Stressante

The time has come for the tourism classes to end and that obviously means exams and final tests -.- Already!?!?! It's so early because now they have a compulsory internship to do as part of their degree for a couple of months which is actually pretty good in the employability perspective because they will have actual relevant work experience.

I've attended 3 tourism classes this semester - yeah I know, should've done more but at first I just couldn't wake up that early in the morning and so it went, later it would've been a bit awkward to go... Well we shall see what's going to happen next year when my tutor in Aber finds out I didn't attend all the lectures I was supposed to... Ooops :P Anyway the 3 that I've done - Customer relationship management, Amadeus and Analyzing tourism territories. In the first one we had to do 2 in class assessments where the prof played the customer and we had to sell him an excursion and "our" hotel, very scary... and both times I fell into one of his traps: first he took my brochure and started looking at it himself - apparently a big no-no and I should keep it kinda between us and show him stuff on it myself otherwise he won't care what I say, makes sense right... At the end of it everyone clapped and said I did a great job - referring to my french that is -.- just great... I was the only one they clapped for... thanks guys :D On the second assessment he started asking all the questions about the hotel and I was answering but I should've taken the leading role and done the asking myself... well it is easier to my French to answer questions and not lead the conversation myself... so we'll see what the result is going to be :S

In the Amadeus computer program class our last test was to sell plane tickets to different people (family, with a dog etc.) because that what Amadeus is: a series of codes that tour operators (and other tourism businesses?) use to sell plane tickets, essentially quite easy if you remember the codes which are quite logical: practice makes perfect :) The funny thing though is that the semester ended so quickly that we still had some codes to learn but no time left, so first we were supposed to have a supplementary class Monday evening but the whole uni internet network was down so they spent about 40 minutes to figure out what to do now and when we could do the classes to learn the last part before our big test. Very funny for me - the observer but you can only imagine how stressed everyone else was - let's do it then! - no we can't we have this this and that, what about then? No I can't do that etc etc for 40 minutes. When the big test day came on Thursday I was quite confident in myself but the atmosphere was soooooo stressful people were freaking out! We had two who were surprisingly awful at it for some reason.... and they were constantly asking stuff from the prof and others and so the prof was constantly telling us to be quiet. You could cut the tension in the air with a knife. The test itself was quite easy but as always when something is easy I can't believe I've done it right so I sat there for about half an hour just looking at everything making sure that I hadn't forgotten anything and listening to the others :D It was funny in it's own way... The prof just kept telling us don't worry you have 2 hours to do it, no need to freak out... Later saw a guy who had done Amadeus already previously and he was absolutely furious at some of the people in our class because they had asked him all the questions and not in a calm matter :D Oh my beloved frenchies :)

And in the third class I will have a proper exam Monday so wish me luck! :)

Ttyl ;)

Jazzz...

Bang Bang

Woke up on my birthday and thought I'd write a post about the things that are happening so that'd be interesting to read in years to come but later that day something far more interesting happened... 

First things first: This year on my birthday, the Malaysian flight is still missing, Russia has taken over Crimea (Krimm) region in Ukraine because the ethnic russians there are discriminated and being hurt and whatnot and they want to be part of Russia not Ukraine... A couple of days ago Moscow reportedly had concerns about the situation in Estonia as well... we'll see what happens with that..

Siim Kallas turned down the role of becoming the prime minister because of the media digging up old things over and over again...

Now to my day: went for a field trip with the tourism crew, they had a group project to do and had to go check out a bicycle trail and later do a presentation about the dangers and all that, didn't really understand to be honest :D but tagged along anyway and every now and again Jasmine look at this, do you know what this is, do you have it in Estonia :D so cute. It was good, got to see a little bit of Corsica that I haven't seen before because we went by car. The main event happened right after we had parted and started making our way back to Corté. There were 5 of us in the car, music blasting spirits high and suddenly someone screams, I notice a car in front of us and the next thing I know we've crashed into it... OMG what just happened?!? I've never ever been in a car accident before so I was quite shocked, everyone got out of the cars and luckily were fine. The cars looked horrible though. And then all the girls started crying apart from me... Guess I was in too much of a shock and din't quite understand what's going + they were calling their parents and the lecturer to come pick us up etc. So I was just sitting there trying to understand what people are saying, now a couple of cars had stopped and people came out to see if we were alright. And after they had eventually filled in all the insurance details, the cars were towed away we made our way back home. So I walked out of there with a bruised left knee - the skin had come off, nothing too bad and a huge bruise on my upper right leg - now that hurts.

Oooooh a funny observation, because Corsica is so small, practically everyone knows everyone so when our lecturer came he said HI giving cheek kisses to everyone there (not the students)... I don't know seemed a bit bizarre to me :D

Ttyl ;)

Jazzz...

My holiday in a nutshell

Pearls from my holiday week to Italy

• Mr. Special had gotten to Pisa before me and therefore was in charge of getting us from the train station to the hotel. About 20 minute walk but since it was dark and I had my luggage we decided to go by bus. So he randomly went to a bus asked the driver if he goes to the tower and voilà we were on a bus. Only a short ride, bout 5 minutes... 15 minutes later when it looks like we're in the middle of later I start to panic a little inside (I'm totally cool on the outside because I always believe that things will work out). I've made Mr. Special properly panic thought because I wouldn't let him go and ask again :D It's just not me to ask someone the same question every 5 minutes :D Especially in front of everyone else and in a language the bus driver does not speak very well :D And it turns out we were on the right bus, saw the Leaning Tower late at night and got to our hotel :)

• "The bells you can hear every hour from the leaning tower of Pisa actually comes from a hidden cd-player!"" Wait what? A cd-player????"" Yeah you see I read from the internet that this is electronic now..."" OMFG you can't be real, that means that instead of someone running around hitting the bells manually it has been automated and you can still here the actual bells ringing not some stupid cd."" Oh.. oops..."

• We had bought train tickets in advance and in Italy there is a ticketless option in Italy meaning you have to have your booking number. Now I had sent him the link explaining how things go beforehand and specially said read it!!!! And he did... Then at the train station going down to Naples another freak out moment: where can we get our ticket, I'll go ask at the counter, omg omg because you have to get a stamp on the ticket from the machine before getting on the train blahblahblah well... if one had read the link I had sent once upon a time... Well that resulted in me having to pay for the fine if we get it for not getting that stamp on our ticket :D So to calm him down we went to the information to be sure (I was already sure but we had loads of time so why not). In front of us in the queue was a lady asking a thousand questions... haha you should've seen how Mr.Special was twitching, trying to get out of the queue and practically yelling right I'm done we'll go ask from the ticket office. I made him stay though :D and finally he got to ask his question and guess who was right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tip we had the ticketless booking ;)

• Arriving to Naples after another freak out on the train because the train was 25 minutes late (overheard from a conversation) and they didn't announce the stops... again if we miss our stop it will be my fault because I wasn't overly worried and freaking out :D In the Naples train station we were looking at the map and trying to figure out where our hotel is and how to get there when a man approached us offering help... We were warned about pickpockets and thieves and all that. Alarmbells, turns out he was a taxidriver, not a proper licensed one though and his car had several bumps so we politely refused to get into that and he tried every trick in the book to convince us - stupid tourists - to go with him, even gave his drivers licence to Mr.Special to keep for the journey to hold on and phoning the hotel. Mr.Special started to freak out (again :D) and tried to run away, me tagging along trying not to laugh too hard. It resulted in the taxi driver demanding money for phoning the hotel and following us around the train station. Mr.Special tried his hardest to run away but we found the proper place for taxis and there was queue so I stood in it but he was tring to jump the queue just to get rid of that dodgy driver :D so you can just imagine him running away trying to get me go with him and me stubbornly just standing there like Chill Out and relax dude. The driver wasn't harrassing me because I kept my nerve and I generally don't give a shhhhh - you're not getting anything from me. In the end we got a proper taxi :) 

• Everyone knows the Italian Mafia - the most notorious out there in the world - because of Hollywood probably and apparently the southern part of Italy is infested with them... So you are forbidden to say the word Mafia in Naples because then you draw attention to them and they will come and beat you up or whatever. Well with Mr.Special cringing and telling me to shut up for gods sake I said the unforbidden word multiple times pretty loudly on the street and I'm still well and alive with no bruises...

• During breakfast in a nice little family-run hotel Mr.Special was chatting to the owner when he said that yeah they only have 10 rooms on the ground floor and his family lives upstairs but it's enough to live on and he works to live not the other way around and asks Mr.Special if he lives for work. Mr.Special's face drops in a minute and I thought that the owner had dropped some food on the floor and then picked it up and put it for guests to eat or something disgusting like that was occurring behind me. But oh no turns out that Mr. Special had been asked to work for the Mafia in that conversation and now he was scared. What? When? How? Why? Apparently he had said his FAMILY (all the stupid hand gestures and fake accent) lives upstairs and you know what Family means! And because the owner obviously didn't speak perfect English Mr.Special interpreted his next sentence as an invite- a demand to work for him... Are you out of your mind? Jeesh, no, no, that was not how the conversation went!

• In Pompeii Mr. Special started whining that he was hungry - but only if I wanted something to eat too, just as we had passed a cafe a couple of minutes ago. So we were there arguing for a while that I do not need to eat but if he wants we'll go back and get something but no no if I don't want to we won't go etc etc etc :D Finally I got fed up and started marching towards the stupid café with him tagging along: "no we don't have to go, I'm not coming" he did. We got there and guess what! By that time it had already closed!!!!!! He promised never to whine ever again :D

• Time to go home from Pompeii and we needed to find the train station and hope that the trains run now (it was a strike day so we were lucky to get there in the first place because normally there aren't any buses from Sorrento to Pompeii but one driver was kind enough to make a special stop just for us :)) in addition it was raining as well and we weren't quite sure where the train station was and yet again we heard someone shouting at us: where do you want to go? Another taxi driver... long story short he said that the train station closed about ten minutes ago (just my luck) and there are no buses but he would give us a lift to Sorrento for ONLY 75 euros... khm khm khm what? 75??? Yeah I know it's about a 45-minute ride but it's only 4euros for the both of us on the train... so no thank you (for now) we'll go check the train station just in case - he said it's a kilometre away in the rain but go ahead if you want in other words it's too far and pointless going come with me instead. So we walked a couple hundred meters and guess what... yeap the train station was open and trains were still running and there were other people there... what a stupid f''''' liar trying to get money from tourists...

• An important part of our holidays is always take-away food :D because I'm too lazy to go anywhere to eat properly :D and this time we decided to share a ham and cheese crepe and a waffle with nutella. The lady took ages preparing them, seriously could you hurry up please and she gave us the waffle first. Sweet before salty food? No mkm me no likey but oh well wadewa, she had already cut the waffle into little pieces so it was quite easy to eat, I ate my half, gave it to Mr. Special then and kept on waiting for my beloved crepe. Next thing you know I heard I loud scream, turned around and saw Mr. Special covered in Nutella and no I'm not talking about a little smudge on his belly, no he was literally covered in it because Mr. Special wanted to cut the little piece into smaller pieces, the knife broke and voilà, I'm surprised he didn't drop it on the floor... Funny as hell :D

Ttyl ;)

Jazzz...