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!

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...?

♫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 ♫

Am I really half way through my year abroad?!

So that's it, the first half of my year abroad is over, I'm done in Belgium, I've finished studying at ISTI and I won't be going back, it's scary to think how quickly the last 4 months or so have gone!  Our journey out of Brussels wasn't without trauma as the Sat Nav decided that it just didn't want to work!  So we started off somewhat following our noses before remembering that I had a couple of Brussels maps in one of my bags.  We eventually got out of the city and from there it is very straight forward all the way to Calais.  Today was spent unpacking everything, not a quick task I must say!  I'm back in England now until the 13th of February when I head off to Granada until the end of June.  I think my time at home is going to fly by seeing as this weekend I'm off to Lancaster from Friday to Monday, the following weekend Katy is down from Lancaster and we're off to see Olly Murs in London and the final weekend we have a party of a family friend to go to up t' north.  I've set myself the target of conquering DELC 310 in the time I'm home, it's do-able seeing as I've done a lot of the preparation for it, but it just seems so far away.

As ever we spend one stage of our lives thinking of the next, and although I'm off to Granada after this- and really looking forward to it too- I'm spending my time umming and ahhing about what on earth I'm going to do in the summer!  It's all about weighing up the value of experience vs earning money, going away vs staying at home.  It's all a bit of a nightmare, but I'll let you know when I've got more of a clue what is going on!

So hungry I could eat a horse...

I realise that what I have done is something that a lot of people I know will quite possibly never forgive me for, but I decided that not to do it would just be hypocritical really, I'm happy to eat Beef, Pork and maybe this is because we've helpfully given it another name so we don't say I'm eating Cow or Pig but it's just the same difference.  This said I decided to try horse last night.  I was attempting to be adventurous and cultural, or at least this is what I'm telling myself.  The funny thing is that I stood outside looking at the menu and saying "oh horse, no, I couldn't do that" and this gradually evolved into "but I am curious..." and then "I wonder what it tastes like" and finally "well, maybe I'll just try it then".  I'll be honest, it tasted like beef.  There was a hint of something I couldn't quite put my finger on but that could've just been the sauce.  That's enough about my horse eating experience, the reason we'd gone out was to see what was going on on the Grand Place, during the Christmas markets they have light shows and music and things and then on Saturdays they put on these extra shows.  Last night was essentially 2 people in a bubble (Snow globe) dancing whilst some rather freaky looking other people crept around the outside in a manner that I can only say reminded me of something like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  Stupidly my camera ran out of battery, which is fine, I'll just pop back another time, but it did allow me to take this photo:

Inititally I was very confused as to why it was necessary to fence in the nativity scene, surely they're not worried that someone is going to kidnap the baby Jesus or something?  But then Jenny pointed out, and I'm not sure how clearly you can see it in this photo, there are real sheep in there, real live sheep.  But I'd like to wish good luck to the shepards as the sheep seem to be about double their size...

It does seem out here that they go all out on Christmas, I suppose my foundation for comparison is Maldon (the lights were switched on last night and I hear it was all of about 2 lightbulbs) (and I hope she doesn't mind, but if you want to read more about the Maldon Christmas lights read it here on Julias blog) but they seem to really go all out for it, can't help but wonder what it could be costing them though!

On an unrelated topic I've decided that the world really must be a lot smaller than we think, I've been looking at flats in  Granada and the landlord for the latest one suggested I might want to contact the people currently living there, so a quick search on Facebook and I'm there.  Well it turns out that there is a guy leaving when I get there, not only is he also from Essex but he goes to uni in Portsmouth with one of my friends from school.  In the summer I met someone in Valencia and we had a mutual friend that she went to college with and I met at Lancaster.  I'm getting used to having random mutual friends with people but I can't help but find it very weird and just makes the world feel like a very small place!

Well this  has been a brillant form of procrastination from the essay that I'm meant to be putting the finishing touches to, the presentation I'm meant to be learning and I'm sure there is more I could be doing.  So that'll be all for now!

The surprise test, the essay extension and the holiday to Mallorca

Great news when the first thing the teacher does when they enter the room is say the word "Test", especially when they have a grin right across their face when they say it!  English to French translation about the King James bible... so that was fun.  Not holding out a huge amount of hope for that one!  He did take pity on us English students towards the end and gave us dictionaries though.

After this would normally be the culture lecture but as I've done the essay I decided it was pointless to go, I later find out that he told them today that the deadline is now extended to January, when I've already finished it, just typical really.  I've got one more to write that I've not been given a deadline for yet, no doubt once I've written it he'll say January too...

The best part of today is that I've booked my flights for my easter holiday break to Mallorca with Katy, Charlotte and Vicki,  I just get a week off from Granada at easter so it will be a nice way to spend it.

Home in 3 weeks and 3 days, which I'm really looking forward to, and bearing in mind how fast time has been going lately it will be upon me so quick.  In terms of weekends I have this one to do work, the next in Lille and the following Henry is here, the weekend after that is Christmas!  Sorry, I know I've said the C word and it's not even December yet but it's just so close.

Apologies for the rather boring post, not 100% sure why I even bothered to write it...

My 30th blog post

Well here it is, my 30th post, milestone eh?  Somehow we've arrived at the second week of November and I have little to no recollection of where October disappeared to...

Before I tell you what I've been up to I'm going to have a little moan about Ryanair and their lack of geographical skills (which frankly, for an airline, is rather worrying).  They fly into an airport that they call Brussels, but it isn't Brussels main airport.  Indeed it isn't even in Brussels, no, it is an hours train journey followed by a 20 minute bus journey away!  That's about the same length of the flight back to England!  Very annoying!  Especially as I'm flying from there to go to Madrid and I have a friend flying in there in December.  Cheers Ryanair! Your flights may be cheap but the costs add up afterwards don't they?!

Sorry, now I've had my little Ryanair rant I'll continue...

Where did I leave off?  I reckon the last thing I wrote about was probably going to Lancaster?  Since then I've been spending time with my grandparents as well as trying to cram in some work.  We visited Bruges for a day and also went to Antwerp.  We also went to the EU Parliament visitor centre which I did in English this time to pick up the things I missed when I did it in French.  Also discovered a room which we missed last time and that I actually think was one of the best bits because it explains how the parliament actually works etc.

It has actually dawned on me now that I only have 2 clear weekends in which I can do any work because for all the others I am either away or have someone visiting.  Basically I need to put my foot down and get cracking with it now.  The ISTI work is going to have to take priority and DELC 310 can take a back seat, but I really don't want it hanging over me in Spain...

Today I need to get some planning done for my Law essay, although not too much as I've not had the go ahead for my topic yet, and then I have a couple of classes to go to this afternoon.  Then I'm off out for a meal with my grandparents.

I leave you with a photo of a common scene across our days out this week and another to bear in mind: