Jings, crivvens, help ma boab! It's been ages since I wrote a blog. I actually got an email from the blogging website asking me where I'd gone. Sorry about that, I have just been *insanely* busy.
Soooo I'll do my best to bring you up to speed. The last week or so here in Barcelona was pretty stressful right until the end, I had “parcial” exams and practical exams and hand-ins coming out of my ears... not too pleasant. To add to the stress, we all had the thought of “I'm going to have to spend my entire Christmas holidays revising for these effing exams.”
After Uni was finished though I had a couple of really good nights out, which somehow managed to end up with everyone singing “ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAAAAS.... is (screaming) YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU!!!!” Even though most people don't even understand the lyrics!
The Monday before Christmas I eventually made it back to Aberdeen after a good ol' dispute with Ryanair check-in staff about my bag being 1kg over the 15kg allowance. In the end, I wore a lot of clothes with stuffed pockets 
Take THAT, stupid woman.
It was lovely to be home and see everyone again. It was great to have a nice comfy seat, lots of good belly-smiling Christmas food and nights out for some Christmas “cheer.” Hogmanay was, as always, a good Scottish affair with Ceilidh dancing and kilts and all that kinda stuff. In Spain, they have to eat 12 grapes at every “DONG!” of midnight... one to symbolise each month of the year.
It wasn't weird to be home at all, however. Just as it is when I come home from Edinburgh, it was just like... being at home. When I go out in my home town after a Uni stint, very little has ever changed.
As expected, I did have to spend an annoyingly big proportion of my holidays studying. I was planning to go down to Edinburgh for a couple of days and visit friends, but in the end I was freaking out too much to justify two days off! The reason the revision was so bad was only very slightly to do with the languages.
Firstly, it is not the done thing, at all, to make solutions to past papers available here. That does NOT help. What also doesn't help is that for some of the courses, there are no resources. Or there are, but they are obscure books which can only be taken out on short loan from the UPC Library. I'm talking... no lecture slides (it's all spoken), no handouts, no online tutorials, no YouTute (Edinburgh School of Informatics' handy wee tool), no practise problems, NADA. Therefore I spent many days pondering concepts and stuff when I had no way to know if I was anywhere near right. All of us Erasmussers were emailing each other in despair.
With a couple of the courses, we also had the final assignments due in a “generous” whole week after the respective exams. Oh, cheers. Exam on Thursday, the assignment's due in the following Thursday but I have an exam that Friday. So I'll just spend the week doing this bloomin' assignment instead of revising.
If you are a prospective Erasmus student at the Facultat D'Informàtica De Barcelona, bear this in mind. Make sure you hammer on at your lecturers until they give you something to use to revise. Most of all, pick EASY subjects for the first semester!! And DO CATALAN.
Yeah, I think it's vital to do the Catalan courses. Not only is it enjoyable, but Catalan friends really appreciate the effort. Also, the majority of Erasmus students honestly look at exam papers and think “uh oh... this is in Catalan. I'm going to fail”.
So anyway, the actual exams were finally over yesterday. I really have no idea how they went... but the general feeling is like this! With big long questions, I had to spend so much of the time slowly interpreting and making wee notes for later reference that when it came to actually getting going I was like “I have no time!!!” so I ended up not putting as much good thought into them and coming up with really good algorithms... recurrences... diagrams... explanations, as I would have liked.
My results are definitely going to be worse than what I'd usually get in Edinburgh, although I honestly don't care – I am just hoping to pass as much as possible.
Haha, one entertaining thing which would never happen at Edinburgh. For 3 out of my 4 exams, the invigilator turned up a few minutes AFTER the time the exam was supposed to start, just handed out the papers and didn't even say “ready, set, GO!” With the last exam, however, I thought the guy was never going to shut up.
Now, I'm free! Today I went and joined the gym next door to the residencia, it's pretty good. Still not as good or cheap as the beloved CSE, but good. And the “come join our gym” guy was really good, and helped me get it cheaper I also went to the Rebaixes (sales) which are still going strong here. January sales start mid-January and run on into February, because their gift-giving is much more scattered throughout the festive season until the “Reyes Magos” (three wise men) come along on the 6th of January and play Santa.
Lots to look forward to now, this week I'm getting visits from friends, and next week I'm going to Sevilla! And winter is over! I can sunbathe through my open window in the morning while I eat my cereal at my desk. Yaaaayyy, happy times are here again! Down with post-Christmas exams!!
