Hola España y gracias Emilia!

Sorry for the lack of blogging. You'd have thought I'd have been on here every night since I arrived but sadly I've been so tired it's just not happened!

Emily and I have spent a lovely few days exploring the area in the simplest way possible. Saturday we left the piso and turned left, Sunday we turned right instead! Methodical, eh? We came across a million parks (randomly in the middle of the avenida), more benches than I care to count, and many many closed shops. Everything here closes at midday on Saturday and all day Sunday, but in fairness things aren't all that cheap here, given it's practically one euro to the pound. It's almost depressing that you don't have to do mental conversions in your head.

Anyway, Emily, in her marvellous style, found me Ben and Jerrys. I've no idea how she did it. But she did. What would I have done without her this weekend??? It was sad saying bye to her and putting her in a taxi with 'pervy McJuan' (actually, when he turned up, he seemed quite nice!), and let's just say I was literally crippled with a bout of 'why the blooming heck did I choose this degree, I'm going to email Olga (Spanish teacher) and tell her I can't cope, am moving back to England pronto and changing my degree to something that probably won't get me a job'. But then I had to pull myself together to go and sign on at the uni, so that was the end of that really. For the first time since getting here, some plonker said 'ayyyy guapa!' at me (oi, fitty! is a rough translation). I'm not sure whether to be offended that it's taken three days, or disgusted that it's happened at all. Hmm. Answers at the end of this blog post please!

I met some English people today (yes I know, the Spanish speaking starts next week, give me a break!) and we had a good old British moan about how we were finding things. I had my first coffee of the semester (un cafe con leche) which tastes like English coffee. But as all of us import coffee, it's hardly surprising. And after that I felt much better. Onward-ho I suppose. I'm eating more than I have done recently. Stupid culture shock. Everything's just a little bit weird, and I've had a lot of trouble eating anything. Obviously I forced stuff down, knowing that this was exactly how I felt the first time I went to France and that I'd get over it eventually. Well it looks as if I am. I was contemplating buying Heinz baked beans (yes you can get them here) just to see if something familiar would go down better, but actually I got a pasta thing that has cheddar in. You can't get cheddar over here (or at least I haven't found it yet) and, as my dad would attest to, there is ALWAYS mature cheddar in our fridge at home. So this is a tricky situation, as you can imagine. But anyway, ate this pasta business and am about to go help myself to some Lays (the equvalent of Walker's crisps, but better). Tomorrow I may also make my way to Lidl, as the supermarket here is OK, just a bit on the expensive side for some things. Though chicken was cheap (and HUGE portions).


Tomorrow I get to go to an official welcome and a trip to the town hall (el ayuntamiento. I remember using that in my AS level role-play... strange what you remember!). So, hasta luego bloggeros (clearly the Spanish term for a blogger. Clearly.) xxxxx

 

Reasons to (temporarily) go off your year abroad

I kicked off the day by watching Jeremy Kyle, so I could get suitably annoyed with England and would then want to go to Spain! I was seriously considering just staying in my bed this morning and refusing to move, but then thought better of it. 

The journey went far too smoothly, this much is certain! My first time on an aeroplane was fun fun fun, I even giggled at take off! We all got a taxi (which was easier said than done as the taxi driver didn't appear to speak Spanish or English or Basque, rather just made grunting noises) and got kicked out on Suzy's street (which is one street away from mine! WIN!)

So, I found my appartment with Emily and rang the buzzer. No answer. I call the landlord. He tells me he's at least an hour away from Bilbao. Blooming marvellous. So, we headed to the nearest cafe, had a sandwich which made my very delicate stomach literally turn over (and it was cheese and ham, not like it was squid or anything!). The lucky thing is that the cola here is actually coca-cola, the real mccoy!

The landlord called me to ask me where I was, and that he was coming (or something. His English is bad and my Spanish isn't great). So we went to stand outside the appartment again, rang the buzzer again, eventually we got let into the entrance. I met a lot of my neighbours, that's for sure! Everyone walked past us, sat on the steps, saying 'hola' and such like. One really nice lady even asked whether we had keys and who we were waiting for. 

EVENTUALLY, after a thousand years (at least), the landlord shows up. "I hhhhhave a gran problem" he says in his best Spanglish. Ooooh great, think I. He'd lost his keys. So I went with him to one of the other appartments he owns, which had but one girl in (who was completely lovely), and we decided that me and Emily should stay the night there. So we go get Emily and my stuff, go to this appartment, skype the parents, settle down to watch something. And I get a phone call from the landlord, saying that the keys were in my appartment all along but the girl already in it was too scared to answer the door.


So. We go back to my appartment, meet Olga (who is lovely, from Maldova, and speaks literally no Spanish at ALL. Brave brave girl, no wonder she was scared to answer the door!) and settle down (again).


And now I'm pooped. I've lost an hour of my life coming over here! Hmph! Hope I get it back at the end. The other little connundrum is that the pillow on my bed is substantially longer than my pillowcase. Which begs the question, why aren't all pillows as wide as the bed? Makes sense!


Anyway, we're off to the supermarket tomorrow (so out comes the GCSE words. Anything but calemares! (squid to you or I!). What an exciting life we lead!
Buenas noches a todos! xxxxx

The last post from this side of the pond!

Well I've packed. Spiffing. And the case only weighs 17kg so win there! 

It's all just a little wee bit too real now, but I have tea bags in my case so life will be fine (as soon as I've bought a mug to brew up in!) I even have an element for heating water so I don't have to faff about with pans of hot water (thank goodness for the days before health and safety! And my parent's hording!)

Just a short bloggio today, maybe more tomorrow if I can get the internet to work in the piso, or otherwise I'll be in touch in a few days! People with contract phones, don't text me till you've checked your terms and conditions, otherwise both you and I could be charged! If I text you I won't be offended if you don't reply, it's facebook and skype from here on in!

Lots of Lucy love! xxx

20lbs, 20kg, what's the difference? :S

So today I started retrieving the bits I'm wanting to take to Espana on Friday. 20kg doesn't seem like much when you say it, but today has been most illuminating in that department. After giving myself a heart attack when I read the bit of the scales that measures in lbs (and my case weighed about 10lbs!), I soon realised that 20kg is a fair amount. And also that my case weighs 4kg just by itself, which is a slight victory for my case because those extra-light ones you can get are still 3.9kg and I think that's for a smaller one. And my black case with white 'Lucy Spots' (as my amiga Beth likes to call them!) is just more epic. Fact. 

So my packing progress has ground to a halt. I've realised I don't have nearly enough underwear and therefore I will have to brave the washing machine fairly pronto after I get there. I really REALLY hope that all those stupid symbols I learnt for GCSE textiles are the same in Spain, otherwise I may flood the piso. All my stuff is currently rammed into my case any old way till I summon up the energy to pack it all properly, and I need to go and buy enough cold and flu relief to stave off fresher's flu when I get there. The last thing I need is a trip to a farmacía two days in.

Till next time, nosey people who want to know what I'm getting up to! (aka, followers) xxx

Articulation Saves Lives (or at least gets me on the right train)

Quick assessment of the situation. I am moving to Bilbao for 21 weeks on Friday. Number of items packed: 0. Number of items thought about: 100,000 (at least). Number of kilos allowed on the plane: 20. Number of unanswered questions about this flaming trip: 500,000 (and counting).

But anyhow, enough about that. Let's pretend it's not happening. Not in the sense of 'I don't want it to happen', more in the sense of 'I'm trying to stay excited so let's not over-analyse and send me into a panic'.

It has to be said, I've not done that much recently. I went to see the grandparents. I feel a little bit like Dr Who (the David Tennant one) when he was about to regenerate and he had a last hurrah to see Martha and various others to fill in the last 10 minutes of the episode and just generally make the point that he (the actor) was going on to pastures new. On the way back from Sheffield I got stuck on a train, which finally arrived into York 45 minutes late, but as I've had more good journeys than bad recently I can't complain. I remember a time when I was younger when sleeping on Doncaster station until there was a train back to York was routine as they were forever being cancelled! I felt sorry for Dave the Train Manager personally. He had to introduce himself several thousand times to keep us updated. There was really no need - we were stuck five minutes the other side of Doncaster with no reception, how much more of an update did we need? 

I tell you what's been bugging me recently (other than Starbucks never stirring the syrups into my coffee, so I drink steamed milk until the last inch when I find syrup and coffee). The people that do the train announcements never articulate their vowels, or their consonants come to think of it. Gone are the days when very RP accents echoed around saying 'the train now arriving at platforms 2, 3 and 4 is coming in sideways'. (Sorry, terrible joke. I got it from the old jokes home for a bit of an outing.) I do think that some training should happen in this department, because the words 'this is a platform alteration' followed by incomprehensible, unarticulated nonesense is just no use to me. I wish everyone would move out of the way and let me do it. I could be the Queen with my impression of an RP accent. Next time I'm on the vino tinto (red wine) you'll have to ask me to give a demonstration!

Till next time amigos. Though I'll probably have had a nervous breakdown about the case taking a whole 4.5kg of my precious 20kg without asking *sob*. 

I went to fair old London and all I got was this blog post (yeah RIGHT!)

I apologise right now for the extra-long, bumper-edition of this blog, but I went to London on Monday. á la Megabus because they put you on a train halfway there and it doesn't cost very much at all! I was met at the beautiful St Pancras station by the wonderful Raph. Of course, finding him was a bit of an effort due to the ridiculous size of said station, and me having the geography skills of a blindfolded fly when I'm under pressure. 

Anyhow, a trip to the Tate Britain followed, in which I saw ten tonne of stuff that would have been useful for Fren233. There was a whole exhibition about the Vorticists, which (as far as I can tell) are roughly equivalent to those drunk guys who wandered round Paris. Only these were the English ones. Anyhow, we found my room, which made me miss Lancaster as I was staying in uni accomodation and they had THAT bed, and THOSE curtains. All you people who have been to uni will know the ones I'm on about! Then, classy people that we are, we had a KFC on a park bench in Camberwell :D

Tuesday I took some classes at Pineapple Studios in Covent Garden, where I'm going to live when I marry a millionaire. I nearly died doing Yoga Ballet Fusion (I'm still wondering which bit was ballet... and my muscles are still asking whether it was really a good idea). They had to leave me on the floor for a bit after. In the evening I went to jazz tap, which was awesome sauce! Obviously I came back with severely aching muscles, an addled brain and an outfit from Pineapple. Then me and Raph saw a cracking band at some pub in Brixton. The saxophonist put me to shame *sob*. And the crazy Spanish people there started dancing, gave up speaking English completely, and forced the band to retreat for fear of spilling their music all over. Culture shock hit (haha).


Wednesday I met Miss Beth on Oxford Street. Shopping ensued, needless to say! At the point where I declared I needed a drink or I might fall down, we were given a flier by a bloke, which gave us a free tea or coffee with every order. So, in true Yorkshire fashion, we went to this cafe, ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, then enjoyed our croissant and coffee. When I'd said bye to Beth, I went for a quick mocha in a Starbucks off Bond Street, and I sat down and who should be sat opposite me than Colin Jackson!!! You know, the famous Welsh runner that came second on Strictly Come Dancing a while back? But I left the poor bloke alone, it must be rubbish being a celebrity sometimes. Later, I ended up wandering stupidly far up Regent Street in search of a Pizza Hut - the craving was soooo bad!


Thursday, me and Raph and Ken hit the sights! We did the V&A and the Science museum, and it rained a lot. Then had some utterly gorgeous food at Raph's (and his mum was kind enough to not put chilli in. Someone told her I was coming!), and then had the rather unpleasant task of saying bye to some of the most amazing people I've ever met :'( 


Friday I just plodded round, slowly making my way back to St Pancras, then got on the train and bus home. 


Soooo, that was my trip to London! I've picked up some marvellous phrases (such as 'swear down' and 'ra' and 'innit'), and apparently I push through a crowd like a Londoner. It has to be said though, that although London has many many people, York suffers from worse overcrowding due to the general lack of space on the streets. In short, a very good trip and I've written a list of things to do next time I'm there!


And today has been spent with the lovely Emily and her family, who took York by storm. 


Well, that's all folks! I tried to keep it as short as possible but you know, exciting times. Catch you all soon! xxx

 

On the way to interprete! (pronounced interpretay in Spanish...)

So, when I published the last post yesterday, it was actually a little bit behind the times because I wrote it last week and saved it and forgot to publish it. So I'm doing another one now because more stuff has happened :)

I emailed my Spanish landlord (in Spanish, I might add), and got a reply in English. The hilarious thing is that I asked whether Emily could stay in the piso with me for the first 3 nights, and the landlord (as yet I'm not sure whether it's a lady or a gentleman, so I can hardly say 'he' or 'she') said that she could stay, for the first two nights she can have the spare room and for the third that 'she would be behaving in bed with you [me]'!!!! Our reputation has reached Spain it seems! 

Also on the Spanish front, I did a bit of freelance interpreting (that sounds like I was getting paid. I wish!) when I just popped into York's tourist info (now named 'visitor centre' which basically gives it license to stock nothing useful for local residents). There was a Spanish lady asking for a map at the desk and the bloke was stood there looking gormless while she said 'mapa... map?' and waved her hands to mime driving. I do think that a foreign language should be a requirement if you're going to work in a tourist info, or at the very least, previous knowledge of charades. Anyway, I barrelled on over and told the Gormless One that she wanted a road map. The woman explained to me that she wanted to visit Malton and their hotel was actually in Bradford, so she needed one to cover that area. I relayed this to GO and he said there wouldn't be any free ones, but they'd be in the other room on the right if there were any at all. As it happens, we went through and there wasn't one at all. So the poor Spanish couple had to leave empty handed with nothing more than my sketchy directions to put them in the direction of WH Smiths. I tell you, I wonder what they think of England. More to the point, I wish I'd had the forethought to ask. 

I also wonder how the heck they even made it to Yorkshire without having a word of English, as we're not like people on the continent are we? We get more broad with our accent just to annoy people and further hinder understanding if they're foreign (that includes pretty much anyone outside of God's own county, you can be English and still be foreign round here!) I also was dying to turn around to GO and say 'that'll be £50 please'. Interpreting is a good business.


Anyhow, after all that my nerves were a little shaky so I went home and had a brew, which is exactly what I'm doing now. Shocking news too - I made the first cake since Lancaster yesterday. I hadn't made a cake for three weeks. This prompted Raph to ask me if I was ill. For a moment, I wasn't sure how to reply!


Right, I shall quit my ramblings and prey that you, dear readers, haven't gone grey while getting to the end of this blog post. Muchas gracias para todo!


Lucy-Cakes (I wonder if I should start putting the 'cakes' in brackets... :S )