and I'm pretty fond of them too.....(that's a major understatement)

Yep my itchy feet have well and truly returned! Understandably so as I haven't been on holiday since I went to Nepal!

also I'm noticing trends...

While I was in Nepal I saw two people I knew from university.

Last year I'm pretty sure half of my nearest and dearest all went to Gambia.

currently I know 6 people that are traveling around New Zealand

about 5 people in Cambodia,

2 in Korea and

4 people in New York.

...I'm in Birmingham...

......I'm not jealous at all....


...

...nope...not one bit!...

1) The tags for the post below read Found, Future, Job! I only just realised but it must have been an omen as this Summer I will indeed be working for THE CHALLENGE! I honestly don't think anyone can fully comprehend how excited I am! On top of that I still have the possibility of maybe doing two sessions of wither the challenge or two sessions of EFY ......or I might just do one of each; either way this Summer is going to be HECTIC! add into the mix that I'm on the committee to organise a conference for up to 800 people between 18 and 30 and Im starting to question what on Earth I was thinking!

2) I turn 23 in less than a month! I cannot decide on a pie party, a pimp that snack party or a panther party....or if in all fairness I just want to go and get food with people that I love.....the last one is kind of winning!

3) Yesterday I had SUCH a lovely day! One of my best friends sisters has been living roughly twenty minutes WALK away from where I live during her first year of university, now that the school year is coming to a close I actually met up with her and spent some time just chatting! We went to the farm.....(where I take everyone) and then we went to Manton's....(where I take everyone else) it was so fun and we've vowed to do it again! (I didn't take any pictures as the whole time at the farm we were being harassed by crazy dogs and terrorised by greedy geese! just a normal day down at the farm!)

4) Scotty and Aaron are coming down on Thursday! from Scotland! Ahhhh I actually can't wait...although I haven't got a clue what we're going to do!

5) A charity that I volunteered with when I was at school emailed me the other day about an informal interview for a role I'd applied for! OH HAPPY DAY [let us also not forget that this charity share an office with THE CHALLENGE....I don't know why I insist on always typing it in CAPITALS] so Dharshna is chatting away and asks me if I have any questions..... I tell her no...as I've done it before...she tells me I don't need to come in on Thursday and she'll just send me a CRB form in the post! I LOVE MY LIFE!!!!!

I have changed and I think to a degree for the worse!

Elements of my character that I was so happy to have held on to, and had not been tainted by modern society have slowly and subtly been worn away by others and their cynicism

I've been a bad friend of late. I've been wrapped up in small menial things and I haven't been there for the people who mean the most to me!

Slapped wrist...all is back to normal!

Ok so even after multiple personal resolves to improve my writing on my blog and also in my journal yet again I am my own victim of my personal challenges. It makes me wonder why I am always so adamant about setting my self personal challenges when I keep in mind my awful record of actually sticking to them!? I’m pretty sure that somewhere in a half completed journal somewhere there is no doubt a list and a date of challenges that I had recently undertaken. I say this because I can remember writing such a list while in a dizzy haze of self belief…oh the folly of my youth…I say that as if it was five years ago and I was still in school…oh how I wish! The truth is that this list was most likely written but six months ago. This sad realisation makes me want to curl up with the closest form of chocolate under an oversized duvet with something bread based….maybe a pizza….definitely a pizza…with all the cheese (I’m not sure if it’s the bread or the cheeses that I’m craving more while I wallow in pity!?....my life is quite a depressing state of affairs when it’s all written down)

I’m currently on a train heading to my Dads for the next week ….me and my amazing planning skills managed to overlook the fact that this trip includes mothers day 2011 and I am actually leaving my mom alone for this holiday that celebrates motherhood…..I’m an idiot!

ANYHOW!!! Less of the dull non events of my present existence…..(today has been ridiculous for many reasons all too boring to warrant documenting here) instead, the true reason why I am breaking my silence of electronic drivel is due to an epiphany ….ok maybe epiphany is a bit extreme as it was not a sudden realisation but more a gradual realisation over a week…or two…maybe even three (I’m pretty slow on the uptake)

I know that I quite often rabbit on about my friends and how much…(I’m on the phone to Libs helping her choose between a sherbet fountain and a dib dab![always happy to help]) they mean to me but it was only over the past few weeks I had truly come to understand how much they actually meant to me. Three years at university studying and living with people who in hindsight I hardly knew were three amazing years; as they drew to a close I started to realise how much I was going to miss them and delayed moving to Birmingham for another two months with excuse after excuse. I moved back to Birmingham….only to move out again two weeks later for 6 months into the most amazing cottage ever. It could have been the biggest mistake ever, Hannah and Libs had only met once or twice before we moved in and looking back on it I didn’t know Hannah all that well either….and I’d been friends with Libs for just under a year…..it sounds crazy ….if anyone else told me they were doing what we did I’d think they were insane. For the first few months we didn’t have a weekend alone; EVERY WEEKEND we had someone staying or we were somewhere else our weird gypsy family started to take shape; people from all over the country on occasion spending a few days in the cottage of love. As the cottage came to a close we managed to look back on our six months there and really appreciate it. I finally bit the bullet and moved home.

Being home now for a month-ish I can truly appreciate how much having friends around has really helped me over the past few years. There are certain things that aren’t for the blog……. And they’re kept in my journal (it’s a fine line) but I honestly don’t know where I’d have ended up if it wasn’t for a select few people in my life. It seems crazy as now I don’t even know where I’d be without them. I might live an hour and a half train ride from some, or an 11 hour flight from some, I may have known them for 6 months or for 11 years but those friendships are priceless.

The past weekend I was spending some time with some new friends….. oh my goodness…all I ended up doing was wishing that I was at home or just anywhere other than where I was. It sounds bad but that weekend I cam to truly appreciate the friendships I have with the people who I can whole heartedly call my friends. They’re honest to the point of brutality, opinionated, stubborn, confident but not arrogant, ‘quirky’, slightly out there and in the nicest way they don’t really care what you think about them. These are the people I choose to have around me and these are the people that I miss seeing on a daily or weekly basis. Some things deserve to be documented and if no one else is going to do it I guess then I should take it upon myself.

High Wycombe is a social abyss so even though this is quite obviously yet another resolve to write more……there wont be anything for about a week!!

I say that but who knows what this week will bring!

Who knows what the future will bring as a whole but I know that with friends like mine I’ll be fine!

This weekend I'm in Nottingham!

I needed to get away! things have been pretty stagnant in Birmingham.

jumping on a train = fun but I'm also now on my way to learning how to drive so suck on that Travel West Midlands!!!

I love my friends and today has been just what I needed


I know that I haven't written on here in a while but this is me making a decision to actually make an effort ....don't hold me to this!

Christianity is founded on the greatest of all miracles, the resurrection of our Lord. If that be admitted, other miracles cease to be improbable. They were intended to be a proof to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ. Many of them were also parabolic and instructive, teaching by means of symbols such divine truths as the result of sin and the cure of sin; the value of faith; the curse of impurity; and the law of love. Miracles were and are a response to faith, and its best encouragement. They were never wrought without prayer, felt need, and faith.


It is important to notice the different names by which miracles are described. They are called signs, as being visible tokens of an invisible power; they are powers or mighty works, because they are the acts of One who is almighty; they are simply works, or the natural results of the Messiah’s presence among men; they are wonders, marvels, because of the effect produced on those who saw them.

Miracles happen daily. Through humble means are great works brought to pass!

I am humbled!

*before more people ask...no this is not a quote from Mariah Carey!!!! it's from the bible dictionary!...Mariah wishes*

"I didn't know people still rowed"
          "Of course I knew rowing existed just not as a competitive sport"

"WoW Burma that's amazing...how's she going to commute?"
         "No not Burma ...Birmingham"

"Don't eat the frog!"

"Did you grow up in the country?"
         "Yeah! Once I missed my stop when I was on the train ..."

Leisurely picnic in Silchester lounging around the Roman amphitheatre with friends old and new!

WHAT A DAY!

his name is HOV!!

what a night!....

I have a whole book of letters written To whom they may concern!

Some are to actual people some to groups, some to people I don't even know but have just seen either on the street, in the library or in a shop, some to people still around, some to people passed on. I read through some of them the other day and it just made me smile hence why I started to share them...I will post a few more...or maybe many more; depending on how my mood takes me.

My parents are my best friends even when we don't get on or they start on their overly repetitive stories all I can do is laugh at them and with them, recently more so with them especially as I'm noticing all of the similar characteristic that we share. Dads aspirations for me that I just dismiss because it's Dad...now as we spend more time together are more in line with what I would actually like to do, rather than what he would like to tell people I do!

I am ready for university to be finished but that is definitely not where my education will finish. I have books to read, languages to learn, places to visit, people to meet, food to taste and a whole host of other opportunities that will be placed in my path! With new experiences come new acquaintances, moving away from what I have known for the past three years will also mean inevitably loosing touch with people who are present in my life right now. That process has already started to happen as my revision causes me to become a recluse my associations with people are not as strong as they once were and I know that this is my fault but I guess eventually it will make it easier for me to slip away come July; maybe then I'll be bothered about keeping in touch!

I'm an observer;....I observe! I think it's why I quite like Social Anthropology! I get to sit and watch or read and then continue to sit and think. In class we study different cultures, lost tribes, "new" civilisations and the things that set them apart from us; cultural differences, different thought processes whatever else the lecturer decides. I love it. 

There is nothing to say that our way is right, it is merely what we are used to. Many in the West see ourselves as the civilised, and feel like they must take it upon them selves to "teach" other cultures how to be civil and therefor more human(I watched a film where someone described an amazonian tribe as half human just because they didn't wear suits and carry briefcases). There have been very significant progresses in technology that we have the benefit of but with the benefits came the losses. Email makes it easier to communicate with people, text messages mean you can get in touch with someone when they are in a different country if it so takes your fancy but whatever happened to the phone-call, the letter... may I even suggest the face to face conversation! shock horror! Yes we as humans are capable of communicating face to face! (now there's a thought). 

Anyhow mini rant over.

I've found myself observing society, paying more attention to things that happen everyday in the situations that I find myself in. The way people interact with each other, the way in which people don't interact with each other, says the same amount maybe more. I've always enjoyed people watching, I think everyone does but it wasn't until recently I started analysing and I can't stop. In al fairnessI don't think i can call what I do analysing in the strictest....or loosest of terms in that case, but my eyes have been opened.

From the insecure, the over confident, the shy, the overbearing, the blunt, the quick witted, the intelligent, the silent, the academic, the not so academic, people that crave attention, people that crave affection, the crowd pleaser, the unstable, the charmer, the know all, the pessimist, the optimist, the "realist", to the down right schizophrenic.

I've never noticed how many people were just playing games, holding up a mask and entering into act two scene three of the big production that is their life. I'm bored of am-mature dramatics and child's play. While noticing people who are hiding behind a translucent facade (because most people can see straight through it) I've noticed that there are many people....in some settings the majority who are themselves no matter what the situation, the don't hide it, they don't seek your acceptance and It is these people who I am so glad to be able to count as my friends. The rest I shall continue to observe....I wander what people observing me think?! I don't think I want to know! I don't really care!

A case of the fake people

from Sabino