Ah, got to love a good puente.

Last week finished off without to much excitement really, I've now settled on History of Women, Spanish Dialectology, Linguistics of Teaching Foreign Languages and Introduction to Latin, so long as I can register for them all this week then that's me set for the year.  I'm finding them all interesting and actually enjoying what I am learning which is more than I can say for the courses I did in Brussels.  That's the advantage of being here, I've got so much choice!

This week I have also written an article for Third Year Abroad about Granada which is intended to help people that want to come here next year, I did one about Brussels too and they can be found here.

For those of you that don't know what a puente is it's basically an excuse for the Spanish to take another day off of work/class etc!  Puente literally means bridge, and that is because if a holiday falls on a Tuesday they generally choose to take Monday off too.  Today is Andalucia day, not that you'd know it, in a very un-Spanish style nothing has actually happened to mark the day other than everything being closed.

What have I done with this lovely 5 day weekend then?  I have to be honest and tell you I've not actually done all that much!  On Friday after having spent the morning inside I went for a wander with Jack, we didn't go anywhere in particular but we did stop for a drink and end up with one of the stranger tapas dishes I've had, literally a fish.  I have no objections to fish at all, in fact I really like sea food so the fact that my food was looking at me didn't really bother me, I just can't help but think it was a bit of a strange tapas dish though!

On Saturday I went out with Aimee, Michael and Jack for another walk, this time up into the hills of the Albyzin where Aimee lives to appreciate the great views as well as while away a couple of hours at a bar where we once again were provided with whole fish for tapas, maybe it's not as unusual as I'd thought it was.

Sunday was a nothing day, I went through my notes from all my classes this week to try and get some sort of understanding of what I had supposedly learnt!  I think it helped... I hope it did because one of my classes is split into 4 parts which means I actually have a test next week that counts towards my end result for that course, bit scary this early on!

Monday was, to be honest, a fail of epic proportions... we had decided to make the most of the weekend and do something worthwhile and thought we should head up into the Sierra Nevada to appreciate the views.  This would've been a great idea, if we had booked our bus tickets.  Unfortunately we turned up at 9.30am just to find there was only one seat left on the bus, and for 6 of us that wasn't going to work.  We decided to make the most of actually being up and getting there by having a coffee in the bus station cafe, how exciting are we?!  After going back to the flat and realising nothing productive was going to get done I went to the shop to stock up on food etc and then went out for a wander again.  We went up to the monastry near the uni as well as up a hill that seemed to head to no where (it didn't, we just turned around and went back down) and then a lap around part of the city.  Tapas called yet again, but this time it was bread and meat followed by fried squid.

Which leaves me with today, and if I'm honest I'm not really sure what on earth I have spent my day doing!  I've read through my French essay for Lancaster and marked on the corrections I want to make but that can't have taken me all this time surely?!

Well, it's a hard life for an Erasmus student so tomorrow I have to head back to classes again, but don't feel too sorry for me now will you, I may have 6 straight hours of classes tomorrow from 8.30am but I only have 1 class on Thursday and then I'm done for the weekend again!  Maybe next weekend I'll actually get some of my dissertation done like I'd intended to do today...?