Final Year Looms

So it’s now been nearly two months since I touched down back on British soil, and since then I’ve moved back into a new house in Leeds, which is now finally full with everyone ready for the start of university this week! You know you’re living in a house full of designers when a day is spent with post it notes re-designing the layout for storage in the kitchen…

During fresher’s week and alongside all the obligatory evenings spent drinking cocktails and dancing away, I also made a little tour of Yorkshire with a trip to visit my sister as she settles into the University of Sheffield and to my grandparents’ in Bradford – where my Grandma had received a card from the Queen herself congratulating her on her diamond (60 year) wedding anniversary!

Just yesterday I hopped on the bus to IKEA where I met my parents, from where we hopped on the motorway and navigated the unforgiving hills and roundabouts of Sheffield to find my sister in her new student pad! Having missed her moving in, I wanted to go and have a snoop around and see how she was enjoying her first taste of freedom.

Ellie’s university halls are much prettier than mine ever were, set in beautiful green grounds and with tennis courts and Sheffield’s Botanical Gardens just next door! Naturally we wanted to go and check these out, so after repeated and increasingly frustrated explanations of what was classed as light and dark for the washing machine, we headed across the road to explore.

The gorgeous gardens paired with the lovely sun of the day made for a lovely calming wander around the Botanical Gardens, where we had a chance to catch up out of the craziness of student halls. Ellie has settled really well down in the south of Yorkshire, and it was lovely to be visiting a university and being led around rather than acting as the tour guide for a change – and we all went out for a meal afterwords which was also lovely.

I also spent a day manning the Undergraduate Research & Leadership Scholarship stall at the freshers fair, which was a lovely chance to speak to some of the new Loiners joining us, and share stories and anecdotes from some of our UGRL antics!

As my third (technically fourth) year of university begins this week, I have braced myself for the oncoming workload, and so I am not sure when my next blog post will be – but I have a strong inkling that the two-day spontaneous trip to Madrid that I have booked myself for next week may yield some stories and photos worth sharing!