The end of an era

My life in Malta is coming to an end. In 24hours I will be on a plane taking me to Dublin, to start a new life. These past few days have certainly been a rollercoaster ride of emotions. I have just printed my master’s dissertation and took it to be hard bound this morning and today I have also packed most of my stuff for tomorrow. Just the last few finishing touches to go. I feel alternatively happy and confident that all will be well, or deep in sad land where I am apprehensive of everything. Using my rational mind I know I can do this, I will make the best of the coming three years and I will make friends (by making an effort) and will not feel lonely. I have a great support system situated all around Europe: Malta, London, Finland (and sometimes even farther away)…and I am sure I will build a support system in Dublin. Other times all my doubts come tumbling in and I am a panicked deer in the headlights.

Think of me…

Cec

Roof BBQ

Yesterday was the day the Comino Group (+ additions: Julian, Bernard, Therese and Nicolai) came over to my house for a roof BBQ, whilst also watching the Santa Marija feast fireworks at Mqabba and Qrendi, which can be easily seen from our roof top. The Mqabba fireworks team is renowned as being one of the best in Malta and abroad. They have won several competitions here in Malta and abroad. Below you could see an entry to the Maltese fireworks festival a few years ago. More videos and photos are available on their website:

Well Bernard came over at around 5pm with the food we had bought the day before…we started preparing the food, went to 6pm mass at the Nigret chapel and came back to continue preparing food. This was the menu:

Starters: Tortillas, Crips, Tuna Dip, Blue Cheese dip, Gallett

Appetizers: Garlic bread (made from home-made garlic butter courtesy of ME!), Maltese sausage on BBQ

Main Course: Chicken kebab, Pork kebab, wudy cheese sausages, Lidl wurstel sausages, Potato Salad, Couscous Salad

Desert: Chocolate Cake, Ice cream (walnut, vanilla or chocolate), apple fondant, fruit kebabs

I think that is all…we had (as usual) too much food, and have remaining food in the fridge at home…even though we went from 10 people to 11 people at the last moment, and my mum ate a bit too…we still had too much food haha…nothing new here.

They were supposed to be here at 8pm…but (as with all Maltese gatherings) they arrived here at about 9pm)…it was a good thing…cos we only finished preparing the food and everything at about 8:45pm haha). All in all, we had a great time, we chatted, we laughed (too hard sometimes…some people were going to have a heart attack I think), made too much noise, and had an enjoyable evening (although we did not really look at any fireworks much haha).

Would like to say a special thank you to Bernard and Chris for helping out in the cooking etc. At about 12:30am…they decided to leave (they were going to Paceville from my house hihi)…So everyone helped take the things down…well not everyone…some people conveniently needed to use the bathroom at this point…well what can you expect…Bernard changed to his going out clothes and they left. Then I spent some time washing the plates etc (did not take long), and stayed reading in bed!

Hopefully today we go swimming together WEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Tired but Happy! Comino!

I already have other posts with a similar name, but nothing else is fitting…knackered and tired but happy…it seems being tired makes me happy…oh well!…

Why, might you ask am I tired? Well this weekend was our planned camping trip to Gozo: Bernard, Sarah, Luke, Chris, Carina, Clayton and myself had met at the beach last Sunday, and a 1 day trip to Comino turned into a 2-day camping trip there. Friday evening Bernard and Sarah went to buy the supplies…and they made sure that we had enough…will tell you more about it later on! Bernard brought the pasta and pesto to my house…and I cooked 1kg of pasta, which I chilled to take up with me to Comino for all of us to eat for Saturday lunch. After this I packed and was ready to be picked up by Bernard on Saturday at 7:45am.

We made our way to Cirkewwa with (between 7 people) 4 big picnic coolers with food and drinks, 3 tents, and numerous bags and rucksacks. We caught the ferry, and we started making our way from Blue Lagoon to find somewhere to camp. Mid-way up the Blue Lagoon hill, a guy in a battered Fiat passed by and he (thankfully) gave a lift to some of our HEAVY picnic coolers (just to put you in the picture…one of the picnic coolers might have 6 bottles of 2Ltr water and 3 bottles of 1.5Ltr Diet Coke i.e. around 17kgs of drinks. The others kept walking until we met up with Chris who had gone with the picnic coolers in the car. He told us where the guy suggested to camp and off we went. There we found a public camp site. We found some space and pitched our tents. At this point we were ravenous…so we had the pesto pasta I had taken up with me. After washing the plates (in sea water…the sea was a mere 20 metres or so away from our tents) some of us slept, whilst the others went for a swim.

After swimming we dried up and rested (the others slept, whilst me and Bernard played cards). Me and Bernard then went for a short walk to explore the surroundings. We found some clean (very clean) public toilets, to which I am grateful, and then walked to a small chapel in the vicinity to check whether mass is celebrated. We were surprised…there were two masses on Saturday evening (6pm and 7:15pm) and one on Sunday morning (5:45am). We then swam a bit, has a snack (i.e. a whole meal for most people…of galletti, pate, crisps, tortillas etc), dried up and half of us went to the 6pm mass. I doubt whether I understood 10% of the mass…it was in Maltese…but the priest was old, spoke very fast in a thick accent and did not even breathe it seems between sentences. This does not augur well when you are tired, but oh well.

After mass…the remainder went to the 7:15pm mass, whilst we prepared the cooking area for the night’s meal. Once they arrived from mass, we started cooking. This was the menu for the night (per person mind you):

                1 Maltese Sausage

                1 Frankfurter sausage (as a hot dog)

                1 chicken kebab

                1 burger (inside a burger roll)

                1 wudy cheese sausage

                2 other sausages

You must also keep in mind that we were 7 people…however e.g. the burger packs were 10 each…therefore we had extra of everything aaaaaa…We certainly did not go hungry.

 After this we talked a bit, and my first problems of the night surfaced. My intestines were certainly unhappy…and I rushed to the clean toilets for the first time of the night. The others kept drinking and talking for some time, but I decided to turn in (although I did not sleep). After about 30mins (about 11pm), Bernard and Carina, who were my tent mates joined me in the camp and we proceeded to try to sleep. The guys from the next group who were camping in the next area decided they wanted to watch a movie (on a laptop I presume) at quite a high volume…but anyways…I still tried to sleep. At 12pm, I woke up in a panic…woke up Bernard and he gave me his torch, I searched for toilet paper and I rushed to the toilets nearby aaaaaaa. Then back to the tent, but this story repeated itself twice more till 3am L

 However I finally managed to sleep a bit weeeee…the next morning we woke up and had breakfast…3 sausages, baked beans, eggs, bread, bacon, nutella aaaaaaa…I did not have much due to the night’s experience aaaaaaa. Whilst setting up and waiting for the last people to wake up (Carina and Luke :D), we also noticed we had visitors in the night…we could notice small paws all around our tents…We had all heard that mice are a common occurrence on Comino…in fact we made sure to wash everything we ate in. Any food was either within the tents themselves or in closed picnic coolers…however it seems the mice came to check anyways…haha…nothing for you 😀

 Carina and Sarah then left to go to the Blue Lagoon to check whether we could go swim there (the day before jellyfish could be seen there, however the wind had died down, and they happily reported back that no jellyfish were there…Wippie…during this time we put down our tents and started packing…when they arrived back, we continued with our packing and then started to make our way to the Blue Lagoon (about 30mins away on foot). We found some space to put down our things at the Blue lagoon, and off swimming we went :D…

The Blue Lagoon

 The seas were crystal clear Although relatively cold…although that did not dampen our joy). We swam around, went to Cominotto and crossed over from under it (there is a cave :D) to the other side, and generally had a good time 😀 We then had something to eat (ftira with rio mare tuna insalatissime for the others, ftira with Nutella for me, and some crisps). Then back swimming we went. At about 3pm we went up to dry and proceeded to make our way to the boat boarding queue. We learned that the next boat was at 4pm…so we waited…the queue (not so much of a queue as a bunch of people) waited until our boat arrived…the thing is that a lot of different operators make use of the same quay…so people have to make their way through millions of others to reach their boat…we were way up front haha but we waited until our boat arrived…wee a boat from United Comino ferries which accepts red tickets (there were others with Blue tickets…I believe they go to another place, not Cirkewwa), and off we went.

 Our fantastic trip to Comino was over L…I did not even capture how much fun we had in this blog…however I would not change it for the world. We reached Malta, and did not want the joy to end. So we all went home, had a shower, slept for around 1hour, and back out we went. Chris collected me and Bernard…the others went with Carina, and we went to Tigne where we had something to eat and chatted some more 😀

 Next up: BBQ at my house next Saturday, to look at the fireworks at Qrendi and Mqabba, and have a good time WEEEEEE!!