It’s been
ages since I’ve updated the blog, so sorry but these last few weeks have been
absolutely hectic and full of deadlines so I haven’t had the time to write. I
am now in my Christmas hols so expect a couple of posts going up about the past
month and a half.
Let’s
commence!
On Monday
the 9th of November, it was my 19th birthday. The night
before, my lovely flatmates had surprised me with a box of pressies, including
lots of chocolate. I love those girls. And then Amélie made crêpes for all of
us and we had a little pancake flip competition. It was a lot of fun and a
delightful surprise after a long day. On Monday itself, I woke up a little bit
earlier to open the presents that had arrived on the mail. I loved them all and
Dad’s poem made me cry, I admit it. I also scrolled through social media,
flooded with messages of people wishing me happy birthday, so thank-you
everyone! I did have to go to class though, so it wasn’t that much of a
different day aside from the presents and the fact of being officially a year
older. I had the usual seminars and lectures, and studied in Lime Tree during
the break (lame). After class, however, I did decide to spoil myself and
stopped by New Look to buy some high heeled boots I’d been eyeing up for a
while. So worth it, they make me feel so badass and they are super comfy! For
dinner, Joel surprised me with a red velvet cake so I got to blow the candles.
Can’t skip the tradition!
The rest of
the week was nothing special tbh. I had an oral presentation for French with
Catherine, so we met up on Wednesday to practice and finish it up. I had my
seminars and lessons, and filled in gaps studying in Lime Tree. I had an
Interview Skills workshop which I found quite useful, since I would have to do
interviews to secure a placement in France. The only out-of-the-ordinary thing
that happened was the weird weather on Friday, it was sunny, then cloudy and
raining, then all of a sudden it hailed. So random.
The actual
extraordinary thing that happened that week was, of course, THE SHOW! I did not
have to do any flyering because… we’d run out of flyers by Friday! So chuffed,
the show promised to be a massive hit! I had tech rehearsals on Tuesday night
and Wednesday afternoon, but luckily I did not have to stay for the whole thing
and I managed to get away. You could feel the excitement in the air and it was
insane that a month had gone by so fast and that that weekend it would all be
over. We had to give the best performance! On Thursday evening I had to skip
fencing because we had dress rehearsal, meaning a proper show-like run-though
with costume changes, having to stay backstage etc. I had dinner right after
class and headed to The Edge. Backstage is so tiny for the amount of people
involved in the show that is was kind of hard to pick a spot that would not be
in the way of everybody. A couple of freshers and I took over the shower room
and got ready there. It was stressful but so much fun to do! The dress
rehearsal went just fine and the directors and backstage crew were quite happy.
We had some bits to improve for the actual show, but that is what dress
rehearsals are for!
Friday was the first show night, and we nearly sold out. We
only had 6 tickets left. SIX. TICKETS. How insane is that? Everybody was so
excited and we had a blast. I think the best thing of a show is the reaction of
the public, when they laugh and cheer and you know you are doing your job as an
entertainer. The excitement of the success of the first night was tainted dark
by the tragic incidents in Le Bataclan in Paris. It came as a shock to
everybody and a lot of people were touched by them, close to the victims, close
to home. We took it upon ourselves to make the most of the last show night to,
as Alex said, entertain our public and make the them happy again, at least for
a couple of hours. The last night was a total success, a complete sell-out!
MTTA was the first sell-out November event in the history of BUSMS and I am so
glad I got to be a part of it. The last night was a night to be enjoyed by both
the public and the performers, so we aimed to have fun rather than to be
perfect, and it was great. After the show- which David, Amélie, Begoña and her
boyfriend and Jenny came over to watch and can vouch for the amazingness ;) –
we had to help Backstage to dismantle and pack up everything. It took a while,
but everyone was buzzing for the after party- it was going to be a good one!
After everything was tidy again, we went to Claverton Rooms for our own private
party. There was music and brownies and drinks. We danced for a while, and then
had a break for Ginge and Lil’Dot (Aaron and Hannah) to give out some presents
to the Production Team. It was so nice and funny. The Production team were also
really sweet and handed each one of us a flyer with a message to “make a start
on our BUSMS collage”. So sweet. We then danced all night. Lyana, Roberta,
Lelia,… We danced and danced and danced and at like, half three we decided it
was time to wrap it up and go home. The bus took ages to come though, so we had
a chill drunken chat at the bus stop. Once back home, I went to sleep and slept
until late the next morning. Most needed sleep and best “night out” in Bath.
All for the win.
On Monday
week 8, tickets for the Snowball went on sale at 9am sharp. Unfortunately, I
had a Careers for Linguists event starting at 9:15 so it was a bit of a chaotic
experience. The site went down and wouldn’t work, and I had to go to the
meeting so I ended up getting Alexandra to purchase the ticket for me an hour
later, when they fixed the technical problems. The meeting itself was quite
useful as a starting point, but I wouldn’t say it was determining… Anyhow, I
did manage to get my ticket for the Snowball on Wednesday with the fencing guys
woop woop.
Later on
that day, a minute of silence was held by the Lake to remember the victims of
the Paris attacks over the weekend. Organised by the French Soc, a few people
said some words and many people gathered around.
During week
8, proper work started as I had quite a few deadlines coming up. I tried to
balance study, work and research with a few outings or social events. And so I
had to meet with my presentation group and with Nina for our La France seminar
about multiculturalism, and get on with my part about films, as well as catch
up with the work I had left aside during rehearsals and show week. It was tough
to not have a minute to relax, but I had been conscious about it when I signed
up for MTTA. It was stressful all the same. I also had to finish up my cover
letters to send out my applications. Amélie and her mum lent me a hand with
proofreading my cover letter which was very helpful on their part, and I had
everything checked by Vicky on Friday and sent off two applications, one for a
centre de langue anglaise and another one for a high school. I also attended a
research seminar led by Christina Horvath about radical Islam through beur literature which I found quite
interesting. The room was packed! Oh, and I also managed to get the time and
place for my Italy since 1945 first seminar wrong, and so I missed it which was
not great at all… Learnt it the hard way.
On the
other hand, however, I managed to fit in some leisure activities. On Wednesday
evening I went to an Arabic Calligraphy Event led by Ali Amir from Cardiff
University, organised by Splat Art and BUIS. Here is the link to Ali’s page: https://www.facebook.com/Alhamdulillah-Arts-803170073057763/ I really enjoyed it. Considering
I’ve been learning Arabic for a couple of months, I know the letters and so it
was great to have a class on Arabic script. It lasted for a couple of hours and
Ali taught us a couple of letters and we had a chance to practice ourselves. I
used a pen marker first, but the ink was bleeding everywhere so I changed to a
Qalam and ink which gave me more control. I really enjoyed the session and also
got Ali to write my name in script! Check out his page, his pieces are
beautiful!
I also went
to see the premiere of Alexander Balanescu’s piece composed during his project
with the PoLIS department about the links between music and language. I don’t
know if you remember but last year I took part in the project and had an
interview with Rebecca and him in which we spoke about music, language and he
had us translate a short story by Kafka into French and Spanish. We got free
tickets for the show so I went with Megan, as we were curious of the outcome.
The concert lasted about an hour and a half. He played two pieces first which
were not part of the project, a piece about polyphony and a couple of studies
exploring percussion and violin (he is a violinist) and then he played the
piece. It was half what I expected and half not. It started with him playing
the violin and then looping different tracks on a computer, and then suddenly
he added the recordings of the interviews mixed together. It was an amazing
piece. And actually the first voice track that was played was me introducing
myself. It got a bit awkward at one point because my voice kept being looped
over and over. Then other voices were added, talking about music, names and
translating the story. He juxtaposed me speaking in Spanish with someone else
speaking in French, and ended up with Megan saying why she likes languages and
then her cute laugh. It was a long but intricate and emotional piece. I really
liked it and wish I could have access to it to listen to it again. The concert
was followed up by a Q&A led by Nina Parish with the participation of the public
which was also quite interesting. I’m glad I attended and got to listen to the
outcome of the project.
Other than
that, I spent the entire Sunday studying in Lime Tree with Amélie. So-much-work.
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