22nd March: End of Term

We passed Wednesday evening drinking and chatting outside the Principe de Gales bar in town, which was already buzzing with the relaxed atmosphere brought by the warmer weather. Our anticipation of summer is increasing every day now with every hint of the hot, clear days and balmy Spanish nights that are to come.

On Thursday I had lectures until midday, when I found myself a bench on Plaza Santo Domingo and read for a while in the sun. As it began to approach 2pm, the sun even became too intense – I could easily have sat there in shorts – and I decided to go back to the flat to get some lunch and cool off. There, I found Giorgos had already returned from his morning observation session at the hospital, and we kept each other company and chatted as usual over lunch.

At 4pm I had another lecture, after which I taught Carmen for an hour, since her brother was at a birthday party. Carmen seems really bright for her age, and shows a real interest not only in learning English but also in the teaching methods I’m using, which is a real confidence boost. This time, we played Guess Who to learn facial features, and did actions, crosswords and spot the difference to learn farm animals. She did really well and didn’t lose interest at all, despite the fact that an hour is quite a long time for an eight-year-old to concentrate for on a one-to-one level.

That evening, the girls came to my place for pre-drinks, and it was all going well until I could feel an illness coming over me again – just as suddenly as it had the time before. I’m almost certain this isn’t drink-related, since it’s only ever happened when I’ve had just a couple of drinks – nowhere near enough to spark this kind of reaction. This time, my friends recognised straight away what was happening and brought me a bucket and some water straight away. Ten minutes later they’d tucked me up in bed and texted Giorgos to let him know what had happened.

The next day, I was half-awakened by Giorgos coming to check on me before he left at 8.30, but fell straight back to sleep until my alarm went off at 9.45. Even then, I still felt exhausted and had to drag myself to the kitchen to get breakfast. I’ve since found out that, despite the fact that I’m usually woken by the slightest noise, I’d stayed asleep whilst my friends were still in the lounge for an hour after putting me to bed, and through Giorgos checking on me when he came back at 3am. This morning, after managing a small amount of food but still feeling terrible, I had to accept defeat and emailed my German tutor, who told me that, luckily, the other girl in my class, Isabel, couldn’t make it that day either – so we would reschedule the class.

I fell asleep on the sofa and eventually woke up again at 1 o’clock in the afternoon to a phone call from Ali, asking me what kind of hoody I’d like. She, Alicia and Annalisa had gone to Espinado campus to buy Murcia hoodies and were fetching them for Lina and me, too. It was at this point that I realised I was feeling much better, and decided to grab a shower and meet the others in the cafe they were heading to on their return.

It was another beautiful day, so it was lovely to while away the hours outside in a little sunny square. The first cafe gave us a voucher for free coffees at another just opposite, which we used up straight away. After a brief stint at the copy shop to print the booking references for our trip the next day, we ended up in Smoöy yet again. By this time it was past 6 o’clock, so we popped back to Alicia’s to fetch our hoodies before going our separate ways.

An hour later, after a drawn-out scour of the shops to find a pink vest-top, I returned to the flat to find Giorgos actually making something other than a bocadillo or pasta. I think he’s making the most of the oven since I taught him how to use it the other day on the phone. It turns out he was making Greek kebab-things to take to his friends’ house, who wanted to try a bit of Greek food. He wasn’t getting on too well, particularly since he hadn’t realised there was a grill function on the oven, so I tried to help whilst making my chilli.

Then there was nothing left for it but to start the dreaded packing for my trip to Cordoba and Seville with the girls. I hate packing because I always feel like I’m going to forget something, and end up spending ages agonising over what it could possibly be. This time, Alicia helped out by putting a kind of ‘packing for dummies’ list on the Facebook thread, which included such gems as ‘underwear’ and ‘shoes’. You would think these things would be self-explanatory, but you can never be too careful with us – especially Annalisa, who seems to forget something every single time she leaves the house. It probably struck Fernando as a little odd when he saw the list when he popped round, but he may just put it down to quirky Englishness. After all, even I have to admit that, as a nation, we do have some fairly interesting idiosyncrasies.

Now the flat is empty again and the packing is done, and all that’s left is to unwind and get a good night’s sleep before my early start in the morning.