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

Semester 1...Done.

This post has been a long time coming but I have a lot happening so thank you for baring with me. 

For a while, nothing was really happening with my life exciting enough to blog about...I was going about my day to day student life in Bologna.

I knew I was going to wait until after my trip to Amsterdam to blog again, and here we are. 

I was so excited to go to Amsterdam, I have been before, and adored it. Having friends there this time would mean I could not worry about seeing all the sights and just spend time with them having fun, and oh boy, did we have a lot of that.

I'm going to insert several pictures because I know how text-heavy blog posts can be boring. We managed to pack a lot into those 5 days. A few of my highlights were ice skating outside the Rijksmuseum (and not falling over), space cakes, the Anne Frank house, NEMO science museum, vlogging, laughing - a lot, eating - a lot, losing two tram passes (despite being someone who neve loses anything), consuming an insane amount of cheese from the Dutch in a random bar, intense facebook stalking and generally spending time with amazing friends. 

The other thing I can update you on is 'Vlogmas'. This was a project I embarked upon at the beginning of December. I wanted to do something fun, and every year I watch these videos on YouTube. It is a phenomenon (if that's the word you would use?) whereby people in their thousands take to the internet and 'vlog' their daily lives. Just carrying a camera (in my case, my iPhone) around with you from the 1st-25th December and capturing anything that might be worthy and that you would like to remember. It's a great chance for my friends and family at home to see what my life and surroundings are like here, as well as a way for us to be able to look back and remember a part of our Erasmus journey more clearly. I will be sad when it's over but as much as I've developed on iMovie, I will be happy to not have to edit and upload everyday.

Just a very quick shout out to the BEST lecturer in the world, Prof. Ascari..genuinely a legend. 

I guess this blog post also means the end of Semester 1 of Erasmus as I go home tomorrow (thank god). I have made some wonderful friends from across the World and made memories I will never forget. I'm really sad to say Goodbye to them, especially those of you who are not returning for a second semester. I don't believe the hype of Erasmus lives up to all you are told, there are definitely down days but overall I have loved most of these last 3 months. There are so many highlights, here are a few. 

Progressing in learning a new language

'The colony'

Making friends with people from France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, America, Austria, Netherlands etc

Venice

Verona

Gelato (all year round - last week in fact)

Cheap and unlimited pasta

Gigantic fresh pizza slices for €1.50

Italian dogs

Riding the bus for free

Acquiring a coffee addiction

Brioche con Zucchero 

My housemates

Surviving 3 months of Italian roads

Cheese/Prosciutto

Il Rosso

Brachetto

Meals at Chris and Vicki's 

Teaching Italians 'ring of fire'

Italian Christmas celebrations

There are so many more but it's difficult to remember and summarise an entire 3 months. 

Whilst it truly has been incredible, I am so ready to go home. Back to English food, English supermarkets, My bed, My cats, and my friends of family (not in order of importance obviously).

Finally, well done everyone for surviving the end of the world.

Buon Natale
<3 

an 'urgh' week..

I keep picturing that chart from the Erasmus information lectures, the highs followed by the huge dip, illustrated in line graph form. I'm not in the 'big dip', apparently we have that to look forwards to in March, but it definitely is a roller-coaster. 
This week has been a bit 'blahhhhh' that's the only way I can describe it. I had the stress relating to my presentation at the beginning of the week, which thankfully went relatively well, less people were in the class than usual which relieved the nerves slightly.

Secondly, and I won't go into detail incase said person doesn't want the world to know, but let's say, within our group from Leicester in Bologna, there is now a 50% crime rate. 3 out of 6 of us have been the victims of theft. I am well aware Italy is dangerous and perhaps well known for this, but we are sensible people, and not one of the crimes have been as a result of our carelessness, I guess it is just bad luck but it's not a great feeling when you can't feel safe in your 'home' for the year. 

Maybe I'm feeling like this because I am sick of the food situation here. I love the restaurants and eating authentic Italian food, but on an Erasmus budget that is just not possible all year round. Anyway, I hate bringing negativity into the world and sounding like a moaner but imagine, for an entire year, your biggest supermarket being the size of a co-op in England. Imagine it doesn't really sell meat, unless it is extremely overpriced compared to England. They have half a co-op sized aisle for frozen foods and unless it's tuna, pretty much no tinned food.

I have basically eaten pasta, pizza or potatoes every day since being here and whilst when I first arrived, this was one of the things I was most looking forward to, it is now the bane of my life. I dread meal times and people who know me, know that I need to have a happy belly to be a happy person haha (and on this diet, that belly is growing..fast).

I already know you're all thinking 'stop moaning! You're in Italy' but after a while I guess when the novelty wares off, it's still a place to live and these little (im)practicalities can be of great annoyance.

I would hate to leave this weeks' post on a negative note and I promise it's not all bad, so I want to leave you with some things I am happy about and thankful for (in honour of it having been Thanksgiving this week).

1) Getting to know my American housemates better. Most of you know, I am obsessed with America, I love the accents, the food, the culture, everything - and visiting New York is at the top of my 'Bucket List' so getting to hear and learn somethings about America has been really interesting to me (especially sitting in the kitchen until 3am trying to do accents haha)

2) My Leicester friends here in Bologna, I always say this but I really wouldn't be able to enjoy this experience half as much without them. It feels like I've known them forever and they really do feel like family now. (I know more about SOME of them than any one else I know..wink wink).

3) I am thankful for One Direction, and their new album - haha. It really does make me happy.

4) This video...was just on my facebook timeline because a friend liked it, it was uploaded by someone I don't actually know but watching this has made me SO happy, and therefore I think this video is the best place to leave it this week. 

Ciao. 

Procrastination

I'm doubting my choice of using the 'procrastination' title so early on as I know there are going to be so many more posts soon where that is the sole reason for them. But yes, I am procrastinating and I need a break from the slow death that is producing a presentation and essay on Mrs. Dalloway.

As always, this week has flown. But I do have some updates (Hoorahh!)

This week, I went on an ESN (Erasmus Student Network) trip and climbed one of the towers in Bologna, whilst it was potentially one of the scariest experiences ever due to the hundreds of crooked narrow wooden steps we had to climb, the view at the top was completely worth it. Unfortunately the light was rapidly decreasing as we got up there so the pictures aren't amazing quality but trust me, the views were breathtaking and it's one of those moments where you think 'Shit, I'm actually here'. The fact that we were greeted on the way down by traditional thick Italian hot chocolate and a chocolate buffet made the backwards climb down 280 steps even more worth it!

You will observe I have talked a lot about chocolate in that last sentence. This is because this week in Bologna has been the infamous 'Chocolate Festival'. Perhaps one of the most incredible things I have ever seen, tent after tent of chocolate, liquid, solid, white, milk, dark, with nuts, fruit, shaped like shoes, tools, on top of strawberries...just chocolate in any way you can imagine. It's free to walk around and considering the quality, it's pretty reasonably priced. I won't even indulge you with how much I have eaten but I'll insert some pictures here so you can see the magical-ness of it (and yes, EVERYTHING is edible chocolate!)

Also this week I have some more exciting news. I have booked flights in December to take a trip to Amsterdam! As some of you know, I have some very special friends (Alex and Sophie) on a year abroad there at the moment and knowing that another one of my wonderful friends (Emma) was visiting them, how could I pass up the opportunity to join! I am beyond excited about this trip for many reasons, for one, I haven't seen all 3 of them for months and miss them LOTS, secondly I love Amsterdam. I have been once before and fell in love with everything there. Thirdly, it will almost be Christmas. This means it will be decorated with sparkling decorations and have that cosy festive feel that I adore so much. 

(Picture, of course stolen from Google Images)

Whilst I'm loving Italy of course, at the moment, I'm wishing I was home a little, my next trip away isn't until 13th December so I have a month with not a lot happening. I'm sick of not having proper meals, I'm missing English food SO much, my friends, boyfriend and niece especially (yeah okay Mum, I guess you too haha - I know you're reading!) I miss all my nail polish, make-up, beauty products and other clothes I have left at home and just that feeling you can't get anywhere else. 

The fact that the work is piling up here, and I have a big, looming presentation around the corner makes me want to run away from it. But I can't run away forever and I guess I have to face it head on and before I know it I will be at home wishing I was back. 

Ciao. 

Romeo, Romeo...

Another delayed blog post...I have finally come to the conclusion that one a week just is not possible. 

I'm a year older since my last blog post and apparently a year wiser but I haven't noticed any changes just quite yet. Now the grand age of 22 'Ventidue'. 

I've been thinking about life and all that big scary stuff that comes with those musings. Yes, I am well aware I am being melodramatic and 22 is not old, yet I feel like only yesterday I was turning 18, or 16 even. I remember thinking, when I was that age, about being 22, specifically because I thought that would be a good age to have children 'Not too old and not too young' I thought. Oh how wrong I was. 

Besides from all of that, I had a rather enjoyable Birthday, it was made special by so many people, my friends in Bologna and unexpectedly my friends, family and boyfriend back home. Because of surprise cancellations of a few lectures, I only decided about a week before that I was going to fly home for one week. It meant that I got to spend the actual day of my Birthday at home and I had such a wonderful time shopping in the Trafford Centre, eating my beloved Nando's and getting to see my gorgeous niece again, who gave me the best reception I could ever have wished for. Just general happy times.

Free Lemoncello and tirimisu :D

being embarrassed in Frankie and Bennies!!

Once my Birthday celebrations were over and I returned to Bologna, I was hit with a brick wall of University work. It's so incredibly difficult to get into the mindset of doing academic work when you feel as if you're on a constant holiday. As someone who has always lacked motivation when it comes to deadlines and reading, this does not bode well for my personality type. I still am yet to climb this wall and get to the other side but it's progressing slowly. 

The other exciting thing which has happened since the last blog post was my trip to Verona. As cliché as it may be, Romeo and Juliet is my all time favourite Shakespeare play (and trust me, I've read/spark-noted, a lot) so being able to visit the 'Casa di Giulette' was a little dream of mine come true. Verona itself is quite small, but very beautiful, we went on a perfect autumnal day, we got to see the classic arena, browse the small streets, cross the breathtaking river and of course, stand on the balcony that inspired the 'Romeo, Romeo' scene. 

I got to do the cheesy padlock and other touristy things..we also ate at this restaurant with the biggest menu's I've ever seen, it was american food too, which was such a nice change from pizza and pasta. 

Anyhow, there really is nothing else to update on, last night our friendship group here in Bologna got together for an indoor picnic and a board game..'Risk'. Tej and I made a great team and I think everyone enjoyed themselves (despite some people taking it too far, Chris I'm looking at you!) 

I have roast potatoes cooking because I literally have nothing else and can't face another day of pasta and ketchup. Must take them out the oven before my pan with plastic handles melts :)

Ciao