About me :)

A wonderful friend of mine Josie is blogging every day this year :) I am addicted to reading them!!! You can read it too by clicking here!!

Her last post was an 'About Me' tag and considering I don't have anything interesting to blog about at the moment but I don't want to give up on this lovely little online space of mine...I thought I'd take inspiration and do the same. I hope you enjoy...and don't forget to go over to Josie's blog and tell her I sent you :)

1. Are you named after anyone? Not as far as I am aware :) 

2. When was the last time you cried? Yesterday watching something sad on tv (standard) 

3. Do you have kids? No!

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot? haha, it's my favourite form of communication!

5. Will you ever bungee-jump? I'm not sure. I'm going to skydive but something about bungee jumping scares me more. 

6. What's your favourite cereal? Frosted wheats 

7. What's the first thing you notice about people? their hair...and clothes...so superficial but that's where the eyes go initially. 

8. What is your eye colour? Blue

9. Scary movie or happy endings? I do not watch scary movies...so happy endings!

10. Favourite smells? the smell of petrol (lol-I bet I'm not alone here), perfume (alien/lady million/green apple) and all things soap and glory.

11. Summer or winter? neither...I'm an autumn/spring girl all the way :) 

12. Computer or television? Computer, because at uni, it's how I watch my television!

13. What's the furthest you've ever been from home? I think Tenerife (about a 4 and a half hour plane ride)

14. Do you have any pets? 2 cats :) 

15. Favourite movie? any chick-flicks!

16. Do you have any siblings? 1 sister who's 2 years younger

17. What do you want to be when you grow up? That's currently a question I'm battling with. I don't know..perhaps a teacher, maybe something in the media/journalism. 

18. What was your favourite subject in school? Religious Education/Art 

19. What's your favourite drink? sprite/coke (but my NY resolution is to cut out fizzy drinks-so apple juice)

20. Favourite song at the moment? One Direction - Kiss you (DUH!)

21. What would you name your children? I'm not sure, something traditional with a modern edge.

22. Do you participate in any sports? lol.

23. Favourite book? Hmm..I love The Book Thief, The Hunger games trilogy, The Divergent series and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 

24. Favourite colour? Pink 

25. Favourite animal? Penguins or Panda's. 

26. Favourite perfume? Thierry Mugler - Alien 

27. Favourite holiday? Christmas. 

28. Have you graduated high school? Yep - living the University life. 

29. Have you been out of the country? Yes..I currently am living in Italy for a year 

30. Do you speak any other languages? I'm learning Italian as we speak. 

31. What's your favourite store? H&M, Forever 21, Debenhams

32. Favourite Disney character? Pluto

33. Favourite restaurant? Nando's (No Brainer)

34. Did you like school? so cheesy but they were the best years of my life.

35. Favourite youtubers? the whole Luke/Ingrid/Joey gang in America and the Alfie/Marcus/Zoe/Louise in England 

36. Favourite tv show? Anything about Birth or Marriage generally. I'm a reality tv ADDICT

37. Pc or mac? A recently converted MAC. 

38. What phone do you have? iPhone 4! 

39. How tall are you? No idea..I rekon about 5'5 ish! 

Italian Exams

I'm blogging in my sheer excitement at the fact that my exams are over (woohoo!)

I know that over half the people who read this blog are students and I'm pretty sure almost all of you still have exams, so I'm sorry for this gloating but I can't help it and I KNOW you'd all do it in my position. 

There's nothing like the feeling of literally having nothing to do! (although I'm sure I will be bored of it pretty soon.)

Just thought I'd write a short blog post about the Italian exam system, because it's been an eye-opening experience to say the least.

I had one written exam on Romanticism and one oral exam on Detective fiction. To begin with, the written exam. 

For those of you who are not students, a quick insight into an English University exam. Once you enter the room, you must be silent. A clock is clear on the main wall you are facing. You can only take in water, and you must take the label off the bottle. Technically no phones in the room, definitely no phone on you personally. You cannot leave ANYTHING on the desk other than your pen and student card. You cannot leave the exam (unless emergency toilet break - even then with a chaperone)..etc etc.

To begin with, we had no idea how long the exam would be going into it, half way through, she casually decided to just add on an extra 15 minutes on to the end of it. There was no clock in the room; one of the chaperone's phones went off, she answered it (in the exam); the papers didn't turn up for 10 minutes, whilst we were all sat at our desks waiting, at this point, everyone was talking; the exam was split into 2 papers and half way through we could leave the exam hall for a 'break' to get coffee/chat with friends; I had a can of coke at my desk. The 'literature' exam had some multiple choice questions (I know, wtf?!), and the longest answer we were required to give was half of one side of A4 (compared to a usual 8 sides of A4 answer in a usual English Literature exam).

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it was easy...it wasn't. I didn't know the answers to some of the questions because it was so date/historical context based but hey...it was an experience...and you only need half to pass and I think I can safely say I've passed!

This morning I had my oral exam. It lasted around 20 minutes and most of the time was spent with our lovely teacher telling me how much he enjoyed having the Erasmus students in his class. My problem with oral exams are their subjectivity. My tutor even said, if the teacher doesn't like you, you're screwed (in not so many words)...luckily, he LOVES us. It didn't feel at all like an exam and I was over the moon with my mark. The best mark I've ever had in an exam, ever! (and I only spent 2 days revising for it...think I'm starting to like this Erasmus thing :P)

This time, the fact is was an oral exam worked in my favour, but who knows what will happen next semester!

Anyhow, I am going home the day after tomorrow (Saturday) for a whole month before next semester begins.

 I get to spend time with friends and family and just relax, watch lots of tv, read books for pleasure...not because I'm being forced to, and play an unlimited amount of Sims 3 (which I am re-installing as we speak :P) 

I am also going back to Leicester on the 28th until the 31st of January which I am SO excited about because I have missed those guys so much!

Now, all my student friends..stop reading this and procrastinating and go do some work ;)

Ciao

2013

First blogpost of 2013..yay!

Firstly, I hope all you reading had a lovely Christmas and New year! I did. 

To begin with, Vlogmas is over. It was such fun to do, I'm happy I finished it, it's great to know I can look back at what I was doing at this point in time. I'm also really relieved it's over. I have so much respect for the people I watch on YouTube who film daily vlogs, it's so tiring and time consuming, just remembering to film followed by the endless hours of importing, editing, exporting, uploading, YouTube doesn't make it very easy to upload let me tell you!

Christmas time in general has been really lovely. I was so happy to go home, Hollie my niece met me at the airport which was lovely, especially considering Emma and I had been delayed at Verona airport on our way. 

It was of course so much fun to catch up with all of my friends at home. The majority of them, I've known since the early days of high school, so over 10 years (wow - that's the first time I've ever thought of it that way! I feel old!) I'm so excited that they might be visiting me here in Italy really soon!! 

Here's a picture of us from our Christmas reunion <3 

Christmas Day was filled with its usual general merriment.  You can see my Christmas Day vlog here: 

I got to spend the day with loved ones and open presents (I was definitely on the 'nice list' this year). Favourite thing about Christmas day - FOOD! (yes, I have lamb..I don't like Turkey!)

In between Christmas and New Year I have my anniversary. Such an inappropriate time of year when it comes to present buying but I very much look forward to the 29th of December each year. My boyfriend and I celebrated our 5th year together this time, which was pretty difficult for us to comprehend...I mean, where has the time gone? Nevertheless we had a great day shopping in Chester, followed by a lovely meal in the evening and a champagne fuelled night. 

New Years eve was a quiet one for us, we spent the night in and got pretty drunk off pale ale - rather random I know. Going out on New Years Eve is so stressful and expensive, triple time taxi's and waiting at an understaffed bar, sticking to the floor all night, personally, I think a night in is always the  safest option. Although when we sat there watching the fireworks, I made a pact with myself (and Charlie) that we must go to London one year to see them in person. 

I have three resolutions this year:
1) to cut out fizzy drinks
2) to use all my make-up/body/hair care products before buying any more (I seriously have 2 x 4 draw sets FULL of them!)
3) to make the most of my experiences and opportunities (not moan so much about spending the year in Italy haha)

Since New Year, other than double my bodyweight, I have been trying to begin revising for my exams. It's Saturday night now, they're on Wednesday and Thursday and I can, hand on heart say, that I've done about half of the revision for one of the exams, and absolutely nothing for the other, so I'm starting to feel the pressure slightly! Although, I'm not worried, I don't get stressed about exams generally, I just hate feeling unprepared in anything. But it is completely my own fault for never learning from my mistakes. 

This is how I've started my New Year...I hope yours has been sincerely more fun! 

Ciao