Wish you were here - Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Ahead of departing for my Year Abroad, I've been contemplating making a few changes to my blog. I'm hoping, at least, that the next twelve months or so will give me a huge amount of material to write about - if all goes to plan, I should have lots of interesting things to cover. Heck, if it all goes spectacularly awry, that'll be even more exciting, right?! In any case, I'm pleased to say that there are a few ideas in the pipeline, the first of which is to write a regular series on my blog to keep you updated on my travels.

You might already have seen my first Five Free Things post about our recent trip to London, but I've been thinking about a series in which I could tell you a bit about my more general whereabouts and share with you some of my favourite photos and just a few short captions - like postcards, if you will. That's the idea behind my Wish You Were Here posts, the first of which comes to you from Amsterdam.

Wanting to get away for a short break before the new term begins in earnest, we spent a few days there at the end of August after getting lucky on lastminute.com. We stayed at the gorgeous NH Barbizon Palace, whose staff were absolutely wonderful throughout, even giving us a free continental breakfast when we checked out at the ungodly hour of 5am! The hotel is directly opposite Centraal Station and just a short tram-ride from Amsterdam's main attractions, of which we took full advantage; over the course of our four-day stay, I'd hazard a guess that we averaged around ten museums, two canal cruises, and a generous glug of Heineken.

Top: A passenger ferry crosses the IJ in front of Amsterdam's futuristic EYE Film Institute, with A'DAM Toren in the background.

Above: Passing beneath Magere Brug on a canal cruise on the first day of our visit. City legend has it that the original bridge, built in 1691, was constructed for two wealthy sisters who lived on opposite sides of the Amstel. But the origins of the bridge's name are disputed; according to one story, it is derived from the sisters' surname, Mager. In another version, the sisters, though rich, could only afford to build a very narrow structure - hence its name, meaning 'Skinny Bridge'.

Top: Dancing houses at the Damrak. These beautiful buildings were on our route into the city each day. The Damrak runs from Centraal Station in the north to Dam Square in the south, and, along the way, is home to the famous De Bijenkorf department store.

Above: Wandering in Vondelpark. It's the largest park in the city and probably the nation's most famous, just a stone's throw from three of our favourite attractions at Museumsplein: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, a museum of modern and contemporary art; the Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands' national museum; and the Van Gogh Museum. Though at one point we got caught out in a thundery downpour, our Vondelpark walkabout was one of the highlights of our trip - the green parakeets, who live wild in the park, and the art installation of singing swings were my personal favourites.

Top: Gazing up at the Royal Palace, or even Koninklijk Paleis op de Dam, if you fancy having a go at pronouncing that. Set on Dam Square at the heart of the city, the palace is right in the thick of it - it's not often you'll find an official royal residence opposite Madame Tussaud's on one side and a shopping mall on the other! If, like me, you're a bit of a geek and have a thing for European royalty, you'll love 'Journey in Time', an exhibition on six hundred years of Dutch history, including the story of the House of Orange at De Nieuwe Kerk, where reigning monarchs King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima tied the knot in 2002.

Above: We visited Amsterdam's Hortus Botanicus, which, at three-hundred-and-seventy-five years old, is one of the oldest botanical gardens in the world. It's one of a number of attractions we could access for free - yes, free - with the I amsterdam City Card. But more on that later...!

Above: A view over the city from Skylounge Amsterdam - a wonderful way to spend our final evening and round off our visit. The bar perches atop a hotel just a couple of minutes from the station, and it's the perfect place to relax with a glass of wine or a hot chocolate (or, indeed, both) while taking in breathtaking panoramic views across the city. You'd be forgiven for thinking it an expensive place to visit, what with it being attached to a Hilton, but we were treated to complementary nibbles, and even a second cup of chocolate at no extra cost. 

And, of course, the views are worth every cent.

Goodbye Exeter, hallo Tübingen! A prelude to my adventures in Germany

As I've just received the dreaded email containing my second-year university exam results, this seems to be a suitable time to write a 'goodbye Exeter'-type post. You might be pleased to hear that I've passed and thankfully got all the grades I hoped for - even, by some miracle, in my Russian exams! This means, quite dauntingly, that I'm officially a third-year student. Eek!

You may also have noticed that I'm having a little bit of a change of scenery around here; I've got a new name, a new URL and hopefully, in the not too distant future, I'll have a new domain to match. That's because in September, I'll be flying off to Germany to start my Year Abroad, which I'll spend studying in the very pretty little town of Tübingen. 

Although I've found the idea of studying abroad frankly terrifying, I'm starting to look forward to the new and exciting opportunities that it will undoubtedly bring - not least where blogging is concerned! I'll endeavour to keep What Hayley Did up-to-date with as many pictures and anecdotes as I can manage. Over the course of my study placement, I'll also be writing 'Mole Diaries' for ThirdYearAbroad.com, and I may even make a foray into video-blogging, should the fancy take me...

There are a good few weeks yet before I depart for Deutschland, but if you want to keep abreast of all my pre-departure developments, such as finding out about accommodation, applying for language courses and choosing modules, you can track me down on the following social media pages:

Twitter - @HayleyJWrites

Facebook - What Hayley Did

Instagram - @chaoshayley

As always, I love to read your comments, so do let me know if there's something you'd like to read about preparing for a Year Abroad, or anything you'd like me to feature in a future blog post. Feel free to email me at hayley.johns16@gmail.com, or use the little box below this post.

Bis später!

Image: Rose Haidu via tuebingen.de

Procrastination, apple strudel and Ultravox

Joy unbounded, exam season is upon us once again. I've already had three and have five more to come, so I ought to be chained to my desk in a frantic flurry of revision. Hence I'm writing this blog post.

To be fair, I've done three Russian practice papers today, so I'm not feeling too guilty. (Also, it's unlikely but possible that uni teachers may see this, so we'd better at least look busy).

Anyway, some of you might know already that I took a jaunt to Austria during the Easter holidays with some lovely pals at the University's German Society, and over the last few days as the enormity of end-of-year exams has hit me, I've been pining for the clear blue skies and gargantuan ice cream sundaes of Vienna. So here are a select few of the 328 pictures I took over the course of our three-day stay (yes, really).

Our first excursion of the trip was to Schönbrunn Palace, one of the Austrian Imperial Family's summer homes. The palace and its grounds are absolutely beautiful, and enormous; the estate is home to Vienna's Tiergarten, where I saw actual, real-life pandas for the very first time! Inside the palace itself, we saw such exciting things as Schönbrunn's answer to the Versailles Hall of Mirrors and Franz Josef I's deathbead. 

Here's Schönbrunn from the famous Gloriette, with the city of Vienna beyond. As you can see, we were blessed with some beautiful weather for at least the first part of our trip.

A view over Vienna and the mountains in the distance from Tiergarten Schönbrunn. In 2012, it was voted Best European Zoo, and it's easy to see why. Everything is very clean and well-kept, and there's more than enough to keep you occupied for a day; we spent the afternoon there, having explored the palace in the morning, and didn't manage to see everything, so I'll definitely be back for a second visit at some point!

As I've already said, there were some exciting animals that I hadn't seen in the flesh before, like the afore-mentioned pandas. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a good picture of one, because it turns out that they eat bamboo at such a ferocious speed that every photo I took of them was blurry.

Inside the Monkey House at Tiergarten Schönbrunn. A lot of the original baroque buildings at the zoo are still standing - the Kaiserpavillon, below, and the Biedermaier Giraffe House were completed in 1757,  remain in use today, although they've been through many different guises since then. Of course, the animal houses have been thoroughly modernised, and it was fascinating to see how the old has been incorporated into the new; in spite of its age, the Tiergarten does feel very modern and up-to-date.

The Kaiserpavillon at Schönbrunn. It was originally built for the Imperial Family to entertain their guests, and it's now a rather posh tearoom, where I enjoyed sitting on the terrace with a Wiener Melange.

A rear view of Schloss Schönbrunn from its grounds (this is the last picture of it, I promise).

An U-Bahn platform at Westbahnhof. I'm very proud that I managed to successfully use the underground every day when we went into the centre of Vienna. Probably the most exciting part of this education in subterranean transport was making our friend, the Accordion Man, who boarded a train with us at Rathaus with a little red trolley, out of which came his accordion. To make things even more awkward, because as you can imagine, everybody's trying to avoid making eye contact with everyone else while A.M. is blissfully unaware of the hilarity he's caused, each time he received a bit of change, he'd play said accordion faster and faster.

Being serenaded once on the tube was quite amusing in itself, but after telling everybody back at the hostel about the performance earlier that afternoon, we got on the tube to go back into town for dinner and what should we see in front of us getting into a carriage but a little red trolley! Apparently our faces were a picture when we were trapped with him on a rush-hour train for the second time that day, but it made for some funny memories.

As well as a more amusing breed of busker, Vienna is home to such fine specimens of authentic Wiener Apfelstrudel as this one above. I think I had perhaps three rounds of strudel during the trip and this, in a small restaurant down a sidestreet in the city centre, was probably the best.

The second full day in Vienna and another palace (here we go again, I hear you sigh) - this time it's Belvedere, another of the Kaiser's summer homes. It's now an art gallery, home to Gustav Klimt's 'The Kiss', prints of which can be bought on tea towels, mugs, umbrellas and fridge magnets in any souvenir shop within a mile radius.

You've been spared a plethora of photos from inside, because we weren't allowed to take our cameras in. It's a shame, because you're missing out on a particularly dashing portrait of Napoleon, who's been made to look like a Heathcliff/Rochester hybrid. Not complaining.

(NB: boyfriend wants you to know that he finds the concept of fancying a portrait of Napoleon utterly ridiculous).

Walking through the gardens from Oberes Belvedere (or the huge, grand Upper Palace) to Unteres Belvedere (the slightly more modest Lower Palace). Belvedere is right in the middle of the city, so it's surrounded on all sides by ordinary buildings and offices etc, but the gardens still feel very tranquil and calm.

Unteres or Lower Belvedere. This is where the modern art lives, being looked after by the nicest cloakroom attendant I met on the whole trip: praise indeed. The 'Vienna-Berlin' exhibition was on while we were visiting (and runs until June 15th this year, so you've still got time to catch it if you happen to be in Vienna soon). 'The Art of Two Cities' showcases some of the most important 20th Century artworks of the German-speaking world, and is well worth a visit to see pieces by the likes of Conrad Felixmüller and Hannah Höch.

Naschmarkt, Vienna's most famous food market. Boyf. and I met everyone here for lunch after Belvedere, and there were some good deals and excellent vegetable noodles to be had in the narrow, meandering alleys. Just don't point out that a few of the traders are trying to rip off unsuspecting foreigners, because you'll be pursued through several stalls with indignant shouts of "TOURRRRRRRISTEN!" ringing in your ears.

Horses and carriages outside the cathedral, Stephansdom, perhaps for a richer and more refined type of tourist than us.

Looking down a narrow sidestreet near the Mozartshaus, just off Stephansplatz, in the first picture. The second shows a stark contrast between tiny sidestreets like this and the huge open squares: old and new showcased side by side in Stephansplatz, the heart of Vienna.

For a capital city, particularly one with the historical and cultural importance of Vienna, I thought it was a very relaxed place. Of course it was busy, but in the sense that there were a lot of people, rather than that we felt rushed or hassled. It's a vibrant, lively place, but we never once felt unsafe.

Inside the stunning Stephansdom. Visiting this and the square outside was definitely one of the highlights of the trip, so much so that I had to come back for a quick visit before we returned home.

It's also one of a number of things you can do in Vienna for free (although it costs a little to walk down the central knave, but you can go inside the cathedral to see the beautiful ceiling and stone carvings without paying a cent). Visiting the parks and the Rathaus, or the city hall, are other free activities. The city hall doubles up as the tourist information centre, and you're perfectly able to explore the halls and courtyards as you wish.

Outside the entrance to the Hofburg, yet another palace, this time in the very centre of the city. It houses the world-famous Spanish Riding School and a vast array of different museums, including Sisi's Museum, named after the Kaiserin Elisabeth, the longest-reigning Austrian monarch, who was on the throne for forty-four years.

The style of the place felt similar to Horse Guards Parade, with its inner courtyard reached through archways, although the Hofburg has two. On the other side of the palace, though, you emerge onto the Ringstraße, one of the main roads in the centre of Vienna, around which are situated lots of the most famous and beautiful tourist attractions, like the Kunsthistorisches Museum (the Art History museum), the Rathaus and the Parliament buildings.

The Kaiser's state apartments inside the Hofburg: we spent a leisurely hour out here in the courtyard having ice cream and yet more coffee. At home in Angleterre, I basically chain-drink tea and I'm sorry to say that, in lieu of PG Tips, I tried to do the same thing with coffee in Austria. It was a steep learning curve.

As an aside, do go and get an ice cream sundae from the little Hofburg cafe, they really are beautiful.

Waiting to go into Hotel Sacher for our Sachertorte! If you're going to Vienna, this chocolate cake is on the list of food and drink that you absolutely must try, along with probably Wiener Schnitzel, Kaiserschmarrn and Apfelstrudel. Actually, I've still not ticked Kaiserschmarrn off my list, so I'll definitely have to do that when I return to Wien (as it's definitely a case of 'when', not 'if').

In spite of my self-proclaimed vegetarianism, I must confess that I did actually have meat on all three of our nights in Austria. Before you shout at me, in my defence, it is pretty hard to be completely veggie in Germany and Austria. A couple of our group managed it, with boyf (no, I'm not allowed to say his name on the internet) opting for some unusual-looking 'eggy dumplings' on the second night. But I went all-out Viennese and had Schnitzel on the nights either side of Sausage Night, which really was a sight to behold.

The Sachertorte was worth every cent, by the way.

Graben, in central Vienna. This is where a lot of the posh shops live - Gucci, Prada and Dior were all nearby, as well as Cartier, the Queen's favourite jeweller. Sadly, by the time I'd got here, I had spent most of my holiday money so I didn't get my diamond tiara this time. The beautiful gold monument on the left is called the Pestsäule, or Plague Column.

A view over Vienna from the famous Ferris wheel at Wiener Prater, a permanent fairground to the east of the city. 

And there's the wheel itself, the Wiener Riesenrad, which is over a century old and famously starred in 'The Third Man' with Orson Welles. It was also built by an engineer from Devon, so ten points to us. (Sadly, it was North Devon, but I won't tell if you don't.)

Another lovely, shiny U-Bahn station, complete with fairground-themed mural. We couldn't believe how clean everything was - that was actually the thing that most impressed my grandparents when they had to sit through a forty-five minute slideshow of all my snaps. Apparently even a cathedral and a few palaces aren't as exciting as a well-polished station floor.

In all seriousness, though, the entire city centre is so well maintained; everything was clean and shiny, or in the process of being made so, like the Stephansdom, which looked to be undergoing a major spring cleaning operation. It's quite a rare thing, I think, to go to a city that's such a major tourist destination and come away thinking how well looked-after it looks. I think I could live here quite happily, and I don't say that easily about big urban centres.

Even higher up than the Prater wheel this time! This is from the viewing platform on the Donauturm, or the TV tower. We visited its revolving cafe and enjoyed ice cream and coffee at a lofty 529 ft. Proud girlfriend moment: boyfriend buying the tickets to go up the tower, plus asking for the bill in the cafe, both entirely in German, despite being a self-confessed monoglot. It did take twenty minutes to get our head around 'Entschuldigen Sie...', but we got there! The big plus is that he's been inspired to buy a German book to learn some more for when he visits me in Tübingen next year.

Looking up through the bars towards the exciting revolving bits of the Donauturm. It was only up here on our last day that I eventually gave in to all 80s new wave-related urges and decided to have a chorus of  'IT MEANS NOTHING TO MEEEE' atop the tower. (Link for your viewing pleasure).

A view of the UN buildings from the Donauturm viewing platform. The tower itself is set in this beautiful green park, in which we spotted Luke Skywalker and the Emperor, or at least their lookalikes, all dressed up and taking a Friday afternoon stroll.

As you do in Vienna, natürlich.

If you're interested in taking your own trip to Austria's capital, and I really do recommend it, there's loads of tourist information here. We were busy everyday and saw so many exciting and interesting things, but  there's so much more that we just didn't have time to do - but we'll have lots to entertain ourselves with on our next visit, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.

"Why do you bother studying languages? Everybody speaks English!"

Now you might have gathered from my previous post that I study Modern Languages at university - four of them, in fact, which has caused such disbelief and controversy that I was actually an answer to a pub quiz question at Tuesday's Oktoberfest social (but I'm not alone in this, as our German Soc secretary Rachel is also mad enough to be studying the same number!).

Once you start to learn languages, I don't think that it's unusual to want to collect them. I started learning German when I was 11 and when the opportunity arose to start another language, it seemed silly to turn it down. I have to say that I would have liked to pick up French at that point, but unfortunately it wasn't possible and so I began ab initio Spanish at GCSE level.

At some point after that, I set about taking A levels in both languages. I would be telling big fat fibs if I said that any of that was particularly easy - aside from any linguistic preoccupations, I was having some serious wobbles about going away to university, so it was after lots of support from the wonderful Sixth Form team at Hele's (and still with some trepidation) that I began my studies at Exeter.

Via www.exeter.ac.uk

Now that I'm in my second year, I feel so much more settled. If you read my Sorting out Stammtisch post, you'll know that I've taken on a lot more responsibility this year, particularly with German Soc (in the picture below, we're at John Gandy's for the Joint Languages White T-Shirt social). 

After starting French lessons in January and doing well in my end-of-year German and Spanish exams, I decided that second year would be the perfect time (if there is such a thing) to pick up a fourth language. In my case, this was going to be Russian.

To give you some idea of what it's like to study four languages, here are a few questions that I'm often asked about my course and studies...

The Joint Languages White T-Shirt social, 2013

Why are you studying languages?

Unfortunately, this question has a bit of a boring answer: because I enjoy it. I don't think that anybody knows what they want to study at university when they're in Year 7 - I think that I probably wanted to do History - so I wasn't motivated by that when I started learning languages.

I think that it's easier to say why I'm studying French and Russian, though. Both languages are famous for their literature; both have had a tumultuous and fascinating history. And of course, the French are renowned for their pâtisserie, so if I didn't learn their language, I might miss out on an chance to eat cake!

I'm also one of the only students in the MFL department who doesn't speak French, which has spurred me on somewhat, and most language teachers are required to know French in some capacity, so job prospects have to come into my decisions now too. I am nearly 20 after all...

Via www.exeter.ac.uk

Don't you get confused between all the different languages?

Not as much as you might expect - at least, not yet! I don't get mixed up in the sense that I use German words in the middle of Spanish sentences and things like that, because thankfully, each of the four languages that I study is completely different to the others. The only exception is French, which might one day become a little bit muddled with Spanish as I learn more of it.

Sometimes, though, I do get a case of what I call 'German-brain' or 'Spanish-brain' etc. For me, it means that, although I'm not actually muddling the languages together, the German part of my brain might not want to work when I need to be doing German, for example; for reasons known only to itself, it might only want to do Spanish.

What's the point in studying foreign languages? Everyone speaks English anyway.

Uh oh, this sounds familiar! This is probably one of the most common comments that I get when people find out that I'm studying languages - particularly from friends at home who are much more science-orientated. 

For starters, it's quite rude; nobody wants to hear that the subject they're going to study at university for four looong years is pointless. But on top of that, it isn't even true! It is a dangerous but sadly common misconception that everybody speaks English. If they did, what would we study? After one-and-a-bit years here at Exeter, I'm pretty certain that there is an awful lot of literature, cinema, history, political science and philosophy in every language the uni offers. Therefore, you'd be doing yourself a massive favour if you had a go at learning a foreign language so that you can experience some of these things.

For me, the point in studying languages is to be able to access that enormous wealth of culture that would otherwise be closed off. To give you an example, I'm learning Russian so that one day I might be able to read Tolstoy in his native language. I know that that sounds highly unrealistic (and believe me, it feels it when you're only two weeks into learning the Cyrillic alphabet), but that's what encouraged me to pick up that particular language. 

Via www.wikipedia.org

Would you change anything about the way you were taught languages?

Ooh, controversial! I really enjoyed my language lessons at secondary school; the teachers in the MFL department at Hele's are fantastic, so if you're reading this and you're a pupil there, you should know that you're very lucky! 

But the thing that I would love to improve about teaching foreign languages is the flexibility of the syllabus (so it is absolutely not the fault of the teachers, because they're outstanding). Languages shouldn't be confined to one classroom, because they're not really a subject - you know, people in Germany use German in the classroom and everywhere else - so I think that MFL should be extended across the curriculum to allow for active learning. I think it was in Year 9 that we had a chemistry lesson delivered in German, which was fantastic because we'd never heard it spoken outside the MFL department before.

In my view, this 'being active' is really important; I bet you never thought you'd hear me say that, did you? But if you take a look at something like the Take 10 programme, you'll see many examples of active language learning and how much more effective it is than the current system of learning lists of vocab off by heart.

So the change I would make would be to rescue students and teachers from the 'memory test' system that seems to be taking over language teaching and try to create a more invigorating, challenging, but ultimately more effective method of learning languages.

Via www.ucl.ac.uk

Well done if you got through all of that! I apologise for having a couple of picture-lite posts, but I should be back to my old snap-happy ways soon enough. Having just started back at uni, I really wanted to write about my degree programme and why I find it so interesting, because I think that poor old foreign languages are often misunderstood and dismissed.

Hopefully that is all about to change.

Sorting out Stammtisch and deciphering Русская - my first weeks back at uni

After moving into our new house last week, we've had a little while to get things sorted before the start of term. It's my second year at Exeter, so most things are familiar by now, but this year looks as though it's going to bring lots of new and exciting things my way.

As I've been writing on here for a little while now, I thought that it might be a good idea to blog about university life and so I got in touch with the people who run the university's Students' Blog and asked to write a few things for them. Basically, anything remotely interesting and/or uni-related will be linked across from there to here and vice versa (at least I think that's how it works).

So the biggest new thing that I'm doing this year is acting as the Education Officer for the German Society. My role is, as the name might suggest, more education- than social-orientated, so it means that I can avoid clubbing for the most part; sorry, I know, I'm a student, ergo I should like clubbing, but unfortunately it isn't really my cup of tea. But that means that I'm much more suited to my Ed Off role, as I like to call it. My main responsibilities will be running weekly conversation classes, where we'll teach and also learn some German with other society members and native speakers, and organising Stammtisch, which is a lovely, informal way of practising our language skills - really, that means that we all go to the pub and speak German!

With my excuses for not going clubbing already made, the main parts of my Freshers' Week comprised Joint Languages meet and greets, where the committees said hello to all the new and returning languages students and hopefully answered any questions they had, and the all-important Freshers' Fair - below is Katy, one of our Social Secs, and Chris, our President, at the fair on Sunday (photo credits to Dan, our Treasurer; thank you!). The Freshers' Fair is held every year in the Great Hall, the Forum and other parts of central campus and every society sets out a stall to help sign up as many students as possible. Our figures on Sunday - if I remember correctly! - were 65 who signed up to GermSoc, as I affectionately call it, on the day and hopefully many more who didn't want to brave the crowds and did it online. Also war er ein sehr erfolgreicher Tag!

Following on from that, my new role as Ed Off for GermSoc (do keep up, at the back!) has meant that I've been able to organise some volunteering, by way of running an extra-curricular German language club at a local primary school in Exeter. We don't start teaching until later in October, but three committee members and I had our introductory training during Freshers' Week with the wonderful Chris Wakely. He is a languages consultant, teaches the PGCE course here at Exeter and is the editor of the very exciting 'Take 10' programme, a teaching resource for primary school pupils which combines learning French, German or Spanish with physical exercise - and that of course meant that we were all dancing to such classics as Ich habe zehn Finger in a glass-fronted conference room in the middle of Devonshire House!

A big thank you also to Sara Bennett from the Student Guild for all her help and advice regarding the project, for purchasing the society's copy of Take 10 and for helping the four of us navigate those fiendish DBS forms!

When we were choosing our second year modules, months and months ago, a previous and clearly very optimistic version of Hayley decided that it would be a really good idea to start beginners' Russian. I think that that version of Hayley morphed into the why-on-earth-did-I-do-that Hayley around the time that my shiny new Russian textbook arrived in the post. Well, the time has come for me to actually open it and start learning some Русская, Русский or Русского - why are there so many different ways to say the word 'Russian'?!

Да, I had my second ever lesson of Russian today and yesterday's session seemed quite straightforward in comparison. On Monday, we learnt the five Cyrillic letters that look and sound like English ones and we learnt the Russian for 'cat', which is clearly the most important word I will need (it's кот, if you were wondering). But today, upon our arrival, we were designated new, Russian names. So as well as remembering to actually learn Russian, I also need to remember that I have a new name. Henceforth, I shall be known to my teacher Yulia and the rest of the Russian department as Galina, which is of course spelt галина. I'm hoping that I'll get the hang of it soon...

Way back in January, I took up French evening classes for beginners (because you can never collect enough languages - hopefully there'll be a blog post on this kind of theme coming soon...) and I'm picking them up again this year at intermediate level - argh! No, I'm really looking forward to starting French again, it's a beautiful language. I decided to start studying it mainly because I was just about the only student in the Modern Languages department who didn't do French in some form. My degree combination of German and Spanish seems to be quite an unusual one and, if I want to go into teaching after university, French will come in very handy. I'll have a couple of weeks to settle back into university life before the evening classes begin again in October, so I'm going to get back down to my books and try to practise lots beforehand!

Added to all of this, I'm still doing a lot of the same things that I did last year, in terms of modules and actual uni work. Each student gets 120 credits to 'spend' on modules, so my Russian counts for 30 and I'm resuming 30 credits of German language and the same of Spanish language. But for me, the best thing about the ML department is its vast range of cultural modules, which we study alongside the core languages to broaden our understanding of history, literature, politics, philosophy and linguistics in the target language. Because I've already 'spent' lots of credits on three core language modules, I only have 30 left to use up, so I've only been able to choose one cultural module for each term, as they're 15 credits each. This term's is on literature during Franco's dictatorship with Dr Katharine Murphy, who taught the Spanish memory and identity module I took last term. Then next term I'll be studying ideology and identity in German cinema with Dr Chloe Paver, another fantastic lecturer whose first year module I studied last year. (Below are the books we're studying for Dr Murphy's Spanish module).

And a few other things that are coming up this term at uni: Varsity football this evening, German Society's first conversation class tomorrow morning, Oktoberfest social on Monday and our first Stammtisch next Wednesday. And it's my birthday soon, yay!

I hope you enjoyed my first foray into student/uni blogging - and hopefully there'll soon be plenty more where that came from!

Bis bald and hasta luego.

(: xx

Back to uni and moving into our new house...

This summer has been one of those peculiar ones which seems to have lasted forever, yet simultaneously flown by. Sometimes I actually feel as though I haven't been to university at all - summer has been so long that I feel like I've never been away from home!

But today I've been busy moving into our new student house, ready to begin our second (eek!) year. We're officially fully fledged students now, which is exciting and a little bit terrifying in equal measure. I'm very excited to have a kitchen of my own (well, we have two and they are shared between the six of us, but you know what I mean), so that I might be able to learn to cook some Grown Up Food rather than just cakes!

I thought that it might be a nice way to integrate my blog with Round 2 of my student life by showing you around our new home. As it's a student property, there isn't bound to be much in the way of decoration provided in our rooms, so another thing I'm really enjoying is making my humble abode seem a little more homely. In preparation for this, I've brought with me all of my posters, lots of books, some lovely handmade bits and pieces, and a couple of vintage and retro trinkets too. 

As a sort of leaving present, my sister made me a pom pom 'bunting' string, which is very cute; I've hung it around my noticeboard, where I've pinned some pretty vintage-style postcards that I found in my scrapbook box. (In other woolly news, I eventually succeeded in making a giant pom pom to hang in my window as well. It's all good). 

My pink bunting came from a Crikey It's Vintage fair in Exeter last September, so I'm rather late to the bunting party, but I think it's very pretty all the same. The ceilings in the new house are very high, though, so I needed a little assistance to put it up on the picture rail! 

At the moment, I appear to be having a small candle phase. For my new room, I bought an oil burner and vanilla-scented wax from a local craft fair - I'd had my eye on the fork-and-spoon oil burner for a couple of months after seeing it at the previous fair, so I thought that I would finally treat myself. The wax 'clam' comes from Sara's Waxworks, a Plymouth-based business which sells lovely scented wax in all sorts of fragrances - from perfumes like Chanel No. 5 to a fresh and simple 'clean linen' scent. I've not melted any of my wax yet, but it still smells amazing even though it's still in its packaging.

Sticking with the candle theme, I've brought with me the teacup candle that you might have seen in a previous blogpost, and thankfully, it's made it up to Exeter in one piece! Another craft-ish piece resulting from trip to Hobbycraft is my desk tidy. It was essentially six plain cardboard tubes in a shallow base and the idea is that you use pretty découpage paper to stick on and make it look nice. It's my first go at découpage, but I don't think it's too awful.

These retro advertisements and railway posters are from calendars that I cut up to make a collage for my room in halls last year and I thought I'd reinstate them this year because having things up on the walls makes everything a bit more interesting and homely.

The lavendar Jan Constantine loveheart was a generous gift from Vintage Life magazine and my many and various cushions have also travelled with me Up North. I'm amassing quite a collection now, with three rather patriotic, retro ones from Past Times (before it very sadly disappeared from our high streets), a handmade owl from the same Crikey It's Vintage fair as the bunting and a pretty cake draft-excluder-style cushion, which I might use to avoid falling down the gap between the bed and the wall.

The two posters above were made by teachers at my secondary school; they read Keep Calm and Enjoy German and Spanish! 

You may or may not know that I'm studying Modern Languages, meaning that most of the books I've brought with me to uni are either textbooks or not in English. I did, though, bring my Bake Off Everyday and a couple of Mary Berry's recipe books, and we currently have three copies of Nosh For Students by Joy May, so I think we're well covered in the cookbook department. In terms of more leisurely reading material (you mean you're not satisfied with looking at pictures of cakes for fun?!), one of the reading-for-fun books I've brought along is Letters Between Six Sisters. It's a volume of the collected letters sent to and by the Mitford sisters - again, if you follow my blog at all, you'll probably know that I have at least a passing interest in them.

I hope you enjoyed the brief tour of my new room; it still needs to be tidied up a little, but most things are sorted now and I'm looking forward to beginning my second year of university properly!

(: xx