We began the hard grind of classes this week; an unwelcome and unfamiliar routine of  early mornings and sitting still for whole hours at a time. Reassured by my experiences in France (I still cannot confirm but it looks like I passed enough credits not to be thrown out of uni – a roaring success)  I was completely unabashed by my inability to understand more than three words in a row of my first lecture. What did abash me somewhat in my second lecture was the elderly teacher who (for once I’m not joking) I am ninety percent sure is a stroke victim, which made him even harder to understand than everybody else. What I did glean was that he would be teaching us only from a book that he wrote, that we were not to bother him other than to hand in coursework and that he would not take into consideration that Erasmus students were writing in a second language. I can tell he and I will be friends. The pick of the classes was Latin American literature which combines all the cool revolutions and wars with the magic, voodo religions of the  indiginous people. It is badass…as literary analysis goes. All in all  classes will, like last term, be really interesting when I work out what the professors are saying.

The pleasantly uneventful academic week did not prepare me for the tragedy which befell me on Tuesday as my latop once again succumbed to its rather rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle and stopped working – it’s not dead but certainly in a deep coma – and to take this image and run with it, it has already suffered several heart attacks and a broken skull so I fear this may be the end of the line. Thanks a lot “watch ‘Boardwalk Empire’ free online’. Unable to take on my fill of American tv I have started, inspired by some douchebags I saw on holiday in Florida last summer, going for runs on the beach. Unlike the hyper- competitive USA, nobody exercises in Malaga and people seem to view anybody who does as a potentially dangerous eccentric, so I feel a bit self-conscious, but having a beach to run along in twenty-five degree weather definitely beats trudging through the meadows up to my knees in questionable-smelling mud as ping-pong ball- sized hailstones do their utmost to give me a concussion. I miss Edinburgh.

As is the custom in Malaga, I also spent a significant part of the small hours of this week sampling more of Malaga’s nightspots, including the club below where I live, where, for the first time ever I could drunkenly point from the smoking area and say “that’s my bedroom” without it being a lie. All the clubs here are small and charge medium prices for drinks with music being the only varient (although messrs Gaga and Perry are never more than three songs away from rotting the part of the brain that perceives good music). The variety is just staggering though and if I do not like somewhere I can just go next door and it will probably be another club, although not always, as a French dude found out to his cost on Friday, when an old lady poured water from her balcony over his head to stop him ringing her buzzer.

Yesterday there was a parade in the city centre in which a collection of crazy people dressed up and walked along the main street throwing confetti at the crowd in time to varuous kinds of flamenco music. It was a very fun experience except when an inflatable ‘Spongebob Squarepants’ had a kind of spasm and collapsed right in front of me and had to be resuscitated (reinflated) before continuing.

Hopefully by next week I will once again have decent computer access (I am using my flatmates while she’s out and can’t handle the stupid French keyboard) and be able to give a more comprehensive account of how decadent and awesome life is.

Hasta pronto.

Gregor