Senses of Reality

As  I’ve mentioned in the past, this whole year has very ‘unreal’ in the sense that I know it’s not real life – I don’t have a job here, I see Cardiff as my ‘place of education’ and despite having classes etc here, in many respects it is like an extended holiday. Even though Valencia feels much more like home than Chambéry did, I’ve always had the notion that this isn’t ‘real’ in the back of my head, and as the ‘end’ draws nearer, it’s hard not to think about everything that has happened since September along with the dawning realisation that my fourth and final year at Cardiff is fast approaching. While I will be sad to leave, I equally know that as soon as I’m back home surrounded by friends and family, go back to work and am surrounded by things I see as ‘reality,’ I’ll be happy to be back.

Last Sunday, after a weekend stuck in making revision notes and doing work, I suggested to Anya and Heather the idea of going into town for dinner, a catch-up and a break from the four walls of our respective flats. We ate at a restaurant in the centre of town between the bullring and the Ayuntamiento and there was a lot of reminiscent conversation about how crazy the past 9 months had been, the amazing highs, the horrible lows and everything in between and it there was almost an air of emotion as we realised that our time was nearly up. Every adjective imaginable could be used to describe the journey I, and we have been on and as cliché as it sounds, it has certainly been a learning curve. Nevertheless, we’ve come through it all, no doubt better informed about life ourselves, each other and life in general. This is without even mentioning the linguistic progress we have made and the many friends along the way.

This week Anya, Heather, Rachael & I have been working on our ‘Trabajo Final’ – a piece of work which has to be completed at the end of a module, Norma y Uso in this case. The task? We have to find 5 mistakes in a newspaper whether they be spelling, punctuation, incorrect uses of set phrases, and incorrect uses of accents – anything. Needless to say it was a time-consuming piece of work, scanning line by line, page by page desperate to find something. There were a few near-misses when I thought I’d found something but after checking the RAE (Real Academia Española, the body which ‘regulates’ the Spanish language, dictating what is correct and incorrect), there’d always be some exception to the rule. After a significant amount of reading, we managed to find 5 between us and we then had to write about why it was wrong, what the RAE says and how it should be written. Tedious, to be honest. Nevertheless, we’ve pretty much finished it and have to hand it in during our exam on Wednesday – hopefully we’ll get a good mark.

A ‘Milestone’ that occurred this week came on Thursday: The final class of 3^rd year, and my final class abroad! 2 hours of Norma y Uso can be quite boring, and it was as we went through pages and pages of questions. As we reached question 40 or 40 on the final exercise, at 13.59, that was it – Year Abroad classes were over and we were one step closer to going home. As somewhat of a celebration, and the fact Heather’s friend Ellie was visiting, a group of us spent that afternoon in Turia with a picnic and enjoying the sun. At one point, as I relaxed in the sun, a dog came and sat next to me. It was making sort of whining noises asking for attention and the more I paid attention to it, the closer it came towards me. Anya captured the cute moment.

PICNIC

 

El Perro

 

That evening, Barry had arranged drinks at a local cevercería for all of the TAs (about 20 of us) from this semester and we had a few beers in the warmth as the sun set, which was great. From there, Heather, Ellie, Sam J, Stevie and I went to Tanto Monta, a Pincho restaurant for dinner. I’d heard lots about it but had never been – it was GREAT. The food was delicious and there was plenty to choose from – another thing ticked off my list of things to do!

Anya & I

Pinchos!

 

With classes coming to an end, I didn’t have TA on Friday and so spent the day sat at the table in my lounge desperately trying to force myself to finish making notes on Norma y Uso as the exam is on Wednesday. While I understand the want to ‘protect’ the language and keep it in order, such strict rules on where to use commas, capital letters and whether there should be a space between a number and the % sign seem a little superfluous. What’s even better is that every few years, the academy will change its mind on things, only to change it again a few years later and so the average Spaniard doesn’t know what’s correct either! Anyway, hopefully the exam won’t be too bad.

Having spent quite a lot of time revising and making notes, I decided that I’d go out with everyone on Friday evening. We had pre-drinks at Han & Heather’s and then went to Umbracle, which is the “open air” part of the club down at the artes y ciencias complex while Mya is the “covered” part. There was a pretty large group of us – Cardiff gang, Greeks & Belgians, Stevie & Kris, Sibs and Heath’s friend Ellie and I had what was probably one of the best nights here – Everyone was on great form and Han, Ellie & I danced the night away, though Heather was keen to inform me that she wanted more hips and I was scraping a 6/10 – She likes to make me work, I guess, or perhaps it was jealousy..   

 

Everyone :)

Hannah & I

 

 

 

D-D-D-Dance The Night Away

Heaths & Anya

STRIKE A POSE

 

I didn’t get to bed until 6.30 on Saturday morning and having only a few hours sleep, plus 4 or 5 hours the previous night, I was EXHAUSTED. Rather than sleep in bed, Heather, Hannah, Anya, Ellie and I went to the beach for a few hours in the sun. Having spent so much time in my flat as of late, I’d almost forgotten what heat felt like. On the way back, Anya and I cycled to El Saler to visit Carrefour and I stocked up on a few things from the “International Foods Aisle,” probably the last time I’ll need to do such a thing.

 

Heather & Ellie

Sunny VLC

CLEARLY Loving Valenbisi Life

 

 

 

This week will mainly be focused on the Norma y Uso exam which on Wednesday. From there, the next exam will be translation, though we’ve been told it will be completed on computers and we are free to Google words and phrases... This seems to defeat the object of a translation exam in my eyes, but there’s still some theory based content I need to revise so that’ll be the next plan of action. Otherwise, it’ll be trying to catch a few more rays on the roof/ in the park/ at the beach and enjoying my ever shortening time in Valencia.