You useless bovine!

I don't really know how I'm still awake. Yesterday something truly bizarre happened - I didn't sleep. Normally this is the first thing that would make me kill someone, but I calmly went to bed at 10pm ready for my 6.30 wake up call and laid there as the master of zen and was perfectly calm until I checked the clock at 1.30. I spent five minutes going over my study notes since I was still wide awake, and gave sleep another shot. It didn't happen. At 3.30 I played on the computer for half an hour, and then by 6.30 I was not only not asleep (just wait until you see me in double negative madness), but I was still wide awake, the kind of 'wide-awake' that happens at lunch time. So I got up and thought that I'd be safer going into my exam with a coffee. And by coffee I mean a mug full of espresso. Sometime I'll find out that I drink enough to kill a cow. On that day I will laugh victorious at all the pathetic bovine and shake my fist in some caffeine-induced madness.

The exam.....was nothing like I studied for. Nor was it anything like the lectures. I was busy cramming all of this vocab into my noggin, such as words that describe another word that has an extra sound inserted into it, or removed from it, whether this be at the front of the world, middle, or end. Crap like that. Instead my heart dived at the test paper and I knew that I was in the crap house. A few other people were there as well and a handful left within fifteen minutes despite the professor begging for them to try, and they simply said that they didn't understand any of it. The real bugger is that you actually need to know coloquial Spanish to do well on this test. I knew when something coloquial was being used but didn't know what it meant or how to describe it, so I'm honestly, truly, genuinely not expecting to pass. I didn't understand the questions and I couldn't answer them as well as I'd have liked. But still in my zen-like zaniness, I handed it in, and went to check my Italian results.

Not surprisingly, I have no clue as to what my results mean. I got a 5. I have no idea what a 5 means, but from adding all the parts of the exam I ended up with 69%, which I'm convinced must be a pass. Good. I looked to see who did better, and someone got a 'notable', but no number. I wrote their numbers down too and they got 80%. Someone else got 89% with a 'sobresaliente'. Again, no number. Good for those non-number people. Curiously, out of 20 people who sat the exam, I saw only 12 names on the results. Since mine was one of the lowest, I'm guessing that 8 people are either MIA or failed.

It's late, I've been awake for 40 hours and I'm still not tired (might have something to do with the coffee I've continually had today, and that I have an exam tomorrow that I haven't adequately studied for). And then the worst timing but still good and annoying award goes to Ryanair. They're back onto their awesome deals again. Yep, it's possible to fly to Milan from Santander for 1 cent. I want to go to Milan over easter. I don't live in Santander. But that's okay, because it's possible to fly from Madrid to Santander also for 1 cent. Getting back cheaply is a bitch though, because it'll be easter. I have a list of cities that I plan on visiting but they're in an easily changeable order. There are 4 cities that are possible to fly out of Spain and into Italy cheaply, and there are 8 cities from Italy into Spain. Some have discounts to some other cities, some don't. Some change depending on the day. I found that you can go from Pisa to the middle of England for 1 cent. That'd be great if I could then get from that airport back to Spain on the cheap, but NO! And to further add to the chaos, there are more cheap hubs that can be flown into in other countries, and my dates are variable, so after exhausting every friggin variable, I have determined that it IS possible to fly from Madrid into Italy and back again for under 10 cents. But it means taking 9 airplanes, and I'm sure paying €27 there and back will make a lot more sense in the end. I'm cheap, but sometimes practical (he says this before booking a flight that will land at midnight...hostels no longer available at that hour...).