So as we have just established, I was feeling slightly under the weather at the beginning of last week after (Narcissistic-histrionic with fantastical delusions of grandeur or not) the Andorran government tried to kill me. Having missed a couple of days of class I was staggered by how difficult it was to get back into the rhythm of lectures – like I had been running around in a hamster wheel and stopped to eat some popcorn (what? That’s what we fed our hamster. Nothing to do with his early death…) Anyway it’s difficult to get going again no matter how short a break there has been.
I shook off this slight disturbance in the force to make a very important discovery on Wednesday: a rugby club. Having spent 6 weeks without one I cannot understate the importance of keeping up extra – curricular activities on a year abroad – without the discipline of rugby a couple of times a week I had happily become a bit of a vegetable, but when I went to training on Thursday I quickly rediscovered the competitive edge which makes me a passable rugby player and a world class bitch. Being the only club within about a hundred miles we played for the ‘campeonato de Malaga’ against our own under-twenty team in which I scored the first try after viciously handing off a seventeen year-old in the face…it’s good to be back doing something constructive. Buoyed by this experience I received some more good news, that we will be competing in the Spanish rugby championships in Madrid in two-weeks time. ROADTRIP.
Dizzy from this triumph, the rest of the week passed in a bit of a blur. We went round to a Spanish friends’ house on Friday, whose excitement at meeting an English speaker to practise with has gradually worn off and been replaced with the usual concern that he cannot understand my accent – this has been a cause of some concern since I arrived in Spain (in France it was limited to other Erasmus student doing impressions of me {and by “me” I mean ‘Groundskeeper Willie’}) but in Spain, where more locals speak English – which they learn by watching American television meaning the closest they have ever heard to a regional British accent is the aforementioned custodian or maybe Shrek. So be warned, no matter how normally you think you speak – unless you are American or from London, to foreigners you do not.
Saturday was spent on the beach in which, being from a race of gingers, I was the only one of our multinational group who had to produce the suncream (the lady in the shop took one look at me and, with a sympathetic look, produced factor fifty) but I did not get burnt which is some consolation. At night time there was another drum ‘ n’ bass party just outside town which lasted until after seven in the morning, but the bus home was free so it was worth it.
And that is my life until this moment. I have my first piece of proper actual coursework to hand in to my crazy professor this week so I expect to have some kind of rant for next week.
Ciao,
Gregor.
University of Edinburgh Go Abroad 
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