'The best fancy dress party in the world' - Jess Watson

Picture postcards from a Sunday day trip to the Carnevale di Venezia, with Jess, Emma and Steph. 

outside the station

Emma, Jess, Steph and I with newly decorated faces

Basilica San Marco

Gondole and the Ponte Rialto

After getting our faces decorated for a bargain 7euros, we set off through winding streets, across little squares and over more bridges than I’ve ever seen to get to the Ponte Rialto and eventually Piazza San Marco. Everything is so cute and pretty, and looks exactly like the films and photographs that we’d seen so many of, and added to that the multitude of weird and wonderful costumes, dresses and most importantly masks, made it quite surreal wandering round. 

To our pleasant surprise, the signs did lead us to the right places and we didn't get lost once, mainly because we didn't have any plan of where we wanted to go, which I think is definitely the best way to visit a city like Venice. And despite the dull sky and occasional shower, it was possibly the best trip I've been on so far in Italy...and the fact that we didn't make it out to any of the islands in the lagoon gives us the perfect excuse to come back again! 

Febbraio

With only five days of febbraio remaining, it’s dawning on me ever more often how fast time is going this semester and how I’m almost half way through my year abroad. However, despite the lack of activities on offer in Parma usually, we’ve managed to do a few interesting things lately:

Firstly, the Erasmus ‘Flirt Party’…typical Valentine’s ‘traffic light party’ with possibly some of the most cringe secondary school style games, but a fun night nonetheless.

Valentine’s Aperitivo was our Monday night out, and lovely it was. Just a bunch of girls having fun on Valentine’s Day, exactly what I like to see, followed by sweets and smores evening the next night. Being a newbie to the concept of smores I was intrigued, until I found out they include marshmallows which I’m not too keen on, but melted chocolate, Haribo, wafers and apple slices were more than enough to satisfy.

Clearly after a few days of not being stuffed with chocolate and sweets we were ready for more, and lucky for us the Carnevale di Cioccolato was coming to Parma! Not so lucky were the extortionate prices of most of the produce – all we could afford were hot chocolates, but they were damn good – but so many of the things made of chocolate looked amazing, some people definitely have immense talent!

On a slightly more musical note – absolutely no pun intended – I have a new violin teacher who I’m getting on much better with so far than the last one. I also went to a little concerto di quartetti the other afternoon, a showcase/recording for assessment of some of the string students. One of the aspects of the Conservatorio that I love, and I guess of music colleges in Britain and all over the world, is that many modules are entirely performance based, and credit is given for learning to play in a quartet, with an accompanist and in orchestra, three of my favourite modules this year, and really valuable skills that I think students deserve merit for. 

I now have inspiration and motivation to practise, two rare and unpredictable things, but the Conservatorio is 'closed' for a week for exams - of course we weren't told until three days before - so I have nowhere to do said practise...as ever. The unorganisation and inefficiency of Italian administration never ceases to amaze me. But that's a rant for another time.

Spring is...springing?

"The sun is shining, the weather is sweet, make you want to move your dancing feet" - Bob Marley


Despite only being the first week in February the weather in Parma has suddenly taken a turn for the better! We've sat outside, with only two layers of clothing on, and needed sunglasses for the first time in what feels like an age! And with sun come sunsets, which as some of you may know (Helene, if you read this) are one of my favourite marvels of nature. 

And to add to excitement and joy, I have a lovely new housemate, Emma! The perfect reason to have a day wandering around Parma, showing her the main attractions, which admittedly takes only about half an hour, but a whole afternoon of relaxing into Italian life is necessary for us all from time to time. And the classic evening activity of aperitivo is coming up...
Ma che bella giornata!

'SOFIA, WE LOV YOU!'

One of my flatmates, Sofia, is a clever clogs and therefore studies two languages, Italian and Spanish. This, however, also makes her a silly billy because she has had to leave Parma to go and live in Spain for the second semester. A sad day for all :(

But this has meant that the last week we've spent lots of time together and with other people here, drank an awful lot of coffee, eaten a lot of cakes and discovered some new places to eat and drink...better late than never!

I wish we had gotten to know each other better earlier on in the year, we've had some great times and I know she'll have more in Espana and when Newcastle visits Cardiff next year! 


For now, buena suerte Sofia, e ti voglio bene!

Some of the bestest people I know

WOW. 
What a weekend.

And now I'm in a mix, a jumble of feelings.
Happiness in general and at having had such a good couple of nights out and so much fun with everyone.
Fuzziness and hazy with the remnants of hangovers two days in a row.
A little bit empty at having said goodbye to friends for months :(
Despair at myself for utter lack of motivation last week and consequent feeling of lack of acheivement.
And slight dread at the fact that we'll have to say another goodbye soon. 


BUT, the sun is shining today, and when that happens, it can't be a bad day!

Can life be that simple?

'A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?' 
Albert Einstein

Wintery wonders.

Christmas holidays at home in Whitby was brilliantly, wonderfully, amazingly nice and leaving was not something I was looking forward to at all.

After a delayed flight, annoyingly due to technical problems, not the huge amounts of snow blanketing Europe, the eventual return to a cosy living room with endless supplies of tea, food, and family love was very much welcomed! Cute as my family are, they’d saved the decorating of the tree until I got back, so that’s what we did on the first morning. Then in the last week before Christmas we played in the snow, sat and chatted, played a lot of scrabble, went out for coffee and cakes and visited family; nothing spectacular but just what was needed.

 Of course Christmas day being Christmas day, me and my sister ate far too much chocolate including before breakfast, surrounded by wrapping paper and new gifts! Santa (and my parents) were incredibly generous with me this year, and gave me a shiny new camera to take photos of all Erasmus antics from now on, along with a lot of nice little things like books, CDs, perfume and the like. Dinner was, as usual, epic and scrummy, even the sprouts!

The next day we had a bracing boxing day walk along the clifftop to watch the boxing day dip, where all the crazy people run into the sea for charity, followed by breakfast at Nana’s house, quickly becoming one of my favourite traditions!

After a few more relaxing days at home, I headed up to Newcastle for New Year celebrations! It was so nice to see Rhona, Vicky and Jim for an afternoon catch up, friends that I haven’t seen in a long while, especially seeing as two of them have just finished/are just starting semesters abroad! For the first time since leaving Italy, I got slightly excited about coming back and saw that actually it’s pretty good to be living here doing all the things I do. The weekend then consisted of meeting up with Lorna and Mark, shopping for the new year’s roast dinner feast, getting ready for the party at Caitlin’s, cooking said feast, catching up with all the girls and guys there, drinking copious amounts of wine, celebrating in the street at midnight and playing pictionary with lots of questionable drawing skills! I had the best time chatting to everyone, friends that I have only seen a couple of times in the last two years due to both years abroad, and friends that I spent a lot of last year with! Had lots of encouraging words from those on Erasmus last year, which was lovely.

And the last of my three weeks at home were mainly spent relaxing and trying not to let myself slip into the trough of despond called ‘I hate Italy, I want to stay at home, don’t make me go back!’ Luckily somewhere in there I was inspired, or probably just came to my senses, and decided that actually it’s not so bad, in fact it’s rather good most of the time, and if I survived the last three months I can definitely do the rest of it! The promise of better weather in a couple of months and having friends and a house to come back to made it a lot less stressful than my previous experience of coming here, and I don’t think I quite realised how much easier it was going to be! Of course, I still miss family and friends back home, and others that I didn’t get to see, but ultimately, being back is good! It’s a lot calmer, less stressful (so far), and less extreme at the moment; I’m starting to feel like I know how to live here, how to live my version of la dolce vita, you could say.