I don't know if you heard, but I'm kind of going abroad...

And I'm really quite excited...and nervous... and slightly sad at the same time because I'm leaving lots of lovely people!

I'm not going for a few weeks or so (24th September) so I can stay in Sheffield for a couple of days in Fresher's week so I'm getting the best of both worlds really, plus there's the possibility of Union Christmas Day too - what more could a Rugby Girl abroad want?! Maybe a way to get to Club Dinner/Wednesday matches, but you can't have it all I guess.

Basically, this is a blog to document my year abroad to Salamanca in Spain and Volgograd in Russia. I got given an absolutely ADORABLE travel journal by my lovely friends from home so hopefully they'll be nice and detailed and I won't forget anything!

Compared to other Year Abroaders, I'm going to Spain pretty late (mostly because I'm not finishing work until the 16th, and it'd be rude not to go to Fresher's week ROAR when you don't have to be in the country until a week and a bit after!) so I'm hoping that I'll be able to find a flat/be able to settle in, otherwise this blog will be a bit short and embarrassing. Luckily, Erasmus is pretty relaxed on what you can do coursewise and the Spanish psyche of putting everything off until the very last minute means that I don't have to properly 'matriculate' until the end of October or something crazy, so it shouldn't be too much of a palaver (she says...). Also, apparently going through phone boxes is a good way to find a flat...that sounds a little bit wrong to me!

Obviously being a language student I've known that all this is coming, but it hasn't felt real until a couple of days ago. Seeing people's Facebook statuses saying they've found a flat in Sevilla or done a 7 hour stint on a train to Petrozavodsk makes you realise that you're actually not going to walk into a lecture theatre/seminar with these people until you've spent 4 months being shit scared of policemen with big guns. And that's after you've inevitably tried to out-drink a fellow Erasmus student in a 1euro shot drinking competition (and probably failing. My competitive spirit far outweighs my stomach on many occasions - just ask anyone in epic fancy dress on a Wednesday evening on the ROAR podium.)

For now this is another way of distracting myself from the fact that I STILL need to buy my travel insurance and should probably start reading in Spanish again so I actually remember how to speak it and not look like a pleb the minute I get off the plane in Madrid. I guess rambling is much more amusing!