A morning of reflection

Hello all.

For some reason I spent this morning feeling a little reminiscent. So much so that I wound up making some collages that I will now share with you. If, by any chance, you actually happen to follow my little blog (I thank you greatly), I thought you might like to get a little picture of my life from before I entered the world of blogging.
The pictures have a range of 1997 right up to 2013, although I am lacking quite a few years as both my PC and my external hard drive died a while back and I lost most of my pictures, I am slowly rebuilding the catalogue from Facebook though - thank god I have such a tendency to upload pictures from trips!
Anyway, here's the collage named "Then & Now"



























In the first picture I'm sitting with my cousin, I lived with my aunt for a while after my mothers death so my dad could work without having to fork out for child are, and to give him a chance to grieve without me being a pain, I kid, I was actually very good as a baby, Dad says I barely cried, just sat quietly and as a toddler I never threw tantrums, just looked at books or played on my own, maybe being an only child I just didn't develop that arguing streak haha!

The second picture is my nursery picture, taken when I was 3 (everyone in my psychology class estimated my age to be 9...either they were VERY baby faced at 9, or I was very mature at 3....) after a trip to Disneyland Florida - I'm wearing a mickey mouse top. :)

The 3rd picture was taken at the end of year 2, aged 7, before making our way to year 3, in the scariest part of the school - JUNIOR SCHOOL!! (at this point, my primary school was a JMI school, we later changed to a primary.)

And finally the 4th picture, taken in my friends garden just before going to our year 11 prom, it was an end of an era, and a very enjoyable evening.




I said my primary school used to be a JMI (Junior mixed Infants), well here are some pictures from the day we changed to primary. A few months earlier us pupils had taken a vote on whether we should be called community or primary, it was fairly unanimous that we should be primary.

On the day everyone had either a green or yellow balloon (school colours), the head teacher called stansted airport to tell them there'd be quite a few balloons in the flight path that day, and we let them go in the ceremony. Then the 2 oldest and youngest pupils (unfortunately i was in year 5 so a year too young for this honour) cut the ribbon to declare us officially open. Then we all received bookmarks and had cake.


This next picture is a combination from my years at secondary school:

In the first picture I have a pair of penguin feet sticking out of my blouse while in RM (resistant materials), my friend found it so amusing that a picture had to be taken - just look at my enthusiasm!
The second picture is a whole group photo from the last day of year 9, how we've shrunk since then!
Then we have my friend, surrounded by books, on a day of maths a geography revision.
And finally, all dressed up for the year 11 prom. :)


This collaboration is from a variety of school trips, the first is me with my best buddy on arrival at mount Vesuvius in Italy in year 9, next we have the rewards trip in year 10 - a trip to the Doctor Who experience in Olympia, London. The next two are from year 12, the first to New York in February and the following to Birmingham for Geography in Novemeber.

And now for the final collaboration, a selection of my favourite moments.

We have a trip to Center Parcs with my (ex) boyfriend in 2011, it was lovely to have a family holiday, without my own family haha! Don't get me wrong, I love my family, but our holidays have only once in 17 years been an actual holiday, rather than work.

Then we have the olympics, for which we scored tickets to (and the paralympics), followed by seeing Michael Mcintyre live, although I had a very painful neck at the time, so had to sit on the end of the row and lean out sideways to see him!

Then we have my 17th birthday at the Natural History museum with 2 of my friends and my new (ex) boyfriend, I do love dinosaurs y'see...
And finally, two of my buddies on the weekend camp nearly three weeks ago, it was a brilliant weekend. No doubt i'll have a lot more happy camping memories when I get back from the summer camp to Lochearnhead in Scotland. :)



I said I liked to read, well, here's the proof - I was an early reader, apparently!

Or maybe I just wondered what was on TV

Strangely enough, I still have this book lying around somewhere!

Well, that's all for now, I broke up from school for the summer today and I'm going to make the most of it by getting on with my holiday work outside before I go to Scotland, knowing my luck, it'll snow while I'm there haha!

Alons-y!

Weekend camp

I've had projects pouring out my ears over the last couple of weeks!
Carrying out my own experiment for psychology, a compilation of info for history, teaching my own lesson for history and a fieldwork report for biology!
All this called for a much needed break, this was granted at the weekend (Friday 5th - Sunday 7th July 2013), when me along with 5 other explorers and 2 leaders went on a camp to Tolmers activity centre, we had a right blast!

On arriving at 7pm on Friday evening, we headed up the campsite to find our pitch, and then pitched our tents (one each, as I was the only girl so needed my own, so everyone got their own), mine was an old tent with very bent poles so took a little longer to put up than the others.
After that we collected wood for the fire and spent the evening relaxing with good chatter, swiss roll and marshmallows.

We like a fire

We went to bed around midnight (after removing a MASSIVE moth from my tent).

On saturday, a team of 2 cooked breakfast and we left the campsite for a hike at 11:30am, little did we know how long we would be gone.

We stopped to watch a couple of cricket matches

When we finally got back to camp, we relaxed for a while before collecting some more wood and cooked the dinner (spaghetti!).
Following that, we sat around the fire and were eaten alive by mosquitos, so I got the insect repellent and it got passed around the group, before we realised we were recklessly spraying an "extremely flammable" substance very close to open flames...
We got the marshmallows out and Mike toasted his in a stealth position:

Little did he know that the marshmallow he was toasting would result in hours of laughter.

On returning to the group, Mike announced that his marshmallow "looks like a willy" (it did), this resulted in some very childish laughter, every time I regained control, I heard Tom's high pitched giggle or Duncan's monkey laugh and burst into hysterics all over again, we were in fits of laughter for 2 hours non-stop - it was insanely painful.

The following morning we went climbing and abseiling at 10:30 and then packed up the kit and went home, It was such a brilliant weekend and I became really good friends with everyone.

Well that was my weekend, I've got lots of projects and reports to write so I'll be back soon.

Alons-y!