Planning Your Year

One of the things that I failed to do much last semester was plan how I would be spending my time, sure we made a bucket list of things to do, but in the end we failed to achieve many of them because we kept thinking to ourselves ‘we have plenty of time to get that organised’. So with that in mind when I came back to Cádiz after the Christmas holiday I decided that I would get some of the big things that I wanted to do planned and booked straight away so that I didn’t miss out on anything. This also served to give us something to look forward to most of the time, as even though Cádiz is great, sometimes because it is so small you can feel like you need to get out of here.

So one afternoon Kath and I abandoned revision for exams and instead decided to compare calendars and book up some of the trips that we have wanted to do. First on the list was Morocco, which after looking at the flights we decided to book for the last week of February, as there are only flights to and from Marrakech on Saturdays and Mondays, and a 2 day trip seemed a slight waste. So this then left us with the problem of when we could do it, as we would have to miss time off university. We decided on the last week in February as we believe that this will be one of the two introductory weeks for uni, where we will be allowed to change classes, so missing a few days won’t be an issue. Unfortunately some of the girls may be going home at this time, so won’t be joining Kath, Hannah and I but we soon realised that if we waited around trying to find times where everyone could do everything we would end up in the same situation as the previous term where we didn’t get anything done.

Next on the list was a trip to Italy to see Claire, deciding when to do this was easy, Claire’s 21stBirthday is in April, so Kath and I will fly over for that. At the moment no one else is going with us, but we have shared with them our flight details so they are welcome to book up and come along with us. I will be flying back to the UK from Italy, as I have a Scouting meeting to attend that weekend, so I booked my flights and trains for then – no need to worry about it in the coming months and prices are only going to go up for flights and trains. We then booked up for a trip to Madrid in May, as some of the girls have bought tickets to see One Direction there, we realised we could fly from Jerez and so researched flights that matched up with train times and booked them. We also put a deposit down for a hostel, which we checked on trip advisor and google maps to make sure it had decent reviews and good transport links to the airport and the concert venue.

We have also made plans for a trip to Ibiza to coincide with the ESN trip in the first week of May, there is only one bus full of ESN members going from Cádiz, and we didn’t want to risk not all getting on it. On top of this we have found that other people seem to gain more from the ESN trips than us, as we like sometimes to do our own thing, so it would be unfair of us to take places from other people. We have found flights and transfers as well as accommodation for less than the ESN trip costs, although we don’t have club entries that are included on their package. We understand that with these added club costs we will probably cost around the same as the ESN trip, but we are holding back from booking this for the time being, because we know another girl who is arriving in Cádiz in February and we aren’t sure if she will want to come with us.

Once we had sorted all of these trips that required flights we then turned our attention to the places that we wanted to go, but could easily be reached by bus; Cordoba, Rhonda and Granada. We looked at our calendars which (once we accounted for our parents’ visits in March, and exams in June) were looking pretty full, and chose weekends to do each of these trips on. After this it seems that we will have very few weekends left here in Cádiz, the time is really going to fly! This weekend after our first proper week of exams we will start to book up hostels for the coach trips as a treat to ourselves.

Some things to bear in mind, when making grand plans:

-          There may be factors that come in to play that we don’t know about yet, what if something really cool is going on in Cádiz on a weekend we have booked to go away? We will just have to deal with it, but a proper event calendar for Cádiz probably would have been handy

-          There is now a rather large hole in my wallet from booking all of these things, my poor debit card is looking very worn out. BUT at least I don’t have to worry about this for the rest of the year – I can now budget effectively knowing that I can go on all the trips I wanted to!

-          My mum has warned me about going to Marrakesh, as recently there have been news items about people getting kidnapped from there, so we are going to keep an eye on this, and the UK government travel website and reassess closer to the time if the trip is still a good idea.

-          Booking with large groups means it may be a good idea to book an item of checked luggage between you, we have done this for both Madrid and Morocco, as hand luggage can be quite restrictive, but no one has enough stuff to warrant a case of their own.

-          Be Excited! I am so excited about the year to come now that I know there isn’t going to be a moments rest – not that Year Abroad would ever get boring. It’s just really satisfying to know that I have so much to look forward to specifically.

So all in all, I would definitely recommend doing some trip planning, avoid missing out! I wish we had done some last semester, think of all the things we could have done!

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