I’m on my way! But I don't really want to leave…
ALBUM: Feeler on the Roof by Fripps & Fripps
Me again! I’ll admit, I really struggled to find inspiration for a blogpost this time around. Since my return to Catania, I have been a large-scale hermit - barely leaving the house and just studying. And I don’t have to explain how boring a life of studying is! But up until a few days ago all of my studying had been without end and I was unsure when my exams would be. Now, however, I have official dates for both my exams. I am writing this on Sunday and my exams are Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. RIP.
I had initially chosen to study General Linguistics and Italian Literature, but on taking my Italian Literature course for about a week I knew I had to change. Imagine two hours of lecture with no visual aids (there was a chalkboard but it didn’t get used) and a small old man - who may have actually been alive when Dante wrote his Commedia - speaking in the quietest voice known to man and that’s pretty much my lectures. First month in Sicily and my Italian was terrible, so I was very lacking in lecture notes. I decided to change from Literature to Roman History which one of my friends was studying. I may have won the battle, but I had lost the war. On Erasmus, you can only change classes once, and my new class was Tuesdays 12-2 and SATURDAY 8-10. I HAVE HAD CLASS EVERY SATURDAY AT 8 IN THE CHUFFING MORNING. I’m sure some of you are thinking “I would not be going to that”, but, alas, I have a sign-in sheet that has to be signed by my lecturer after every class. And if I don’t attend 60% of classes I can’t take my exams and then ultimately fail my year abroad and end up back in Edinburgh doing a Bachelors (phew - that escalated quickly). I had sold my soul to the devil.
So after a painful semester, here I am, procrastinating my studying by writing a blogpost about my studying. This is like bloody inception or something. It’s just incredibly boring. Roman history is so content-heavy, there is so much to learn - about 1200 years worth actually. I even tried to make it easier by buying stationary to make it fun. I had the most unhelpful trip to Tiger. I bought a notepad, great. I bought highlighters, great. I bought a colourful pack of sticky notes and a pack of colourful ballpoints. Also great. I get home so excited to pimp my revision. I envisioned a wall of colourful sticky notes telling the stories of Kings, wars and Emperors. My sticky notes weren’t sticky, and the colourful pens were in fact blue biros with coloured outsides. I felt cheated. I then used this as another excuse to procrastinate. I had envisioned my notes as a piece of art on my wall - and that was how it was going to be. I went on a search for blu-tac.
The happy end to the story is that I did indeed find blu-tac. It wasn’t blue, but instead came with two very jazzy Hello Kitty tattoos, which me and my flatmate donned as sexy under-boob tattoos. The boys were lining up to get our numbers, naturally. And now my wall is awash with sticky notes and I have successfully learnt 1200 years of Roman History. If there is one thing I know, it’s what aids me in my revision. And that’s colour, music and exhaustive repetition that ends up driving me crazy - but it does work. Two days away from my exams and I know every single date of 16 of the most important wars during the Roman Republic, the reigns of all the Kings and Emperors and every single phonetic in the Italian language and its properties. Ask me in 2 weeks any of this and I won’t be able to tell you a thing. But I sound like I know what I’m talking about in exams.
As always I am an expert at a good segue, so here I will take the opportunity to talk about music (if you missed it, I very subtly nudged it into the last paragraph). The album of this week is Feeler on the Roof by Fripps & Fripps, or as my friend has been calling them: Chips & Dips or Chicks with Dicks… This is only their first EP, it's only got 5 songs on it, but each one is just so so good. I normally can’t revise and listen to new music - finding new music is a job I take very seriously and I have to concentrate all my attention on that. But I listened to one song from these guys and was just in love. I have been listening to the 5 songs pretty much on repeat for the last two weeks, that's how good. I really hope Chicks with Dicks can make it big.
The last bit of news I have is about Chile. I have found myself an apartment in the centre of Santiago and I have my Visa appointment in London. This Visa really has been a dark cloud over my head for so long. I started the application on the 4th of January and on the 18th I had to start compiling documents of proof together. I needed my acceptance letter from Santiago, my acceptance letter from Edinburgh, proof of financial support, a photocopy of my passport, a medical report and a police report. All of these were pretty easy, bar the last two. Getting a medical report from your doctor while you’re out of the country and trying to insist urgency is so difficult. After having had the document for about 3 days, when my dad went back in they said it could still be another 7-10 days for the medical report to even get to the doctor. We pleaded urgency and they did it in a few days and for the price of £30. £30!!!! For a medical report! HA! Better still is the Police Report I had to do. For this I needed 2 proofs of address - both different and from the last year, photocopies of my passport and an endorser who could not be family, had a prominent job and had known me for 2 years. I managed all of this and then to have the document sent to me in less than 10 days I paid the pretty price of £80. Add that to the £466 my Visa is going to cost me and this year abroad stuff is looking like its more trouble than it’s worth. But I can’t complain, I’ve been accepted and everything turned out ok. It’s beginning to sink in that I am finally going. And I don’t know how I feel about it. Because I really don’t want to leave Sicily now.
I have been having such a lovely time with my flatmates and my friends as of late and it has really changed my opinion of the place. We’ve been discovering so many parts to the city we hadn’t seen before and it’s been excellent for my Instagram! I still have my reservations regarding the men and such but when I write my review of my semester (soon hopefully!) I hope to give a different and more positive view of Catania.
So this is where I shall leave you, with the promise of another blogpost to come soon! I apologise for the absence again, but this time it was simply because I was trying not to procrastinate. Which, as I have stated in this blogpost AND by the fact I have indeed written a blogpost, I obviously did do. Go and give Fripps & Fripps a listen and check out my Instagram (@flynn.fotos) for all those amazing new photos I’ve taken… Until next time!
Me again! I’ll admit, I really struggled to find inspiration for a blogpost this time around. Since my return to Catania, I have been a large-scale hermit - barely leaving the house and just studying. And I don’t have to explain how boring a life of studying is! But up until a few days ago all of my studying had been without end and I was unsure when my exams would be. Now, however, I have official dates for both my exams. I am writing this on Sunday and my exams are Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. RIP.
I had initially chosen to study General Linguistics and Italian Literature, but on taking my Italian Literature course for about a week I knew I had to change. Imagine two hours of lecture with no visual aids (there was a chalkboard but it didn’t get used) and a small old man - who may have actually been alive when Dante wrote his Commedia - speaking in the quietest voice known to man and that’s pretty much my lectures. First month in Sicily and my Italian was terrible, so I was very lacking in lecture notes. I decided to change from Literature to Roman History which one of my friends was studying. I may have won the battle, but I had lost the war. On Erasmus, you can only change classes once, and my new class was Tuesdays 12-2 and SATURDAY 8-10. I HAVE HAD CLASS EVERY SATURDAY AT 8 IN THE CHUFFING MORNING. I’m sure some of you are thinking “I would not be going to that”, but, alas, I have a sign-in sheet that has to be signed by my lecturer after every class. And if I don’t attend 60% of classes I can’t take my exams and then ultimately fail my year abroad and end up back in Edinburgh doing a Bachelors (phew - that escalated quickly). I had sold my soul to the devil.
So after a painful semester, here I am, procrastinating my studying by writing a blogpost about my studying. This is like bloody inception or something. It’s just incredibly boring. Roman history is so content-heavy, there is so much to learn - about 1200 years worth actually. I even tried to make it easier by buying stationary to make it fun. I had the most unhelpful trip to Tiger. I bought a notepad, great. I bought highlighters, great. I bought a colourful pack of sticky notes and a pack of colourful ballpoints. Also great. I get home so excited to pimp my revision. I envisioned a wall of colourful sticky notes telling the stories of Kings, wars and Emperors. My sticky notes weren’t sticky, and the colourful pens were in fact blue biros with coloured outsides. I felt cheated. I then used this as another excuse to procrastinate. I had envisioned my notes as a piece of art on my wall - and that was how it was going to be. I went on a search for blu-tac.
The happy end to the story is that I did indeed find blu-tac. It wasn’t blue, but instead came with two very jazzy Hello Kitty tattoos, which me and my flatmate donned as sexy under-boob tattoos. The boys were lining up to get our numbers, naturally. And now my wall is awash with sticky notes and I have successfully learnt 1200 years of Roman History. If there is one thing I know, it’s what aids me in my revision. And that’s colour, music and exhaustive repetition that ends up driving me crazy - but it does work. Two days away from my exams and I know every single date of 16 of the most important wars during the Roman Republic, the reigns of all the Kings and Emperors and every single phonetic in the Italian language and its properties. Ask me in 2 weeks any of this and I won’t be able to tell you a thing. But I sound like I know what I’m talking about in exams.
As always I am an expert at a good segue, so here I will take the opportunity to talk about music (if you missed it, I very subtly nudged it into the last paragraph). The album of this week is Feeler on the Roof by Fripps & Fripps, or as my friend has been calling them: Chips & Dips or Chicks with Dicks… This is only their first EP, it's only got 5 songs on it, but each one is just so so good. I normally can’t revise and listen to new music - finding new music is a job I take very seriously and I have to concentrate all my attention on that. But I listened to one song from these guys and was just in love. I have been listening to the 5 songs pretty much on repeat for the last two weeks, that's how good. I really hope Chicks with Dicks can make it big.
The last bit of news I have is about Chile. I have found myself an apartment in the centre of Santiago and I have my Visa appointment in London. This Visa really has been a dark cloud over my head for so long. I started the application on the 4th of January and on the 18th I had to start compiling documents of proof together. I needed my acceptance letter from Santiago, my acceptance letter from Edinburgh, proof of financial support, a photocopy of my passport, a medical report and a police report. All of these were pretty easy, bar the last two. Getting a medical report from your doctor while you’re out of the country and trying to insist urgency is so difficult. After having had the document for about 3 days, when my dad went back in they said it could still be another 7-10 days for the medical report to even get to the doctor. We pleaded urgency and they did it in a few days and for the price of £30. £30!!!! For a medical report! HA! Better still is the Police Report I had to do. For this I needed 2 proofs of address - both different and from the last year, photocopies of my passport and an endorser who could not be family, had a prominent job and had known me for 2 years. I managed all of this and then to have the document sent to me in less than 10 days I paid the pretty price of £80. Add that to the £466 my Visa is going to cost me and this year abroad stuff is looking like its more trouble than it’s worth. But I can’t complain, I’ve been accepted and everything turned out ok. It’s beginning to sink in that I am finally going. And I don’t know how I feel about it. Because I really don’t want to leave Sicily now.
I have been having such a lovely time with my flatmates and my friends as of late and it has really changed my opinion of the place. We’ve been discovering so many parts to the city we hadn’t seen before and it’s been excellent for my Instagram! I still have my reservations regarding the men and such but when I write my review of my semester (soon hopefully!) I hope to give a different and more positive view of Catania.
So this is where I shall leave you, with the promise of another blogpost to come soon! I apologise for the absence again, but this time it was simply because I was trying not to procrastinate. Which, as I have stated in this blogpost AND by the fact I have indeed written a blogpost, I obviously did do. Go and give Fripps & Fripps a listen and check out my Instagram (@flynn.fotos) for all those amazing new photos I’ve taken… Until next time!
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