A Weekend of Work

With another 'Exam' looming it was time to knuckle down and do some actual work. My main concern was the exam for History of Andalucia, which I will have to sit next week, it is a 15 minute interview about a book that we are meant to have read. Not only is this terrifying because I have to answer an exam in spanish, but because I will be doing it out loud to some lecturer who doesn't really seem all that fond of us English folk since the second week of class when we didn't know anything about the Industrial Revolution in England or great seventeenth century thinkers of Europe. This means that every time I inevitably slip up the look on his face will make it very clear that I am losing marks by the second. Oh, and I haven't read the book, and it is not a nice easy book to read either. Great. So it was time to start reading, luckily for me there is a rather large UK contingent in this class, 8 of us, so we decided to get together and help each other out, dividing the chapters between us so that there is less to read.

On the friday afternoon we headed over to Sophie's roof terrace for a study session, hoping that the sunshine would motivate us some more to work. It was certainly a novelty to be sitting outside in the sunshine doing work in mid November! We put on some Christmas songs to cheer us up as we had all been missing the festive spirit, Christmas cheer is somewhat lacking in Cádiz. The workmen who came to the roof to fix some flowerbeds didn't seem all that impressed with our renditions of Mariah Carey's 'All I want for Christmas is you', or perhaps it was the fact that some of us were sunbathing whilst the Spanish people are insisting on walking around as though it is an Arctic winter, in coats and scarves.

After a couple of hours of work, which admittedly got a little bit sidetracked by the Christmas sing-a-long, the sun started settting and we decided to call it a day. Anissa had invited me over to watch some films and had kindly offered to make me a gourmet meal of Chicken Nuggets, how could I refuse? So I headed to Anissas intending only to watch a film, but instead we ended up watching four. I would have headed home if it wasn't for the thunder and lightning that began mid way through the first film. I didn't want to risk heading home in the rain and getting my laptop wet, however by 3am it seemed that I had little choice, and I had my daysack with me which does have a waterproof cover, so I made it home laptop intact. Although I did get a few funny looks wandering home at 3am in the pouring rain in a T-shirt.

On Saturday we had all agreed to work independently on our designated chapters for History of Andalucia, there were two of us per chapter so that we could confer or help each other out if we got stuck. By the end of the day I was getting more than fed up with Spanish work, so instead I read my Chinese textbook from home - yes that was how much I wanted to avoid work. Luckily for me we had planned a fun evening as a reward to ourselves for having worked so hard (or not in my case) all day. At around 8 the girls came round to my flat where we watched some highlights from 'Children in Need' a show that is on once a year in the UK and features sketches and performances from some british celebrities and asks you to donate in order to help fund good causes in the UK. It is a really big thing back home, it is hard to avoid any fundraising efforts for it, so we caught up on some of the best bits, including performances by One Direction. We also ordered ourselves a take away from Fosters Hollywood, what seemed to be American diner style food, which was a nice change from typical Spanish cuisine. It was an early night though as we had more work to do on Sunday. Not overly exciting but proof that Erasmus students do work! The other girls more so than me at the moment as they have the test for the CSLM language course coming up, which I didn't take. So they have much more revision to be doing than I do.

The Sunday was spent much in the same way, apart from without the get together at the end of the day. I made the big mistake of allowing myself a lie in on Sunday so didn't manage to get the early night on Sunday that I had promised myself. It was good to have a weekend where we all did work, as I didn't feel like I was missing out, if people had been going somewhere or doing something I would have dropped that in an instant rather than get the work done - even though I can't really afford to avoid this work at the moment! Study sessions do work, surprisingly.

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