I cannot believe that my course is halfway done. I only have seven more modules to complete before I head home to write my thesis- which I still don’t know what it will be on yet, suggestions would be appreciated. This week has not been overly eventful except for the fact that Thursday was a holiday to mark St. Paul’s Shipwreck in Malta. I thought it would be cool to check out what goes on during a ‘festa’ so a bunch of us headed to Valletta to see what was going on. I think it would have been better to go at night because all we saw was a band marching through the city. Yay for cultural experiences. I’m sure there is more to it than that but I couldn’t find an itinerary of events or anything so that was slightly disappointing. There will be plenty more events to come, I’m sure so hopefully those ones are better. 

There have been a lot of changes going on at the residence, specifically with the new residents having arrived for the second semester.  The overall mood at the residence is pretty mixed right now with a lot of people sad to see friends heading back home and a lot of people who are happy to start their time abroad. Obviously it sucks to see people leave but, speaking from experience, having met people on exchanges in the past it makes for the best excuse to travel and you never have to worry about paying for accommodation! So good luck to everyone who has gone back home and welcome to all the newbies. 

Vacay Therapy

So I know it’s been a while since I last posted, but I went away for a bit of an adventure after exams. I hopped around to 5 different cities in France and the UK and got to see a lot of people that I haven’t seen for a while and who I care about a lot.

I met up with Mark in London and the following day we debarked on our trip to Bordeaux to meet up with Dan, a fellow Canadian and friend from Grenoble who is currently doing his PhD there. Despite the fact that I haven’t seen Dan for about two years, we were able to pick up right where we left off and spent hours catching up, drinking wine and eating cheese and chocolate. Later that night Jamie arrived and the following day all four of us went on a wine tasting tour which was really fun and of course delicious.

  

Back in the UK again I went to Leicester and met up with Sweta, my friend that I met on my flight back to Toronto in December and we became instant friends so it was awesome that I got to meet up with her again and she took me to law school for the day, how very Elle Woods of me.  

Next up was Wales to see the beautiful Kat and Lama. What an amazing place, maybe I’m biased because I like lambs, but it was absolutely stunning. I would go back there in a heartbeat and I would love to see it on a clear day. My only complaint was the windy roads which make me sick but I’m just used to straight roads so I clearly need to man up.

The last leg of the trip was spent in London with Miranda (the legend), as well as a bunch of people from France and my cousins from Australia and Canada. Even though the whole purpose of my trip wasn’t touristy, I was pretty excited to make the effort to go to platform 9 ¾ (since I’m so cool) but I think the next time I am back in London, which will be soon, I’ll actually do the 27 page self-guided HP tour. Why not?

So thanks to everyone who I met up with especially those who donated a bed to me, it was amazing to see you all and I look forward to seeing you again. 

Going Postal

Earlier on in the week, I had to go to the post office to mail a few things; despite the fact that I had to walk there which realistically takes 3 minutes, and there was 4 people ahead of me in line, it literally took me one hour to go and come back. At the beginning of the year, I was really frustrated with the post office because a) I couldn’t find it and b) when I finally did, it was closed. It is only open from 7:30-12:45 so for people who work or go to school, it becomes very difficult to get mail posted. Albeit, I had a few (six) things to mail but in my opinion, I didn’t think it should have taken as long as it did. I had two small letters to send and after weighing them, the man gave me the stamps and envelopes back only for me to have to stick on the stamps myself and then walk outside and post them in the mailbox. I’m sorry, was I not at the post office already? Why would that mail not just stay at the post office and go out from there? Moreover, the remaining four things I had to send were larger things which contributed to the other 40 minutes of my post office adventure. For each package that I had to send, homeboy put at least 9 stamps on. Are you serious Clark? Why not print a sticker with a barcode that says that I paid the right amount instead of sticking each collector’s edition stamp on and then taping the hell out of the box to make sure the stamps don’t slip off? Too much. 

Legit

Anyway, in other frustrating/unsafe Maltese news, as I was walking back from getting some groceries last night I saw an uncovered manhole. The cover was just strewn about, not even half making an attempt to cover the hole. There were no pylons indicating any sort of random hole in the ground. I imagine that since today is Sunday, and God forbid anyone works, it will remain uncovered until Monday.

I digress. That’s been my non-eventful week. I’ll be back in two weeks. 

Study Time

Well it’s that time of year again, the time to buckle down and get serious about school and attempt to pass your classes... yes my friends, it is exam time. I know that when it comes to exams, I adopt some funny habits which are mainly just excuses to not study. Suddenly I find every excuse in the book to tidy my room, reorganize my desk, finish a book (so as to prevent distraction later), paint my nails, take naps (more so than normal), wash the dishes, eat my feelings, the list goes on and on. The newest ritual that I guess can be added to the list is to completely ignore the fact that exams are looming around the corner and have a party in the afternoon. That’s what was collectively agreed upon by everyone in the residence yesterday. At 2:00 in the afternoon we had a sangria/beer party which led to a bunch of drinking games, eating, and noise. I guess it was better to get it out of our systems before exams have officially started, or at least that’s the excuse I’ll use to justify it. Anyway, I am lucky enough that I have a week off to really get into study mode and then write my two exams and escape the island to go on my adventure to the UK and France. So good luck to everyone on their exams, I’m off to finish reading a book. 

Sangria/beer party... 8:00 pm

Ok, I’m back from my blog-writing hiatus. Happy New Year to everyone and I hope that your vacation was great. Mine was definitely not long enough, ten days went by way too quickly and trying to find the balance between seeing family and friends and writing papers proved to be a bit tricky but it worked out in the end. Anyway, it’s nice to be back to start the beginning of the end of the course; 8 more modules to go- it’s hard to believe that the course is pretty much half done. Anyway, after a quick week of classes, I’ve been able to enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend. It has been roughly 18 degrees during the day which means I’ve been getting my ‘stan’ on. Hopefully the weather continues to get warmer in about two weeks when I have a study week; realistically I want to maximize study time with a nice bronzed glow. Priorities eh? I think it’s more multitask planning in advance. Call it whatever you want. 

Working hard or hardly working?

 

I'll Be Home for Christmas

So let’s talk about the last two days. I was supposed to leave Malta on Saturday so that I could spend a couple nights in London to catch up with some friends and family before I went home on Monday. My plans were quickly changed when Mother Nature decided to dump snow all over London and cause the airports to shut down. It was a snowstorm like no other, ten whole centimetres. I’m only kidding, I’m not sure how much snow they got in the end but by the time I got to London it all seemed like a huge joke, I didn’t really see what all the fuss was about but perhaps that’s the Canadian in me thinking that a lot of snow is anything over a metre. Anyway let me explain how it all went down. On Saturday, 45 minutes before I was supposed to get the taxi to the airport, I got a text message saying that my flight was cancelled. I frantically looked for another easyjet flight to transfer onto but of course the next one on Sunday was completely booked and the following one on Monday landed at 2:00 in London which was no good for me since my flight to Toronto left at 12:00. Thankfully I was able to find a flight with Air Malta on Sunday that left at 7:50 in the morning. So the next day I woke up bright and early at 4:30 to get to the airport for about 6:00 only to find out that my flight was delayed an hour and a half which I thought was better than it being cancelled altogether. Then I found out that Heathrow airport had shut down for the day and probably would not re-open until 8:00 that evening. At around 8:55 I found out that I could switch onto another flight that was going to Gatwick at 9:30 so I had to run through the airport to switch my flight, go through security again and then get on the plane. We left at 9:40 and needless to say I was a very happy camper to be going to London so that I was at least one step close to getting home. 

So thankful that I didn't get stuck in this

Once landed, everything was fine. I navigated the rail and tube system like a true Londoner and was met by my cousin Jeremey and hung out for the afternoon. Although I didn’t get to meet up with everyone that I had originally planned to (since they were also stuck in their respective cities due to the weather), I was very fortunate to meet up with people from my exchange to go for a nice dinner. Of course I was nervous on Sunday night that my flight on Monday to Toronto would be cancelled since I had heard of so many people having spent 2 (some 5) days in the airport waiting for their flights and was thinking of my back-up plan in case I needed to crash in London for a few more days. I was very lucky that my flight was not cancelled and everything went very smoothly. So now I’m back home and looking forward to doing noth.... writing two papers- yay holidays. I’m not that bitter, I’m still gonna chill out as much as I can. I hope everyone got home safely. I’ll be writing more soon.

Grenoble Reunion

So it’s nearly been three months since I’ve been in Malta and I’m really proud of myself for learning the language. Ok that’s obviously a huge lie since I don’t think I’ve learned as much as I could have if I didn’t have a couple degrees to figure out. However, I have taken to pretending I know what people are saying to me when they speak to me in Maltese. For example, on Friday I was looking for a new coat for London since I don’t want to freeze my ass off- yes they sell coats here it’s not always warm- and they didn’t have my size so my roommate kindly went to ask if they could check for another coat and despite the fact that she asked in English, the sales associate promptly returned and immediately spoke to me in Maltese and told me she didn’t have the coat I was looking for. It’s easy enough to tell when someone is saying something positive or negative so I just rolled with it and said, “Oh you don’t have it? That’s okay.” Even yesterday, when I went for my run, I tried to go a different way and I got a little lost- of course I did- and then this sweet man told me to just go back a little bit and take the first right. At least that’s how I decided to translate it and he was right anyway so no complaints there. 

Anyway, I’m very excited to be coming home in a week, although I am slightly nervous about the cold. Of course I’ve grown up in Canada so temperatures below zero don’t scare me but my Mediterranean blood hates the cold. If I think it’s cold when its 10 degrees here how am I going to deal with minus 8? I guess I’ll just have to hibernate and only go out when necessary. Hope most of you have recovered from snow burial and I can’t wait to see everyone, love to all.

Not looking forward to this temperature difference