that is because you're meant to be more confident and outgoing, better travelled and more experienced but I think something quite the opposite has happened to me.  Over the last two years at uni, and to an extent some of my time in 6th form, I have managed to shed the shy person I used to be, I am a lot more confident, will get stuck in and involved with anything and everything and really enjoy meeting new people.  Somehow over the course of my year abroad that person has gone into hiding.  I get wound up over little things, complain about things that would never usually bother me and get upset totally needlessly.  I've never been an unsociable person but I've certainly spent a lot more time on my own than I ever have done before, and I'm not even entirely sure why that is.

During the first semester I convinced myself that it was because I was in a French speaking country and that it was my weaker language and so I was bound to feel uneasy, but I realise now that was utter rubbish.  I was surrounded by Erasmus students that I didn't have to speak French to  if I didn't feel able to, so why couldn't I make myself do that?  Here I am coming to the end of semester two, in a country where I am a lot more capable of speaking the language and yet has there been any change?  No, it's been just as hard as the first time round.

This is one of the overriding reasons why I am looking forward to going home, I come home and start a new job for the summer, I go back to meeting new people and doing new things.  Then I go back to Lancaster where I am involved with societies and have a job which constantly has me doing new things and meeting new people, just the way I like it.

Why this year hasn't given me that I just can't explain.  I'm not saying the experience hasn't given me other things, and I'm sure I'll see these in hindsight, I've been to some great places and seen lots, I'm certainly a better travelled person, and have learnt things, but other than that?

Anyone that has met me for the first time this year will have almost certainly have met a different person, it's not a bad thing, but she's certainly not the person I know and won't have any problem saying goodbye to her at Malaga airport in just under 4 weeks...

Exactly a month remains- the penultimate visitor to Granada

As today is the 22nd of May it marks exactly one month until I am leaving Granada, heading home and ending my year abroad once and for all.  In fact, 4 weeks to the day I will have finished all my exams here and will be getting ready to pack my bags.  Maybe it would be a good time to get started on some revision...  Crazy as Spain is and disorganised as some parts of the uni here would seem to be I have just one class tomorrow and then one a day next week until they are all over on Thursday ready for Fridays first exam... Anyway, enough about all that!

This weekend I have had my penultimate visitor here, Lucy came for the weekend from Geneva.  She arrived around midday on Saturday (with a lovely bar of Swiss chocolate for me!) and we spent some time wandering around town before going out for Chinese in a restaurant really close to me that I'd not been to before.  On Sunday she went to the Alhambra and afterwards we met up and wandered around a little more, but it was a long day of walking so after tapas and churros we headed back and watched a film.  On Monday I had a class (turned out to be my last Spanish Dialect class EVER!) so Lucy went up to the monastery and then had a very Spanish time reading the paper and drinking coffee in a bar.  We did a lot more wandering around in the afternoon, including shopping and walking up into the Albyzin and admiring the views.  It was really nice to have the company for a few days.

That's all I have to tell for now I think, I don't imagine there is going to be much to tell over the next couple of weeks whilst all I'm really doing is revision, but we'll see!

"These are the days of the curriculum vitae rather than the dolce vita."

Today I read a very interesting article on the BBC about an Italian university that is planning on teaching the vast majority of it's courses in English and English only.  They believe that it will increase the international reputation in an increasingly global climate for higher eduction.  I won't reiterate everything that has already been said in the article, you can read that yourselves, I just wanted to talk about it.

I understand that these days it is increasingly important for universities to open themselves up to the world outside their own country, but to me this decision seems to be a step too far.  I totally understand the need for courses in English.  We live in a world where English is used in many fields, I was in a class recently where all the research in this field of linguistics has been done in Britain/America and so the vocabulary is all in English.  To be able to take this course the Spanish students have to show a certain level of English and I see that makes sense.  I also understand that it makes sense for international institutions to teach a certain amount of business courses in English, and there are universities everywhere that have been doing that for a few years now.  To me, however, an Italian university making the decision to teach the vast majority of its undergraduate courses, and all of its graduate classes, in English doesn't quite sit comfortably.  By all means, teach some or even most of the classes that require English vocab and skills in English but why go the whole way?  What about the arts, architecture, classics and other courses that arguably the Italians know more about than the majority of the Anglophone world?  Are they not just risking diluting their own culture whilst striving to do the opposite and bring themselves up on the gobal scale?  A good example from the BBC article was from someone comparing the use of languages to watching films.  When you speak to someone with the same native tongue as yourself it is like watching a film in colour with surround sound, you get all the detail, everything that has been put into it, total understanding and the full experience.  Speaking with someone in a language that isn't the mother tongue of  one or both parties is more like watching a film in black and white, whilst it is still a pleasant experience and things can be learnt, culture shared etc it doesn't quite match.  Why do this to the teaching of all courses?  One way or another the teaching is going to be diluted, it's never going to match up to the way it was before.

As the title says (quoted from the BBC article) These are the days of the curriculum vitae rather than the dolce vita.  This is the way things are moving.  But I for one don't want to watch a pattern occurring and English "taking over" more than it is already going to, and that is coming from a native English speaker.  I'm not sure if this is more a reflection on the Italian language than that of the English however, recently more than one English university has decided end the teaching of Italian, but that is a whole other story I'm sure....

A week with my family. Granada, Nerja and Gibraltar.

This week my parents and my Nana came out to visit me in Granada, the week covered my Mums birthday as well as my 21st so it was really good timing.  They stayed in a hotel right near to my flat which was really convenient as it only meant a 5 minute walk whenever we wanted to meet up.  They arrived in the evening on Sunday so we didn't do much, I just went back to their hotel and chilled for a bit. On Monday I had classes to go to in the morning, but after that we went to the Cartujan Monastary which was good as I'd not had a chance to go inside there yet.  Tuesday was my Mums birthday, and I had classes again, so whilst I was there they went back on the Sight-seeing bus as they'd enjoyed it the day before and then went to the Cathedral.  In the afternoon we had a bit of a wander and went out to dinner near the Alhambra to celebrate Mums birthday.  Annoyingly I started to feel ill on Tuesday night so made the decision to get a good nights sleep and not go to classes on Weds.  As it happened this was a good decision as my Nana dropped her purse in the taxi, long story short they were reunited but I had to make a phone call to the hotel and go and collect it.  I also managed to get some productive work done in the flat whilst they were at the Alhambra so it worked out ok in the end.  We didn't do too much on Weds afternoon because it was very hot, instead we got taxi back to the hotel, via a rather large detour.  A slight misunderstanding between the taxi driver and I meant that he began taking us to hotel Los Angeles not Los Aljibes, not at all close to each other...  In the evening we went for a wander round the shops in town and had dinner.  There was another student strike on Thursday and lots of lessons were cancelled, I presumed that meant my class was off too and so took the day off again.  We decided that as we had the whole day free we would go a little further and drive along the coast to Nerja, it was lovely weather and it was nice to get out of Granada.  At this point I believed that I would be spending my birthday the following day in Malaga but this was not to be!  The plan was to drive to a hotel in San Roque and then spend the day in Gibraltar where I have been wanting to go for ages but was pretty sure I wasn't going to have time to do.  It was a really good day.  So that we could fit it all in we did a taxi tour of the rock, meaning we got to go in the caves and the siege tunnels, see the apes and hear all about Gibraltar which we otherwise wouldn't have had time for.  After the tour we had a wander round and then walked back to Spain(!), where we had to cross the runway to get off of Gibraltar, very odd!  It was also very funny seeing M&S, Next and other British shops as well as telephone and post boxes.  On Saturday we travelled back to Granada via Puerto Banus and Nerja. Granada is boiling now so we went and bought a fan so that I don't melt when I'm in my room and I've looked up where to get the bus to uni, it actually means walking in the wrong direction but I think that walking up to the Uni in the midday heat would just be stupid so I don't really have the choice.  I only have 3 weeks left of classes now, and some finish in 2 weeks time and then I have my exams, so I don't have that many trips back up there anyway!  In fact I have 12 days of classes at the most plus 4 exams in the next 40 days before I go home!

All in all I have had a great time having them here, as always saying good bye is really hard, but  at least I know that the  next time I am with them will be in the airport in London and my year abroad will officially have ended.

What happens when your year abroad doesn't live up to the hype?

This year has been a big one for me in the realisation that just because everyone else says something and does something it doesn't mean it has to be the same for you too.  There were so many things that people said before I left Lancaster and whilst I was making my plans for this year that I felt so strongly that in order to make the most of this year I had to stick to them.  It has taken until now for me to realise how wrong I was. 

Everyone says that the year abroad is going to be the most amazing year of your life, you’ll make loads of new friends, your language will come on leaps and bounds and that you’ll never want to go back to the UK.  Well, that just isn’t always true.  Yes, for some people it is a great year, they have a fantastic time and the thought of going home fills them with dread ,but for others of us it isn’t the case, we get homesick and just spend the year wishing away the weeks.  I’m not going to tell you that I’ve not enjoyed this year, because I have, I appreciate the opportunities it has given me, and have had fun seeing new things and travelling to new places.  But I cannot and will not tell you that it has been the best year of my life, because it quite plainly hasn’t.  Don’t get me wrong, I am by no means complaining about the year abroad and the opportunities it has given me, I am just saying that it hasn’t lived up to the hype that surrounded it.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing isn’t it?  With it I’d have gone to a place where I knew more people, or not worried so much about living with native speakers or all those other pressures that get placed on us.  I’d have done as many of those things that we were told not to as I wanted, knowing that it might not be the best for my language or my “experience”, but that I’d have felt a hell of a lot better for it.  In October I decided to go to Lancaster for a weekend, but that decision came after a lot of umming and ahhing about whether it was the “right” thing to do.  I should probably have made more decisions like this one, that were for my happiness not what I felt I should be doing according to everyone else.

I have not found this year, so far, easy.  In fact, I have probably found it harder than I have let on to many of you whilst I have been hiding behind the part of me that thinks that I am on my year abroad and so I have to have a fantastic time.

I guess that all I’m trying to say is, to all those people that are planning their year abroad, or are on it and sharing my experience.  It doesn’t matter.  We all have hugely different experiences on the year abroad.  Some love it, some hate it and some just have an “ok” time.  It doesn’t matter. 

Please don’t try to put a label on the year abroad, it can’t be done.

The weekend we paid €18 for churros and chocolate!

This weekend I went on my last trip whilst I am here in Spain and spent a few days in Seville with Erin during the last weekend of the main festival there- Feria de Abril.  We stayed in a hostel right near the Cathedral which was really nice, comfortable rooms and nice staff which is always good!  After 3 and a bit hours on a bus I was finally in Seville and met up with Erin when she arrived from Barcelona.  Not really knowing where we were going but heading roughly in the direction of the cathedral we set off, typically we had gone the wrong way only to have to turn round and go back the way we had just came!  We did however eventually reach the hostel and drop off our bags in time for a wander round the city.  In the evening we went to a Flamenco show at the Flamenco Museum which was really good, and well worth the €14 euros we paid for it as there were 2 dancers, a guitarist and a singer, I wasn't sure what I was going to think of it but it was really enjoyable.  After that we, in true Spanish style, went and had paella for dinner in a bar close to the hostel.

On Saturday we woke up to the sound of the rain, brilliant timing for the rain to arrive in Seville the weekend we were there, but as there was nothing we could do about it we just got on with it.  First up we went to the Alcazar, it is an old palace and parts of it are actually still in use, if you paid a bit more you could get a guided tour of these parts, but we had so much we wanted to fit into our day we didn't really have time to do that.  At times it really reminded me of the Alhambra here in Granada, but it was significantly cheaper to get in (€8.50 normally but €2 as students!) After this we went to the Cathedral, with another brilliant student discount, down from €8 to €3!  We were very impressed to have paid to do 2 things for the same amount as the full price entry to just one!  Once we'd seen the Cathedral we headed to the Bull Ring and booked ourselves in on a guided tour and museum visit (of course, student rate applied again meaning that for the 3 things we visited that day we paid under €10 in entry fees- brilliant!) After all of this it was just coming up to 2.30 and we were pretty hungry so stopped for lunch.  The starter was artichokes and ham, which I think would've been really nice, if it hadn't been soaked in so much olive all that it actually tasted like eating a plate of olives (which I really don't like....)  bit the fish we had afterwards more than made up for it.

A trip to Seville this weekend would not have been complete without a visit to the site of the Feria.  We really didn't know what we were expecting when we headed over the river to the site, luckily by now the rain had stopped and the sun was doing its best to shine through, giving us great weather for a wander around.  The feria site is full of tents called casetas that the people of Seville and the surrounding areas hire out for private parties for their friends and family.  There are also some public tents but not very many.  The feria is the opportunity for the locals to show off quite how much money they have with the size and decoration of their tent but most importantly by the clothes they are wearing.  Most people are dressed in traditional Andalcian style, with the woman in full flamenco dresses and the men with the old suits and hats.  There are also loads and loads of horses at the feria, some pulling carriages and some being ridden, clearly being used as an opportunity for people to show themselves and their families off to everyone else that is there.  Once we'd finished wandering round we decided to stop for chocolate and churros (these were actually called bunuelos, their bigger and doughier, but it's the same concept).  We sat down, got served very promptly and then once we had the food in front of us the waiter said "€18 euros por favor" we had no choice but to pay it but we couldn't believe our ears!  €18 for a bit of dough, sugar and hot chocolate!!!!  We couldn't even finish them all, we made a valiant attempt, we really did, but we were beaten and couldn't eat any more.  Once we'd got over that shock we started to head back to the hostel, via a trusty chino shop to purchase some shoes for €4 euros which are the most comfortable things I have worn in my life as my feet were slowly dying from the blisters my usually very comfortable sandles were giving me.  In the evening we practically had to swim to go out for some food and a drink, it had been hailing previously and was pouring with rain - when you're both wearing canvas-y shoes this is not a good thing!  That said we did have a nice selection of tapas at a bar a little off of the beaten tourist route.  When we got back to the hostel we spent quite some time drying out the shoes with a hairdryer before eventually going to bed- after everything we'd fitted into the day we were exhausted!

This morning we had time to waste as we had to be out of the hostel but my bus wasn't until 2.30 so we decided to pop into an exhibition at a building called the Archivo General de Indias where there are lots of maps and other things from the discovery of the Americas.  Seeing as it was fairly early in the morning and we'd not had the best nights sleep we didn't really make the most of this exhibition and ended up skim reading and looking at the maps and pictures because it was very in depth that our brains just weren't ready for it quite yet!  Other than that we spent our time wandering around, in and out of little tourist shops, drinking coffee and eating lunch before it was time to head off again!  We did happen to come across a little street market that was selling lots of old coins, stamps and other things including old postcards, they were all written and had been sent to people at one time or another, some of them were really interesting as they had Viva Franco! and Viva Espana! Stamped across them.  We could've looked through them for ages.


Now I'm back in Granada I am very glad that this is a puente weekend, because Tuesday is the 1st of May and therefore a festival day across Spain we also get Monday off as well because, lets face it, what is the point in going into work just for one day? Got to love Spain for that!  Hopefully I'll get some work done over the next couple of days, I certainly will if the weather stays as rubbish as it currently is because I won't want to be stepping outside!


This time next week my Mum, Dad and Nana should've landed in Malaga and be arriving in Granada!  I can't wait to see them, they are staying for a week over my Mums birthday and mine too.  I have classes on 4 of the days but only in the mornings so I should be able to spend plenty of time with them.  The scary thing is quite how fast the time has flown, once they leave I have just 2 weeks left of classes, including a visit from a friend from Lancaster and then 4 weeks of exams before it is all over a done with!

The day the Spaniards pretty much kicked me out.

This morning I was sitting in my class minding my own business when I could hear chanting in the distance.  It got louder and louder, I couldn't distinguish the words but it didn't matter because all of a sudden a very angry looking Spanish student burst into my class room!  He got up onto the stage type thing at the front of the room and started shouting at us, he was telling us that we must get up, listen and join them in strike against the cuts and the fact that next year students could be paying up to €1000, I felt like telling him to try £9000 for size but thought I'd be safer not to!  There were quite a few people that weren't showing any intention of moving, Spanish students and Erasmus students alike, but he was going nowhere.  He just continued to shout and look angrier and angrier until people got up and left.  I wasn't sticking around, he was scary!  We stayed around outside the classroom for a bit to see what would happen, someone apparently saw our teacher but she didn't seem to make it down to the classroom.  It seems they were moving on from our building to the other departments on the campus before heading into town to the other faculties.  We stayed for a bit and had a coffee, but then we decided that it was unlikely that classes would be on for the rest of the day and left.  I have now heard that my next class actually went ahead, but I'm not going now I've made it back to the flat already, it's not like I'm going to miss much anyway.

I totally understand why they are striking, and they have the right to do it, but I also agree with what I heard one Spanish student saying to the people organising the strike.  She said to them that as much as it was their right to strike it was also her right to stay and be taught, she wasn't happy about the fact that her class had been cancelled because of the students going on strike.  To me it doesn't really matter, after all I am only an Erasmus student and if I miss a few classes it really isn't going to make much difference to me.

So it seems my weekend begins here as I've been told that tomorrow is some day to do with the founder of the University and students don't turn up to classes!  We also have a puente (bridge) as Tuesday is a festival day, meaning Monday is off too!  I won't be in classes again until this time next week!  Ridiculous, but welcome to Spain eh?

A weekend in Cordoba

I can't remember when the last time I blogged was, but I think it was a while ago.  Since then I have started my own mini series of video blogs on Youtube, they're all on language based topics and you can find my channel here. 

This weekend I went to Cordoba for a few days with Jack and Erin.  Wouldn't usually mention the bus journey but I'm going to because we got a free bottle of water, packet of peanuts and a pastry as well as extra comfy chairs and a film to watch!  Once we actually arrived in Cordoba however we met Erin off of her train and got a taxi to the hostel on the basis that we didn't really know where we were going. The hostel was very nice and just what we needed for the weekend.  We spent Friday afternoon eating, wandering round and then eating some more!  On Saturday we went to the Mezquita, the "must-see" attraction in Cordoba, it's a lovely building and well worth your money to take a look round if you're there.  From there we headed to the Alcazar which has some lovely gardens as well as a tower you can climb to see out over the city.  It was a really hot day so we took this opportunity to sit in the gardens for a bit to catch the sun.  We came across a cheap Chinese for lunch which was really nice, and good for the price too.  We also came across a market stall that sold loads of flags, we got some for LULangS, Jack got a Venezuelan flag just for the sheer hell of it and Erin got a Catalan flag, partly because she'd been looking for one for ages and partly because she found it really funny that she could buy one in Andalucia! After this we weren't really sure what to do with ourselves so we went and sat on the terrace at the hostel for a bit and chilled in the sun once again.  In the evening we did a lot more wandering and then gave up on being good and cultural and had kebab for dinner...  Our bus wasn't until 2 on Sunday but as we had our bags with us we didn't really want to do too much.  We ended up walking towards the bus station and stopping every 5 minutes for a 30 minute break, I'm not even exaggerating!  That wasted away the morning quite well and before we knew it we were on the bus and Granada bound, leaving Erin soaking up the sun whilst she did some work as her train wasn't until a lot later.  I'm in the process of loading my million photos up onto Flickr so if you feel like taking a look they'll be there for you in a bit.

This week I have 4 days of classes (although if I overheard a conversation correctly it may even be 3...) before I go to Seville with Erin on Friday until Sunday.  Monday and Tuesday are fiesta here so there are no classes, meaning just 2 days of classes for me next week and then my parents and my Nana arrive on Sunday for the week!  I'll be back with an update for you after Seville, I doubt anything interesting will happen before then.

Bex Trex Learns Esperanto

Another week that has just flown by.

I got back from Mallorca on Sunday and the last 6 days have just flown by, I can hardly believe it.  We didn't have any classes on Monday, I can't actually work out why though because it's not a holiday here like it is at home, so every thing was open, other than the uni.  This meant that I only had 3 days of classes.  There is nothing interesting to report as far as they are concerned though, same old same old now.  The weather in Granada has been pretty rubbish this week, colder than usual and grey, this weekend it's even been rainy and windy- this is not what I signed on for!  If I didn't know better I could think it was Lancaster or even Brussels out there!  Go away rain, you're not welcome here!

I've not been up to a whole lot this weekend, the weather has stopped me from going out but equally being dark and horrible I've had a lack of motivation to actually get anything really done. I have however managed a bit of work, so it hasn't been a totally wasted weekend so far.  I've been thinking about what I am going to do with my blog when I get back to the UK because I've really been enjoying doing it.  I've decided that I want to carry it on, and I'm going to try and go on a langauges-y sort of theme.  I've also started making videos on the same sorts of topics, and here are 2 from this weekend- Bex Trex and the Untranslatables and Bex Trex vs Google Translate.

This time next week I'll be in Cordoba with Erin and Jack, so we're hoping the weather bucks up and the following weekend Erin and I are going to Seville for the Feria so that should give me something interesting to write about.  In the meantime I'll be back if something interesting happens!

Bex Trex vs Google Translate

This is just a quick video showing just a few examples of why you shouldn't trust everything that comes out of google translate!

There are more examples and you can view the google translation of the article with some of my very rough notes on it here:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZiKD-UaZ6qEqBapwLFI55B9gKCX4CKP9V2vLbNHNR...
This also includes the link to the original article for those that are interested.

The title music is Lancaster Uni Glee Club, performing in 2010.
The guitar music is provided by Danosongs.com

Bex Trex and the Untranslatables

This is the first attempt I've had at a video really, my others have mostly be photos and music, nothing quite like this. I hope at least a few people enjoy it, I want to carry on but it depends on me coming up with topics really, if you have any ideas please tell me! I guess I want to go along the lines of languagey/linguistics sort of stuff but I'm open to suggestions.
My blog- www.bex-trex.blogspot.com
Twitter @bexnobes

Bex Trex and the Untranslatables features:
Words taken from:
http://www.acclaro.com/translation-localization-blog/12-untranslatable-words-...
http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/20-awesomely-untranslatable-words-from-aroun...
http://betterthanenglish.com/ 
http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/20-more-awesomely-untranslatable-words-from-...
Music from:
http://www.youtube.com/user/LUGleeC/videos (Performance in February 2010)

An accidental holiday in Magaluf.

This was the week that we had been looking forward to for a long time.  Booked at the end of last year we decided to spend our holiday in Mallorca, it was somewhere we could all get to from 3 different airports, it was a good price and it is a nice place.  We booked a hotel called TRH Palmanova (remember this, it is going to be important...), booked our flights, and all we had to do was wait, so wait we did.  A quick read up on the internet suggested that the hotel wasn't quite in Palmanova like the name would suggest, and on a steep hill, neither of which really caused us a problem.  Easter week rolls around and off we go!  Charlotte and Vicki arrived first having flown together from Manchester, and get told we've been moved hotels as there had been over booking with ours, not a problem, it's just  even further up the hill!  Now I'll take you back to our location, we were basically on the end of the strip in Magaluf!  Not quite what we'd intended, but oh well!  Palmanova itself, when we actually did go there for a wander, is a lot bigger than we had realised and we'd certainly go and stay there again.  The only problem with the location we ended up in was that there was a Spanish festival of some sort on for a few days and there was a huge group of people staying in our hotel, and they weren't the quiet type!  But when this is the view from your balcony, you really can't complain:

The very first time we took a walk down to the beach we realised that we would have to find another route, it is impossible to walk down the main strip without getting stopped at least every 5 or 6 steps (and I'm not even exaggerating) by some promoter or other trying to get you to stop in their bar for a drink.  It doesn't matter how clear you make it to some of them that you're not interested, they'll engage you in conversation, physically block the way, try and split up the group and even try pulling you in by your hair!  It's a bit of a laugh but certainly gets tiresome after a while.  We instead tended to go to places along the beach front or walk over to Palmanova where there are still plenty of lively bars but without the hassle.  We did cave into them once or twice though, the first time was at 4 in the afternoon when we bought beer and sangria and got given free shots of Sambuca, only in Magaluf...

Because we're so cool and so mature we bought a bucket, spade, rake and some little animal shapes, oh and a sive!  We spent quite a while on 2 different days making these creations:



And on a sand related note, the girls buried me in the sand and sculpted me into a mermaid.  I didn't get the best photo of that though!

In general we spent our week wandering, eating, drinking and laying in the sun, so I'm not going to give you a diary entry style blog of what we did for fear of boring you all so much that you never come back!  However, we did go to Palma for the day which was nice, other than paying €4.50 for a Fanta!  We had intended to see one of the Easter parades for Semana Santa but by the time we'd spent the day there we were getting tired and ready to leave so we didn't get to see it.  I just see that as an excuse for me to get back out to Spain another Easter and see it all though!

We also did one of those holiday essentials and played mini golf which was a lot of fun.  Especially with holes like this one where the water gets in the way some what:

I didn't do very well, lets just say that I lost by a long long way and leave it at that shall we?  Whilst we were there Katy and I had our photo taken with a snake, it was pretty scary and we weren't really expecting it to happen, but we had to buy it just to prove we've done it! Apologies for the quality, it really needs to be scanned in at some point.

That  is about it really!  I came back this morning fairly early, I've unpacked, done 2 loads of washing, uploaded my photos, done my photo of the day project and now I've even written this!  Will be an early night for me tonight though, and hoping for my first totally uninterrupted nights sleep in a week! Got a day tomorrow to catch up and maybe do some work before classes start again on Tuesday which feels really odd.  I'm glad though, because I'd quite like the next few weeks to pass, it's been hard knowing so many Erasmus students that have been home and seen their families this week and I haven't.  Oh well, one blank weekend, then Cordoba, then Seville and then my parents are here with my Nana for a whole week which even includes my 21st!  Can't wait!

Hooray, hooray, it's a holi-holiday!

This week has been pretty uninteresting if I'm honest, since Erin left on Sunday I've not been up to a huge amount.  Classes as usual and an exam on Wednesday mean that I'm now half way though my classes here and just over a third of the way through my total time in Granada.  Time has flown by so fast since arriving here at the start of February, I'm coming to the end of my 7th week here!

The only slightly exciting thing that has happened this week is that the Spanish decided to go on strike on Thursday against a labour reform that is being introduced, I'll be honest and say I know very little about it (I have bought myself a couple of newspapers in the hope of reading up on it at some point though...) but lets just say they aren't happy!  I went out for a wander on Thursday morning to see what was going on and I have to say there were more shops open than I had been expecting, groups of people shouting here and there but I generally didn't see much.  Apparently closer to the centre things were a lot more active, and I could somewhat see the aftermath of that when I went shopping yesterday and there were stickers and posters and things around but not much.  But that is just Granada, things were worse in Madrid and Barcelona etc as I'm sure lots of you have seen on the news in the UK.  Whatever way you look at it the strike gave me an extra day off, I didn't use the time productively though.

My day was made yesterday by a random smiley Spanish man walking past me when I was walking down Gran Via eating my Smooey yoghurt and calling out "que aproveches" which is the Spanish equivalent of bon appetit and then carrying on his way.  This should show you how little I achieved yesterday if that was the highlight of the entire day!  The only other thing I managed was spending money on clothes. 

Today I remembered what is the worst part of going on holiday- packing!  I'm useless at it and am always over the weight limit no matter what I do.  Annoyingly I have no way of telling how much my luggage weighs for my holiday as I have no scales, on the basis that I am using a smaller case and only taking clothes for a week I surely must be under my weight limit, but the thing seems to weigh a tonne!

Tomorrow morning I'm off to Majorca for a week with some of my friends from Lancaster, I've not seen them since January/February so I'm really looking forward to it.  A little bit of research tells me our hotel is just off the strip in Magalluf, so watch out for us in the background of Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents I guess!

Sorry for the really boring post, hopefully by the time I get back on Easter Sunday I'll have plenty to tell you about, I'm hoping to get to see the Maundy Thursday parade in Palma whilst we're there so don't panic, there might be some vaguely cultural content in it!

A tiring touristy weekend.

This weekend has been a touristy one as Erin came to visit Granada for a few days.  On Thursday I just had one class to go to before going to meet Erin from the bus, I rather unenthusiastically dragged myself up the hill and into the classroom just for the teacher to turn up and tell us that there would be no class.  As you can imagine I was not impressed, not just because I'd got myself up there but also because next week we are missing a class because of a strike and I could really do with the lesson time for Latin if I am going to stand half a chance in the exam.  Still, there is nothing I can do about it, ♫ Que sera sera ♫ and all that, so off I went back down the hill to the flat.  When Erin arrived things were not quite as straight forward as they could've been, the internet says that the bus stop is at Triunfo Gardens so logically that is where I was waiting when I received a text from Erin telling me she had just got off of the bus, yet she was no where to be seen.  Some confusion and rough directions later and we found each other after the bus had quite helpfully dropped her off down the road, not even in sight of the gardens!  With the initial confusion over we spent the afternoon having a wander round the city, and even went inside the cathedral which I'd still not done.  We ate in a really nice restaurant where the food was really moorish (Sorry, I think I have spent too much time around Jack and his terrible puns, I won't do it again...), I had a lovely cous cous dish with vegetables and we also had some arabic tea afterwards too.

Friday brought with it a trip up into the Sierra Nevada.  I didn't really know what to expect but knew that I should make the most of my chance to go up into the snowy mountains and enjoy the views before it all melted away.  The bus ride is only 45 minutes and cost us less than 10 euros for the return which was really reasonable.  The views on the bus journey are amazing and every time you think that you couldn't possibly be driving any higher you turn another corner and up you climb a bit more.  We were prepared for the cold with hats, scarves, gloves, hoodies and gillets but it wasn't as cold up there as we'd been expecting.  In fact we sat outside a bar drinking cold drinks and watching the ice melt before our eyes.  Being so warm and sunny yet surrounded by snow was more than a little surreal I must say!  Whilst we were there we took the cable car up higher, we think it was around 8200ft, to really make the most of it.  It was quite expensive at 16.50 each but worth it to appreciate the views up there, we'd been walking round the bottom of the resort which was absolutely dead, we soon discovered it was because they were all at the next stage up, there were loads of people!  After another sit down with a drink in the sun we headed back down to have some lunch before getting on the bus again.  In the evening we met up with the others to go out for tapas, we tried the Chinese tapas to start off with which was a strange concept but the food was good and that was all that mattered!  The last place we went to had a huge range of tapas to chose from and we had some really good fajitas, will certainly be going there again.

On Saturday we woke up to the rather disappointing sight of clouds and everything looking generally grey but this actually turned out to our advantage because although it rained a little it made our day a lot easier.  We walked (or more accurately climbed) up to the Alhambra where we queued, in order to queue, in order to just queue again! You'd think we were in England, we like queuing there, it's our national sport, but the Spanish don't generally like to partake in such an activity!  Despite all the queuing we had a really good time, but we did an awful lot of walking and consequently by the end of the evening after we'd been out my feet were in no fit state to walk home and we ended up getting a taxi- stupid blisters!  We'd not eaten anything for lunch before we went into the Alhambra and so were rather hungry when we eventually caved in to the temptation of buying a packet of gullible tourist priced biscuits from a stall, half a packet is a nutritious lunch right?!  We did eventually eat again when we got back into town and went for tapas, including another visit to the Chinese tapas place.  In the evening we went to Paddys with the others for a few drinks, finally arriving back at the flat in time to change the clocks and see an hour of our sleep for the night go flying out of the window...

Today I've not done much, in fact I don't really think I've done anything.  I walked to the bus stop (that this time actually was at Truinfo Gardens) to say goodbye to Erin and then headed back to the flat where I have successfully done one load of washing, written this blog and put my photos on facebook.  For those of you that want to see my photos from the weekend I've put them all (or at least am in the process of...)on flickr as opposed to Facebook where I have only uploaded half.

This week is going to be a short one as the Spanish are going on general strike on Thursday so I won't have my classes.  I do have an exam on Wednesday though which I have no clue about the content so that should be rather interesting.  Oh well!  Just 3 days of classes to get through before a few days off and then off on holiday for a week!  I can't wait now, it should be really good.  As well as looking forward to seeing my friends (obviously) I'm really looking forward to getting to see a Spanish Easter parade on Maundey Thursday.  At the end of this week I'll be half way through my classes out here in Granada and a third of the way through my time in Spain.  6 weeks down and 12 to go!

I'm settled in, now what?

As you may well know from my previous blog posts I've been here for 5 and a half weeks now and haven't really been up to much.  Don't worry, it's not like I've been locked in my room for all this time or anything, I have been out and about but I've not had any big plans or gone any further than the beach.  That's been good for the settling in period but this week I've been hit with the feeling that I really need to do something, because if I don't I start realising how I miss everything and everyone at home and it's far too early to be doing that.  Some of you probably read Lucys blog too and will have seen in her most recent post that she talks of the "post-settling-in and pre-holiday slump" and I think she has hit the nail on the head.  We've gone through our first month or so discovering everything that is around us, got into our routine and now need something to break it up a bit.  For me I think the realisation came over me when I got up at 7 on Monday to head up for my classes and was no longer so willing to do it and just wanted someone else to go for me.  I had this in Brussels too, it was the point at which everything became boring/normal, and I had a few weeks until the next exciting thing I had planned, I think it was going back to Lancaster for the weekend.  This time around the timing couldn't be better, Erin arrives tomorrow and we're going to go and enjoy the apparently brilliant views up in the Sierra Nevada as well as going to the Alhambra which I've still not done yet.  After that I'll just have a few days to wait until I go on holiday and get to see Katy, Charlotte and Vicki for the first time since January.  As if I didn't already have enough to look forward to whilst I am out here I have now planned to spend the final week of the summer term in Lancaster so that I can go to Grad ball, extrav etc, meet a few people that I need to see and also collect my keys to the house for next year, but most importantly catch up with the people that by then I won't have seen in months.  It does mean however that I will be spending around 1 day at home between flying back from here and driving up there, and in that time I'll need to buy a dress for Grad Ball... should be interesting!