Bjutifulllll!

I'm writing this blog at that lovely time of the evening just before it starts getting dark, just before twilight, the time of day when one's mind is bound to drift off into dreams and "abstractions", as Keats would call them. Wherefore all this meditation, I hear you asking in a mighty thunderous chorus? (there I go again, repeating myself). Well, I'm in a good mood. A very good mood. I had a wonderful day, which is not what one would expect exactly ten days before the much dreaded exams. The day started horribly enough. I woke up feeling all serene and happily sleepy, in the comforting belief that since it was Saturday morning I could just switch off the alarm and doze a little bit more to my heart's content. Yet, the recollection that I had a three-hour Education and the Law lecture gradually sunk in, and it was accompanied by a sort of collective dismay about all the little disappointments I've experienced lately. Nothing tragic or heartbreaking, mind you, but all those little things that keep letting me down. Anyways, with no time to brood and sulk, I just leapt out of bed, showered, dressed and ran out of the house. My bad mood seemed to have been somewhat shaken off and, thanks to Wendy's company, the yellow JOVI crayon and the notes on Byron, the lecture passed pretty quickly.

After lunch I tried to have an afternoon nap, in the hope that it would help me study better later. However it was more a state of half-sleep than a real nap. Which was oddly enough connected with what I was to study later. John Keats. Apparently linked to world of dreams, half-sleep and the like, I'd read. And how! I hadn't read any one of his poems, since we just started them about three weeks ago in lectures. But as soon as I started reading 'Lamia', I was truly captivated. Keats thought that Art should only be made for Art's sake, for Beauty's sake, and dear me, his poetry IS truly beautiful and not heavy in the least. At the same time, it is not flimsy and is still somehow rooted in the depth of our reality. So, you can only imagine what this did to a hopeless romantic dreamer like me. I'm not romantic in the sense of red roses and diamond rings. I'm romantic in the sense that I can sit in an average bedroom in an average house in the middle of an unremarkable village like Fgura and still get all dreamy just by seeing the curtain (very old and faded by the way) being blown inside and outside the balcony door. In times of such stress and cramming, it is heartening to be reminded that what one is studying has value beyond the exam paper (and exam grade :-s). That obviously put me in a very happy dreamy mood and I spent my break from studying drawing flowers, taking pictures of flowery cloth for my mobile wallpaper and, guess what?, listening to Hopes and Fears by Keane. And now I'm back here finishing my blog. (I had to stop to study what I planned). I hope I made you want to read Keats (please do! the world would be such a better place if we all read more poetry!). In the hopes that I did not bore you to death, I shall bid you farewell! Good Luck

Take care
Lizzy
xxxx

When will life be bloggable again?

I haven't blogged for what feels like ages. So much to do, so little time. Exams are really near now, and I think I've decided to stop being afraid and just do my best. To my delight, I've discovered that studying Literature all day long is not so bad, especially compared to last semester when I was studying Linguistics all day long. This has unfortunately led me back to reconsidering changing to B.A., yet I know that this is impossible if I want to keep studying German and still have an Honours degree. Bureaucracy... Blah!

The past few days since I blogged have been relatively calm and quite productive- I kept studying though I'm still going slower than I wish to. My dear brother told me it is because I'm still learning the university way of studying... Oh well, we'll see.

Today I really have nothing much to report- seems I've lost the spark needed to make mundane life interesting and bloggable! (new word! lol!) The only reason I'm blogging is that I need a break from studying AND i need to rediscover my ability to make life bloggable (mission failed). The most exciting thing that happened to me in the past few days was my dear best friend Andrea's nineteenth birthday, on the occasion of which we had the first girls' afternoon out in ages:-D. The second most exciting thing that happened was that on Monday I officially became an irrational Keane fan by spending my hard-earned cash on a magazine just because there was an article about their cherubine-faced frontman's drug addiction in it .(please note -In my realm, money was made to be spent on clothes, travelling and kinder bueno, period.) Anyways, I read the article and spent the whole afternoon all sad and depressed. Gosh, I guess I really love those guys! Anyways, you can kind of realise, life's not exactly enthralling at the moment.

Another quite remarkable event was my attendance to the USTA (the student-teacher association) AGM. Now, this is very uncharacteristic of me, firstly it's because I'm a lazy, happily uninvolved bum and secondly it's because the Faculty of Education and the teaching profession does not exactly make my heart flutter with joy. The only reason I attended this very boring function was that two dear course-mates of mine were contesting the election for the executive, and I wanted to vote for them. There was nothing particularly wrong about the AGM but nothing particularly right either, and my heart is still not fluttering with joy. The experience ended with some stuck-up second year killjoy telling me that half my English B.Ed group will not make it to second year, a statement which was followed by much glaring on my side and a burning desire to unleash the Laguna Biotch within me. Some people really need to get a life. Thankfully, my dear friends both got elected :-D.

This particularly long (and particularly unexciting) blog has stretched till the end of my study break, and has finally come to an end. (Rejoice!) I apologize for boring you out of your wits, but i needed to ramble a bit, and even literary giants have their off-days ;p (joking, I promise!)

Till next time,
Take care,
Lizzy
xxxxxxxxxxxx

Examsss!!!

I am very tempted to hire hitmen to hurt the person who dismissed my course as easy-going at the beginning of this year, but since it is my dear statistician-brother, I shall refrain from doing so. Let's just assume he was joking. Anyways, as my title subtly suggests (I've already used this phrase but I'm free to copy my genial self, I guess) the exams are very very near. They're not even round the corner anymore, they've surpassed the corner and are running to get me!!! This year, I made it a point to start studying early, which I did , admittedly with some hitches. However, here I am two weeks before the exams with barely half the material covered, and with still an assignment (in German!) to start and finish. I have no idea how I am somehow managing not to panic so much, but I have a dull feeling of foreboding which will eventually result in my losing all hope of doing well. English Literature seems as vast and labyrinthine as the winding paths of Zurrieq (ref. the legendary hike). You never even get to the end of the poem, let alone to the end of the accompanying reading you're supposed to do. And it does not help at all that some poets have absolutely no concept whatsoever of conciseness (Byron! grrr!!!)! Okay, I admit, for all my professed love of poetry, I'm not half as hardworking as I should be. Period. I should read more throughout the year and stop complaining. But then again, I'm a first-year and I spent all the first semester staring with bewilderment at this new subject called linguistics, and forgetting all the rest. Oh well, hopefully all will be okay.

To the benefit of your amusement, I'm trying hard to excavate something which is not exam-related from the recesses of my mind. However, there truly is not much. This morning I went to university for an extra lecture and, on strolling alone to the bus stop through the sleepy university, I was truly impressed by the explosion and intensity of colours in the very bright midday sunshine. I know you must be murmuring "duh!" to your computers as you read this blog, but for a person who for so many years not so long ago somehow preferred winter (don't ask), it was a somewhat delightful revelation. Were I William Wordsworth, I would have written a glorious 'Ode to the Sunny Silent University', yet being Elizabeth Galea I only managed a few poorly structured lines in a blog. (Feel free to butt in telling me they're a hidden masterpiece ;p)

Right now my sister is playing Mika's Grace Kelly for roughly the sixth time consecutively (We discover songs quite a while after they become a hit here)and this has suddenly put me in a cheerful bouncy (what kind of word is that?!) mood. I might write some lines about Goethe tonight (assignment) or else call it a day. Let's hope we all make it safely to second year. Good Luck Everybody!!!

Take care,
Lizzy
xxxxxx

Highs and Lows

Saturday night and I'm inside. Thankfully it was a productive night, because I managed to finally write the majority of my Group Skills assignment, which cannot be described as anything but a shameless celebration of mediocrity and a waste of very precious time and even more precious energy. But anyways, today was a rather difficult day. My exam-oriented mood has morphed into my stress-oriented mood, and I do not seem to be handling it so well. I seem to be taking longer to cover stuff (aaaa!), I snap at my family members, I want to lock myself up in my room and listen to as much Keane and Coldplay as I can lay my hands on- the works. And I'm afraid. Sigh. I have no idea how, after all these years of sitting for exams, I still shudder at their mention. But hopefully, everything will turn out alright in the end.

This week was one of highs and lows. The highs were Tuesday (the legendary hike), Wednesday (sporting my consequent tan by wearing a white top and doing some serious work at the library), and Friday (doing some serious work at the library. full stop.) The lows were the rest of the week when my recent high levels of optimism were nowhere to be seen and the serious work was left undone. I subsequently listened to quite a lot of Sigur Ros, whom I hadn't listened to in quite a while. Sigur Ros are an Icelandic band who tick all the right boxes because they are very original AND very good. Their songs are quite long and that might put some people off but if you're looking for atmospheric, ethereal and heart-wrenchingly beautiful music they're just the thing for you. Admittedly, you have to get into the mood to listen to them but if a musically illiterate person like me can enjoy them, then I'm sure that they're not so inaccessible after all.

On Wednesday morning we finally did our School Experience presentation. Now, I do not know whether I should include this with the highs or the lows. I could have never expected the ten presentations to be so amusing and so tragic at the same time. Almost all the presentations included some kind of entertainment such as a play, a song and ,in an epic piece of wackiness, an aerobics session. Now I do not know if it is just me, but I honestly thought that at university, presentations are supposed to be a serious, formal affair, rather than a cheesy talent show. While some presentations were good, (even superbly shot in one case), most groups seemed to be thinking that their audience consisted of the pre-pubescent students they will be teaching in future rather than adult, educated teachers in the making. One group even had the audacity to perform the macarena with lyrics in Maltese!!! The lyrics transmitted the world-shattering revelation that, yes, all students are different! Wow! Impressive indeed! Call me snobbish, but it is only fair that one expects a certain level of dignity and excellence at university, which is supposed to be an institution of higher education and hence should challenge rather than insult one's intelligence! I cannot help quoting Mr. Incredible (the father in The Incredibles, in case you were wondering) : "Every day we find new ways to celebrate mediocrity " Could not have put it any better myself, I'm sure! With this, one of my favourite quotes, i will say goodbye and wish you a wonderful (albeit probably study-full) week!

Take care,
Lizzy
xxxxx

We wandered lonely as a cloud...

Where do I begin? Yesterday was a day of epic proportions, and I honestly feel ill-equipped to describe it. (Long narratives/travelogues aren't my forte hehe). I went on a hike. Yes. Me. Hike. They do not usually go together. I love walking but I don't ever actually get down to doing a lot of it. I guess my friends and I are just very bad hike-organisers (for want of a better word). Or else it's just the fact that I never get down to doing 75% of what I am really keen on doing, which is an alarmingly true statement about my life history.

Anyways, Claire wanted to go on a trip to the countryside in order to take some nice pictures, and, after postponing it a couple of times (my fault again!!!), we decided to go on the 1st of May i.e. yesterday. We met at Valletta at around ten in the morning and decided to go to Zurrieq. Our destination: Wied iz-Zurrieq. Claire and I had hardly ever been to Zurrieq, let alone to Wied iz-Zurrieq, so it all looked like one big sunny adventure. Apparently, at Wied iz-Zurrieq you get the best of both worlds- sea and countryside, so off we went! At around eleven we arrived in the main square of this lovely village, got off the bus and started strolling through the quaint narrow roads in the direction of where we imagined the Wied would be. That was our problem- we imagined rather than found out or checked. Anyhow, after walking for one and a half hours, in which we only managed to come across one very ambiguously stationed signpost, we reached the ruins of an old chapel dedicated to St. Catherine of Baqqari. This is a quiet rundown little place, with white flowers scattered all over, which made me declare this as the place I want to get married in someday, but it is meaningful to our journey because it was the last sign of civilization which we passed by before getting lost. And then we got lost. It felt like we were in a movie and Zurrieq was standing in for the countryside of some vast country. The paths were endless and my continuous singing of the Beatles' "The long and winding road" must have made them seem even more endless for poor Claire. Finally we reached the sea, a feat we had thought much easier in an island as small as Malta. But we could not actually get down to the sea, as we found ourselves on cliffs. So we trudged on along the cliffs until we were scared away by three barking dogs and the oncoming end of the last flickers of hope that the Wied still actually existed.

To cut a long story short, we decided to sit and eat and take pictures on the cliffs. Then, after risking our lives looking for the Wied in what was clearly a hunter-colonized territory, we finally gave up and had the brilliant idea to bathe our tired dusty feet at Birzebbugia rather than Zurrieq. We arrived at Birzebbugia at 5.30, exactly six and a half hours after starting our adventure. You can imagine how it felt for two rather geographically-challenged young ladies to be standing clueless in the middle of a grey, hideous, deserted industrial estate in the middle of nowhere on a scorching May afternoon. It still beats me how we managed to keep walking and walking... and walking and walking till we finally caught a glimpse of good old Birzebbugia. Finally we could just put our very tired feet in the cold sea. Our noble mission was accomplished and immortalized on camera. Afterwards we bought a chocolate doughnut each and rode the bus back home.

Ah what a day! Even writing about it has tired me out (Only God knows what reading it will do to you poor souls). However it was certainly a memorable and lovely day, and the sunshine seems to have recharged me for the last month of hard work at university. Thanks Claire!!! P.S. Once more no energy to proofread, so excuse any mistakes,

Till next time,
Take care
Lizzy
xxxxx