Currently

the weather is good. I'm in Spain though so any Brit could expect it. The strawberries are out already and it's only April. Cold soup at lunchtime. Novelties abound.

Living abroad is strange. What once was too exciting to fathom becomes regular. That foreign numberplate you were looking out for on the M11 is now all around you, any eager ears pricked up in Camden to hear the odd bit of Spanish from teenage tourists now require no effort, and the occasional day where you can leave the house in but a tee in spring is no longer occasional, but an expected norm. Even boarding an aeroplane, the most thrilling of the thrilling, loses something after Ryanair cabin crew refuse to take a breath in between their umpteen attempts to sell you something on your umpteenth flight.

Does it become mundane though? If you're like me and you haven't until now been thinking about how best to use time outside the very little amount of hours spent in class, maybe. If you're also like me and remain enthralled on every step taken on the busy Valencian streets, maybe not. Shop windows. Traffic signs. Police cars. The way paving stones are arranged on the street. Palm trees. Elegant cream-coloured balconied buildings. All different. Yet the creators of these are people that do it neither worse or better, just different, right down to their communication with each other.

Still, not much time remains to benefit from all of this. Opportunities to sit down, drink a cortado and read Sartre or Cortázar, or alternatively to head to the beach and murder the feet hopelessly trying to play football, are numbered. One thing is certain: I need to read, listen, speak and write as much as possible, in any language. Next year is going to be the biggest task of my life in terms of personal maturity: securing the good degree. Not only for practical purposes; if I succeed I will know that I can live more organised than I am used to.

The work starts now.