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!

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!

Apparently I've been here for a month already?

Now that is a scary thought right there.  Tomorrow I will have been living in Granada for a month and I honestly couldn't tell you where that time has gone.  The scary thing is I have 15 weeks left here, and I have plans for 8 of my 14 remaining weekends!  If the 4 weeks I have been here have flown by so quickly when I've not had plans or much work to do then how quickly is the rest of the time going to pass?!?

This weekend I've not really been up to much, I had a 4 day weekend because my only Thursday class was cancelled.  I could've used this time to work on my dissertation, finalize my essay for Lancaster or even do some of my Lancaster Award forms that I really need to do, but I've not done any of that!  I've done a few bits for uni here but not much.  On Thursday night I went out for tapas, I seem to be getting rather partial to a bit of tapas and sangria don't I..?  Yesterday I went to the beach, we had really nice weather for about an hour an a half but after that it got a bit cold so we went to have lunch at a bar just up from the beach.  Oh, what I forgot to say is that it was a rocky beach as opposed to sand, so not the most comfortable!  We're determined to find a sandy beach round here somewhere though...

Actually, I did do something vaguely productive, I wrote an article for Third Year Abroad called ebooks vs real books on a year abroad, which I am being paid for in Amazon vouchers, so I'm pleased with myself.  At least something was achieved this weekend.

This week may finally be a "normal" week for me where I get all my classes and actually go to uni 4 out of 7 days, but who knows what may crop up to change those plans, another random conference, a protest maybe? (There was one on Thursday, a feminist demonstration to tie in with International Womens Day, you should've seen the amount of police that were out for it, a bit excessive I think.)

Whilst I'm here, apologies to anyone that follows me on Twitter and was bombarded with #lusuelections tweets on Tuesday and Friday, it's all over now I promise! (Until next year...)  I should find out the results of the exam I took last week in the next few days, so that'll be nice to know how many points I have towards passing this module.  I'm only taking enough to satisfy Lancsaster this term, I took a few extra in Brussels but couldn't find anything I liked that worked with my timetable here.  I'm happy that I could pass 2 of the 4, but my Latin class and my Dialect class look like they're going to be rather hard.  As long as I get some points to take back to Lancaster with me though that's fine as I did alright in Brussels so I'm not going to get myself worried about it. Edit: Got 1.5 out of 2.5 marks available so that'll do :)

I've not eaten the most healthy food this weekend (tapas, Mcdonalds, chips...) so I'm going to try harder tonight, no doubt I'll end up snacking on chocolate later though!

This time in 3 weeks I'll be on holiday in Majorca!!!!

♫Everything in life is only for now♫

That blog title loses a large proportion of its somewhat philosophical quality when you know it's taken from Avenue Q doesn't it?  Sorry about that, but I feel that it is particularly relevant to me at the moment.  As a lot of you probably know, I went up to Lancaster for the weekend as it was the only chance I was going to get whilst I'm back at home.  I won't bore you with all the details of what we did but needless to say I had a lovely weekend as ever and I've realised how lucky I am to have friends that I can just fall back into place with as if I never left.  Being in Lancaster is a little strange though, I do feel weird going onto campus to an extent I feel as if it is completely normal but on the other hand I feel a bit like I shouldn't be there when I had to go into my department and went to say hi at work.  The problem is it is all over with far too quickly and before I've even realised it we're at Monday and I had to go home, luckily I got to do my goodbyes in stages so the waterworks didn't come all at once!  The thing I need to remember is that last semester absolutely flew by in the blink of an eye and as long as I try and fill up this one with plenty of things (and maybe some classes, work, dissertation and exams...) I'll be back in England at the end of June sooner than I think.  The hard thing is saying goodbye to people and knowing you're not going to see them for 5 months, last time it was a lot easier to just pop back to see everyone but what with Granada not being the easiest place to get to and most of my friends being in final year it's just not practical at all.  The other thing though is to keep things in perspective, I was sat telling a friend how hard it is for me to say goodbye for 5 months and then remembered that he spent the whole of last year in America... talk about complaining to the wrong person!

For now though I'm still in England for another couple of weeks but once I do go I know its only a matter of weeks until I'm off on holiday and get to see some of my friends in Majorca for a week, another few until my parents come out and then a few more until home time again...I really shouldn't wish away time like that, the next thing you know I'll be writing my first blog post from the house in Lancaster!

I'd better love you and leave you now as I have some serious work to be done on my essay if I have a hope in hell of getting it done before I leave for Granada!

I'll leave you with the song I quoted in the title.

 ♫ Everything in life is only for now ♫