Fjords, Mountains & Cruise Ships | A week in Norway

I’ve not been on a proper holiday for years. Once my sister and I reached the age of going to university and fending for ourselves, invites to family holidays soon decreased, eventually down to a big fat zero. However, out of the blue earlier this year, my parents casually slipped into conversation that they were considering a cruise to Norway, and asked if I would like to join them. After about 1.5 seconds of thinking about it, of course my answer was yes!

So July came around, and off we went, tootling down the road with our suitcases in toe, down to the ship. I feel like cruises are something young people often turn their noses up at, with the stereotype of them leaving you trapped on a boat full of elderly people, with nothing to do. I’m sure at some point in time it was possibly like that, but today’s cruising reality couldn’t be further from it. With bars, theatres, cinemas and pools, there’s not a minute where you find yourself with nothing to do. You find yourself on what feels like a little world in the middle of the sea, with no boats or land as far as the eye can see, in a place far away from the reality of home, with way better phone signal too (I could get full phone signal in the middle of the North Sea, but have to stick my arm in the air next to a window at home to get a single bar of the stuff- madness!). Sounds like heaven if you ask me!

Anyway, our cruise took us up the Fjords of Norway for a week, and I have fully concluded that Norway is one of the most beautiful places I’ve had the pleasure of visiting. If I wasn’t such a city person, I’d say a quiet life living in the Norwegian mountains wouldn’t be too shabby at all. I spent much of my week stood (admittedly in the freezing cold!) on mountain tops just taking in the incredible natural beauty of the world that we live in, and as corny as that sounds, I have no shame in saying I enjoyed every second of it.

But as they say, a picture speaks 1000 words, so I’ll stop with the rambling and let them do the talking..

 

 

 

 

xoxo

Day in the life… Final Year Uni Student, Part Time Procrastinator

The new university year has finally hit with full force. Deadlines are starting to flood in, dissertation research is looming, my diet has deteriorated considerably, and I’m of course ignoring all of these things and instead spending my time sat here writing a blog post. Standard life of a student, right? Who really needs a degree anyway…..

My days naturally start with my alarm, which gets snoozed 3 times every. Single. Day (my new phone only lets me snooze it 3 times, I can assure you that there was naturally absolute pandemonium when I found this out half asleep on a Monday morning). I’ve had to get up super early this year to get a bus into uni, which has been piles of fun. I live in a town about a 20 minute bus ride from campus, but here at Warwick buses have now gained a new reputation for being absolutely shocking at actually turning up, and getting you anywhere on time. Standing out in the cold under the never ending rain for half an hour really puts you in a chirpy mood for the day ahead.

My timetable is shameful. 6 hours a week kind of shameful. I’ve spent about 25% of my time at uni arguing to friends that Sociology is a ‘proper degree’, but these kind of contact hours are just something I can’t bring myself to even attempt to justify. Today I had 2 seminars, nicely sat across the middle of the day so lunch was a bit of a struggle to squeeze in, but I had my favourite seminar Sociology of Education today, and as an aspiring primary school teacher, I can finally say I’ve found an aspect of my degree which isn’t boring to me. It’s only taken 3 years.

     
                               (what I should be doing vs what I actually end up doing…)

Time at home is spent doing hours of readings for my seminars which make zero sense to me, no matter how many times I read them again and again. I’ve come to the conclusion that sociologists just cannot bring themselves to write in nice coherent, simple English, and all of them have set out on a mission to make studying for a degree in Sociology one of the most boring and painful things known to man. But still I persevere. I say that like I’m some sort of trooper, I only persevere purely because I really have to. I also say that like I’m a great student who uses all their time in the most effective way, doing all of my readings. I’d say about 75% of my time at home is spent sat in my lovely warm bed, or on my laptop avoiding readings through hours endlessly refreshing Facebook in the hope that something exciting will pop up (it doesn’t), or on Youtube watching way too many videos and vlogs by those horribly addictive British Youtubers.

And as a uni student who clearly has a fair bit of time on their hands, you’d think I’d have the opportunity and energy to cook myself a nice, healthy dinner to end the day nicely. Vegetable soup counts as one of your 5 a day right..? Chocolate biscuits are also my worst enemy but we’re just not going to talk about that right now because I definitely don’t currently have the biggest chocolate biscuit shaped food baby going on…

Being a finalist is a pretty enjoyably boring business.

xoxo