Exploring

I finished my second module this week and since I finished all my work on Friday, I actually had a weekend to myself. I would have liked to have flown somewhere to visit a new country but since I never know how much work I will have to do, it’s a bit risky booking a flight in advance and not knowing if I can go. Besides, right now flights are really expensive and I think that it is important to see this beautiful island that many people don’t even know exists! So with that, I decided to go to Mdina, the old capital of Malta, also known as the Silent City. It was really nice to walk around and take in the sites and also go to an amazing cafe to take a break and eat some chocolate cake--- diet starts Monday so it’s okay. Later on in the evening us girls got dressed up for Halloween. To be honest, I really don’t like the holiday, save for carving pumpkins, but I ended up deciding to be Bellatrix Lestrange from Harry Potter. (19 days and counting until the 7^th movie comes out!)

Today a bunch of us took the ferry to Gozo, and we hired a few taxis as personal guides to take us around the island. Normally I wouldn’t do that but because today is Sunday and everything is closed or operates on a reduced schedule, it would have been really difficult to get around and we probably wouldn’t have been able to see half of what we did. It was a great day and we were all exhausted by the time we got back to Malta to take the van back to the residence. Everything was fine and dandy until the van stalled and we were stuck. Thankfully it didn’t take too long for someone to come and help us. I thought that when the next van came to pick us up, we would all just switch from the broken down van to the other one; instead, we were “towed,” and by that I mean the vans were attached by a rope and we were dragged from Mosta back to the residence. Is that even legal?

 

And I know I usually have a good story about the buses, but the only one that I have this week is that the bus drivers here can sometimes be really hostile. Take for example when I tried to get on the bus just as it was leaving- probably not the best of ideas but for the record I was yelling and saying “wait!” - I literally had to jump on the bus to get where I needed to go and then when I was trying to get off, the donkey that was the bus driver, didn’t stop so I found myself jumping off the bus. At least I know that if my career in conflict resolution fails, I probably have a good chance at becoming a stunt double in Hollywood so I mean, I guess it’s a win- win sitch.

So that’s it for me for now, I’m looking forward to the next module which deals with Media and Conflict... who knows, maybe I’ll get in touch with my inner Robin Scherbatsky and start my career as a news reporter. We shall see.

I am pleased to say that my second module has been much better than the first one mainly because the professor has been more realistic with his expectations. However, one thing that has been tough is his teaching style... I frequently find myself looking around to see if people in the class are confused but they either have amazing poker faces or I’m the only one in the class who is confused. The prof will ask if people understand and everyone nods enthusiastically, with smiles on their faces while I’m sitting there going “what the hell just happened?” Anyway, that’s something I’ll have to figure out. On another note- holey moley I’ve been here for one month which means I only have a year left. Boom diggety, time flies when you’re having..... *ahem* working hard. I have managed to squeeze in some fun time and I went out twice this weekend which was a nice break away from the books.

Now I know it seems that I have a habit about talking about the buses or the rain here but it is for a good reason. Take today for example (Mondays seem to be terrible for rain): I woke up to a thunderstorm. Seeing as last week I got soaked by the rain, you’d think I’d know better  (seeing as I am a local now) to just call a cab. Anyway, it wasn’t raining by the time I left the residence so I thought I could make it to the bus stop and all would be good. Wrong-o. I got soaked. And I’m not exaggerating by any means. I was wading through water that was gushing all over the place. Friends of mine decided to take off their socks and shoes but I really didn’t want to risk stepping on uneven ground and twisting my ankle or stepping on something sharp and bleeding everywhere and getting an infection. Instead, for the sake of my education, I pushed through and faced the dangerous waters and got to the bus stop only to have no buses pass and i ended up calling a cab and getting to class 35 minutes late. A new record for being late. I sat through an hour and a half of lecture freezing and smelling of sewage, so naturally I bought a new pair of jeans at lunch... I needed a new pair anyway (see mom, I told you I needed to bring five pairs of jeans)!  So there are a couple lessons to learn here: first of all, I need rubber boots and second of all, if I hear the rain, and see water everywhere, I’m just going to call a cab... it would save me a lot of trouble. 

Flooding in Msida is always the worst when it rains.

If you want to check out some video clips and pictures of the flooding, look here: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20101025/local/readers-pictures-of-the-floods

It's Been a Tough Week....

Hay girl hay! You all still with me? I am surprised that I am still alive but I somehow managed to finish one semester in a fortnight... ya, I just wanted to use fortnight in a sentence. Anyway the last week was really intense, I had a presentation and a 15 page paper to due and then a random conflict facilitation simulation thrown in there with a day’s notice- why not eh? So basically, I went into hibernation, ate my feelings and felt sorry for myself for about a week. I’m not going to lie, I cried and hated my life. What a child I am sometimes. In fact sometimes I still manage to surprise myself at how childish I am since today I put my underwear on inside out. Really, am I 22 years old? 

 Thanks to Heather (Lamb#3) for sending this to me in an email which, I felt, really applied to my life. It said "It's been a tough week... but dammit I made it!"

Moving on. After finishing all my work for this module I got to enjoy 12 hours of the weekend to myself and I decided to get in touch with my inner 65 year old self and I did what every other senior citizen in Malta does on a Sunday night... I went to banda- in English, I went to a symphony. I was invited by a cousin of a friend I knew in highschool. I agreed to go because it reminded me of my grandfather. When I was younger, I remember going to watch my Pappa play with the Maltese band in Toronto. The ladies would sit and play rummy whilst gossiping and I would drink some pop and enjoy a pastizzi. This performance varied extremely to what I expected. It was actually really wonderful, and I genuinely enjoyed it. There was a tenor and soprano singer and they performed Nassum Dorma, and O Fortuna... anyway I digress, I guess I’m still a band geek at heart.

And just a little side note about the bus system in Malta. Remember my conundrum of getting from where I live in residence to Valletta? It already takes me a good 30 minutes to get to school on a good, dry day, but when it rains, I’m screwed. Take today for example, I was at the bus stop before 8:00 a.m and by 8:20, five buses had driven past me, I was cold and soaked so eventually three of us pitched for a cab and made it to class 15 minutes late- great first impression. The bus system is really unreliable, you never know when one is coming, you only know that it is supposed to come every 30 minutes, and the driver may drive past you for no reason which makes for a fun guessing game to play to try to get somewhere in a timely fashion.

So that’s what’s been going on in my life the last little while. Today is a fresh start to the course since I’m starting a new module (read semester) and I’m ready to work hard and push through this challenge.

First Week of Hell

This week has been absolutely crazy. Without knowing it at the time, I can assure you that I entitled my last post correctly. If you ever need advice on how to lose your social life, just do you Masters in one year. Every two weeks I start a new module so within that timeframe I am technically completing a semester’s worth of work. On the first day I thought I was going to die when I was told that I would be writing a 2 take-home exams, a 15 page paper, and giving a 2 hour presentation alongside reading countless chapters and articles all within 10 days. FUN! I am definitely feeling the pressure of the course and to be a hundred percent honest, I’m also really freaked out. Anyway, if you’re ever wondering what I’m up to, your best bet is to guess that I’m reading or sleeping. Hope everyone at home and abroad is doing well. Love to all

Last Day of Freedom

So today was my last day of freedom and to make the most of it I decided to go to Spain. No I’m kidding I didn’t go there but it sure felt like I did since I was surrounded by Spaniards all day. Remember how in every episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy there was a segment called Did You Know That? Well I have one of my own for today. Did you know that Spanish people never stop talking? Now you know. They say that in every conversation there is a lull after every 7 minutes. The Spanish however, prove this claim to be untrue. Where the lull should be, they replace it with a song. I sat through hours of jibber jabber and songs that I did not understand and it got to a point where I wanted to cut my ears off.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure not all Spanish people are like this, but I’m willing to bet that 73% are. 

Anyway, that slight rant aside, I’ll tell you that I actually went to Comino today, a beautiful island just off the Maltese coast where The Count of Monte Cristo and Troy were filmed.  I have been there before with my brother but this time I got to spend a full day there instead of a quick visit as part of the Captain Morgan boat cruise (not recommended). So I did a bit of stanning (studying whilst tanning) and got a little banned (a burn that will quickly turn into a tan) and called it a day. So that’s the end of my holiday before school starts tomorrow for real and I think it’s going to be one hell of a ride.  I’m going to try to blog once a week from now on  since I don’t think my day-to-day life will be super interesting but if something comes up I’ll be sure to let you know. Thanks to everyone for following thus far. More to come 

Paceville

The last couple nights have been spent socialising and meeting new people... aka going out and getting my swagger on. I figure that once my course officially starts I will get into S.A.S (serious about success) mode and spend a lot more time reading than partying. On Thursday night we went to an international student’s party at Q bar; I’m proud to say that I was much classier at this welcome party in comparison to the one at MC2 in Grenoble so, pat on the back for that. Last night we went to Paceville, the club district in Malta. A note on the name itself... it’s pronounced Patch-a-ville, not Pace-ville or Peace-town as some people like to think it’s called. Anyway, I don’t know when bars close there but if they do, they it’s probably around 8 in the morning. There’s not much you can say about a club district but I find it funny the way that English is not everyone’s first language and even when we struggle to communicate, we can always find a common ground in music. No matter what club you go to in the world, the scene is always the same: girls dance, boys watch- some feel it necessary to grope you, and sometimes – not always (but more frequently for me) - you encounter the smelly-spits-on-your-face-whilst-speaking-to-you-guy. Good times. The one thing I still have to get used to here is the smoking. Everyone smokes, and those who don’t smoke normally, smoke when they drink. As a result, my hair smells like an ashtray. Gross. 

Anyway, despite weird encounters with people, I really did have fun last night and got home at 4 in the morning, but I almost didn’t get home at all. Here’s a lesson to learn: if you pay for a bus to take you and bring you back from Paceville, make sure you get on the same bus you came on. Four of us flagged down what we thought was our bus but it turned out that all the buses look the same and our driver thought it was a good idea to drive at 150 kilometres an hour over speed bumps and winding roads. Since he wasn’t our original driver, he wanted us to pay for our near death experience. He threatened to call the police, and called me a bum (which I found funny since he was taking me to my home...). The best part was that he said if we don’t pay, he was going to drive us back to Paceville because we were wasting his time; I’m not sure what his logic was with that. And so, in the end I thought it better to pay they guy to get him to leave us alone.