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.