I made it

Finally. My last exam finished.

I think it went OK and hopefully I've done enough to pass.

It took a while for the feeling of freedom to truly sink in yesterday. I think it well and truly sunk in once I got back to my flat, sat down and thought, 'For the next four months I literally have no commitments; nothing that needs to be done, no deadlines, nothing'. The feeling was good.

Before I got back to the flat where I was greeted with this wonderful epiphany, I had some errands to run; books to return to the library; that kind of thing. So on the way down to the library from the exam hall, me and Luce explored the area we'll be living in next year a little. We had a gorgeous lunch at this little Mediterranean place. Cathays is brilliants for little cultural places like that. It has so many non-chain restaurants with food from all over the world, all of which will be at my fingertips next year.

When we got back to the flat, after the epiphany, I beat Ben's ass 7-1 on Fifa, meaning he had to run around the building twice. It was brilliant. Everything that could have went right yesterday did. Me, Luce and Dan went to the Blackweir and I had a few cheeky pints of cider in the glorious sunshine. While we were sat there Luce's friend from school came and sat with us and I called Momin to come and join us. I ended up going to town with Momin and Luce where we met Darsh and Luce's flatmates for a meal at Las Iguanas, a gorgeous Latin American restaurant. For starter I had empanadas which are a gorgeous, I believe Argentinian, pastry and look exactly like the food of my homeland, the good old Cornish pasty.

Then me, Luce and Darsh went out to Oceana which was awesome. It was brilliant to be out and not have to worry about any work that's still to be done. We met some friends from our course, including my flatmate Hannah. We then hit Live Lounge after Oceana and partied on down; me, Luce, Luce's greek friend Alex, Giovanna and Momin. Needless to say, it was a late one. It always is when Live Lounge is involved. It's the club where people go when all the other clubs start closing, spitting their hammered patrons out on to the streets. Everyone there is wasted and the music, which includes songs such as Tenacious D's Tribute really provides one of the funniest and best ends to a night out that I've had in Cardiff.

So now there's one night out remaining on Friday and then on Saturday I'm off home to the hopefully sunny Plymouth.

It's so good to be free.

Hello again old friend, alcohol

So here I am, three out of five exams down. My education exam yesterday was the peak of my worries and now that it's out of the way, I feel like I'm on the home stretch, the final descent to the joys of summer. The current chaos of books, paper and notes that I find myself submerged in will only last another 11 days as of today. As the exam period has been rather dull with regards to providing me with material to blog about, I'll allow this post to give a summary of anything worth mentioning that has happened.

My plans for this summer seem to have changed a lot. Mine and Lucy's hitch-hiking plan for Spain and Italy has now gone out of the window due to exams causing a lack of time for the meticulous planning it would require. Instead, she has invited me to go on a free week's trip to Egypt which she won on a scratch-card. Providing it's all valid and there's no catch, she said I could go with her. Egypt's not even a place I would have thought of visiting, but you can't really turn down a free holiday. Also, with the money I have saved for the summer, I'm thinking of going to Barcelona for a week.

It was Nick's birthday yesterday so our flat went to The Bay for a gorgeous Italian meal and some drinks to celebrate.

It quickly became clear how much of a lightweight I have become as the drink went straight to my head. I hadn't been drunk in quite some time due to exams so by the time we got in the taxi to leave I felt pretty sozzled.

The taxi was by no means the end of the night, however. Instead of going home, me and Ben got the taxi to drop us to a restaurant to meet Lucy and the Erasmus lot. Gael is back over from Spain this weekend so I had to see him while he was in Cardiff.

When we arrived at the restaurant they were just paying the bill, after which we headed to Vagelis' house where he generously laced us with vodka orange. By the time we all left Vagelis' to head to Buffalo, me and Ben were well and truly fucked due to foolishly drinking at the same pace as everyone else who had just started drinking, despite the fact that the two of us had been drinking for hours.
We ended up staggering home at 5:00 under a pure blue sky. It was the most surreal experience because it was so light. It felt like mid day. Ben stubbornly decided to walk a different way from me, Lucy and Giovanna, with his reasoning being that his way was 'quicker'. His plan backfired, however, seeing him getting lost for over two hours and ending up on the total wrong side of Cardiff, meaning he didn't get home until gone 7:00. 'Quicker'? Really, Ben?

I had to suffer Ben's new Fifa punishment again yesterday afternoon, doing a total of three underwear laps around our building. This time it was in the middle of the day, with loads of students outside sunbathing. A rather sizeable group was sat right outside our building so, as it turned out, I had quite the audience.



Sam

Layout change

I'm back in Cardiff.
After bidding farewell to Mother and Brother, I set off on the train foe what was a very peaceful and unproblematic journey. I played Final Fantasy IV (a game almost as old as me) on my SNES emulator on my laptop to get me through the journey.
My flatmate Ben's front teeth have incurred some damage since I've been away. Turns out he got a bit excited on the way to the local park to play football, fell over and face-planted the floor. Not good.

During the day today I changed the layout for the blog. What do you guys think of it? I'm not sure if I like it or not.