Since 2016 was famously the year of realising stuff I decided to write a list of everything I realised last year (feels weird writing last year when it was only two days ago).
I realised how much I can achieve if I put my mind to it and stop procrastinating!
I am the world’s best procrastinator, I’ve seen myself be in uni for three hours and achieve nothing, but when I really focus on something I get the job done and the results are worth the time not spent looking at pictures of cats on Instagram. I talk about what I achieved last year in my previous blog post so I won’t go into to much detail but it turns out when I set my mind to it, this little dyslexic human can get an A in Critical and Contextual Studies!!
Likes on social media are really unimportant and actual human interactions hold much more value than those on a phone screen.
I used to really worry about the fact people weren’t going to like something I posted on social media, to the point where my flatmate was ordered to go through my Instagram at least once a week and like anything I posted..but I realised that is just absolutely ridiculous. You are worth so much more than the amount of likes your last selfie got. Who you are off screen is far more important than who you are on screen and no amount of Instagram hearts and Facebook likes can ever compare to quality time with real life, present human beings.
Friends who you haven’t seen for four years but when you finally meet up with them it is like nothing ever changed are the best kind of friends!
I took a trip down to the South of England in September to visit some new friends I met thanks to my adventures in Tanzania but while I was there I also took the time to meet up with a really good friend I met while living in South Africa. It was honestly one of the best things to sit and have a proper catch up, because as much as we keep in touch you just can’t beat a good old fashioned chin wag! Friends we meet while travelling are like no other friendship you can make, that shared experience bonds you for life and it is a hard bond to brake! (If you’re reading this Lynda then Happy New Year, love ya! Oh and you are coming up to Scotland this year if it kills me! We have a hill to climb!)
Travelling and Photography are two things that truly make me happy. Apart from maybe dogs…and cats…and rabbits. Ok Travelling, Photography and Animals are the things that truly make me happy.
New places and new experiences are worth more to me than anything I can think of and capturing those memories as they happen through your camera is what I love about the power of photography. The year I visited Germany, Tanzania and just took some really nice small trips to various places in the UK and it has been great. Hopefully if my driving lessons keep going well I can pass my test this year and go on even more mini adventures all over Scotland, just me and my camera (and anyone else who wants to join us).
I also became a vegetarian this year after thinking about it a lot I realised it just made sense to me not to eat meat. However, if you follow me on twitter you might know that drunk me disagrees. After about three vodka cokes all I seem to want is a McDonald’s cheese burger but I’m getting better at sticking to the chips, baby steps baby steps.
Bras are not always necessary. #freethenipple
I honestly never thought I would wear an outfit that required the absence of a bra but this December I wore three outfits that required just that! It is still an absolutely terrifying concept to me but I am actually pretty proud of myself for having the confidence to go braless. I know that it probably isn’t a big deal to most people but for me it’s a lot.
I own to many things.
Around the middle of summer I watched a documentary on channel four called “Life Stripped Bare” if you haven’t watched it then I recommend you do but also be prepared, it is very bizarre. To give you a brief run down of the programme; people volunteered to have all of their possessions removed, from their mobile phones to their clothes, absolutely everything was taken away! They then picked an item each day that they felt was essential and they could go and collect it from storage. It pretty much stripped them back to basics and showed them what they could and couldn’t live without. Having said that the show wasn’t as deep as it sounded, one of the volunteers picked their onesie as their first essential item so, yeah take from that what you will. Any way it did make me think about the about of useless tat that I own, not to mention the ridiculous amount of shoes and clothes that are currently in my wardrobe, so since watching it I have been really slowly trying to get rid of the things I don’t need in my life. So far a lot of clothes have been bagged up/given to my sister but I still have a long way to go until I am back to only the essential items. I might not ever get there but I can at least try. Also I don’t know how I’m going to fit all my stuff back into my parents’ house when uni is finished…cross that bridge when we come to it I suppose.
Turns out I’m allergic to dairy as well as being a Coeliac, fantastic!
After returning from Tanzania I kept getting what felt like gluten pains when I knew for a fact I hadn’t eaten any gluten. I had, however, always either eaten a lot of cheese or had a glass of milk around the same time that I was in pain. So I made a conscious effort to cut dairy out of my life, after having a chat with my GP, and what do you know I feel so much better! One day I’m just going to end up allergic to every item of food known to man kind and have to live of lettuce for the rest of my life…
Lastly I realised just how lucky I am to be in the situation I am in.
I feel like I write about how lucky I am all the time but I really truly am. 2016 wasn’t a great year in terms of world events; the war in Syria, terrorist attacks, the Zika virus and so much more awful things have happened. It really makes me appreciate the luck of growing up in Scotland, I always feel safe here. I can’t imagine how it must feel to not feel safe in your own home and for that I am truly grateful everyday. Another thing that made me think about how lucky I am was a movie called “I, Daniel Blake” about a man in the benefit scheme who to be honest gets quite badly done over by the system. I highly recommend watching this film especially if you don’t know how the system works, it really opened my eyes and also brought home how easily you can end up in such a hard situation.
I’m sorry that post ended on such a sad note but I think it was one of the most important things I realised this year. Just appreciate what you have because you never know how long you’ll have it for. The world is a scary place to live in right now.
Anyway that is enough of my late night ramblings for one day. I am going to try and post something on here every Monday, we’ll see how long that lasts once I get back into a routine for uni (I say back in a routine like I had one before…) but I’ll give it a shot. In the meantime I read this article the other day, maybe give it a look?
It’s 12am, it’s pitch black, all you can hear is the sound of your own heart beat and someone being sick a few steps in front of you. It’s cold, it’s windy and all you have is a head torch to guide your way. It’s summit night on Kilimanjaro and it’s about to be the hardest night of your life!
I had such high hopes for this blog post, I was going to write notes from each day, record everything, do a video diary. By the time I got to camp on day one all I wanted to do was eat my popcorn, sip my tea, locate the nearest toilet, curl up in my sleeping bag and pass out! (Which is exactly what I did.)
Don’t get me wrong I didn’t for a second think that climbing the highest free standing mountain in the world was going to be easy, in fact a small part of me was convinced I couldn’t do it but I just told that part to go to hell and kept pushing on. The thing I found both this year and with Toubkal last year was that it didn’t seem to matter how physically fit you were if you weren’t determined to make it to the top. It was mind over matter with me, my body wanted to give up, it was falling asleep as I walked but my head wasn’t going to let that happen.
This is my Kilimanjaro experience (as well as I can remember) it day to day over the six days it took to complete the biggest challenge of my life!
Our first group photo at Heathrow Airport. So proud of my team together we raised an amazing £72,363.10!!
Day one started at the Machame gate 1640m above sea level, it was a bit of a gloomy day so we didn’t get to see the whole mountain before the climb (probably for the best to be honest…) It was like walking right into the Jungle Book, hanging vines and stone steps all the way to camp. I was glad of the cloud cover if the sun had been out in full force the heat and humidity would have been unbearable. It was quite pleasant walk to Machame camp stopping for a lunch of chicken and chips under the trees about half way. A couple of times I felt I was going to tumble back down the path, my awful balance and walking poles being attached to my back pack were not helpful, but there was always someone behind me to give me that slight push I needed to correct myself.
(1) The route we took to the summit and back down.
At camp we met our porters who showed us to our tents (I’m just going to say now that my porter was the best human being I have ever met and I owe him so much because he pretty much did everything for me, including putting aftersun on my very burnt hands, and I love him). We were shown the mess tent and given a briefing for the next day and then it was straight to bed for me because it got unbelievably cold as soon as the sun went down!
Day two the sun was out and we raced the clouds up the mountain. I thought they were going to catch up with us but we stayed ahead of them until they couldn’t climb any higher. I found this day one of the hardest because we had to walk all the way to camp before lunch and it felt like a life time! I also dropped half of my NAKED Banana Crunch bar at our second snack stop and it was heart breaking. Staying at the back allowed for a lot more conversation though I felt like I got to know some of my Brunel team mates a lot better on day two.
Racing the clouds up the mountain.
Everyone told me about how beautiful the stars look from Kilimanjaro before I went but I can’t say I really saw them properly until summit night. They were there, I was just absolutely exhausted every night when we got to camp that I went to bed straight after dinner and looking up while walking in between 20 something tents is not advisable. A few people stayed up to watch the stars and came back to me with tales of shooting stars and the milky way but I just couldn’t keep myself awake to watch with them.
Day Three was acclimatisation day, we climbed high until lunch time and then back down to sleep low giving our bodies a chance to get used to a thinner atmosphere at higher altitudes. The climb to lunch was hard, breaks were very welcome, but I did not feel any symptoms of altitude sickness and made it to the Lava Tower in the first half of the team. After lunch I decided to stay back with the team members who were suffering from altitude sickness to make sure everyone was doing ok and to provide my encouragement. This was going very well until about ten minutes before camp when out of nowhere altitude sickness hit me and the entire contents of my stomach emptied onto the side of the trail. It completely knocked me for six. I felt dizzy, weak and wasn’t entirely convinced I wash finished throwing my guts up. My head guide, James, had to hold me up for the short distance to camp, my vision was blurry and I don’t really remember getting to the check in point. All I remember thinking was how impressed I was with the members of my team who had been dealing with this all day, I felt absolutely horrendous and could only imagine what it must be like to experience altitude sickness from the morning knowing how far away camp was! When I finally got to camp all I wanted to do was go to sleep but I knew that would just make me feel worse so I made myself go to the mess tent for popcorn and a hot cup of tea, followed by a handful of pain killers and a lot of water. Within the hour I felt absolutely fine again.
Lunch time before the altitude sickness hit!
Day Four we tackled the Barranco wall. This steep ridge was an almost vertical scramble on which I ripped my nana’s walking trousers she had lent me, almost had my hand pulled off by the guides (they did not know about my dodgy wrist) who yanked us up that wall like their lives depended on it and saw the most spectacular view from above the clouds. This was actually the fun part of the day because they then made us walk down a valley, back up a valley, down another valley and finally back up a valley and into camp. What’s wrong with bridges Kilimanjaro?? I have never wanted to pee more in my life than the last twenty minutes of that day and I was so relieved (in more ways than one) to see a toilet block just out side of camp, there was no way I would have made it through check in without an accident occurring!
Team RGU representing Scotland after scaling the Barranco wall!
We had made it to base camp! There wasn’t exactly much time to celebrate though, we were to leave again at midnight for summit so it was dinner, toilet and bed! Having said that dinner was still an emotional meal; a couple of my team were very upset because they did not believe they could make it to the summit! I had full belief in every member of my team and to see them so upset made me completely break down into what was the first of many tears in the 24 hours that followed.
Sometimes in life you believe you have been super sneaky and no one could possibly know what you are up to! I tried to organise a surprise for my team along with the team leader from Brunel by contacting the teams loved ones asking for a letter of encouragement to read before summit night. I would like to think that most of the team were completely clueless but one member of RGU had asked me on several occasions if I was organising said surprise. Getting more and more frustrated at this members willingness to spoil the surprise for himself when he finally called me over after all the letters had been handed out I thought it was to gloat that he knew what was going on the whole time and I hadn’t surprised him one bit only to be handed a letter from my own loved ones and have to return to my seat feeling bad for all the times I told him to let it go! My letter is pictured below and while most of the team were sitting in their seats crying I couldn’t help but laugh at my mum’s favourite story of me and my stubborn ways!
Letter on the left is from my fellow team leader from Brunel Uni! Letter on the right is from my family, thanks to a lovely member of my team for organising that for me!
So here we were, summit night, with two to three hours sleep my nervous chatter had already set in, I had one mouthful of “breakfast” and thought I was going to see it again almost immediately, the cold was unbelievable, the sky was glittering with star light and my water bladder had already frozen solid. For most of the climb I focused on Mars, it was usually directly in front of me and distracted me from the tiny head torch lights in the distance that reminded me of just how far we had still to climb. My day bag was taken off me by a guide almost straight way so I could focus solely on where to put my feet. This guide (who fell over once and scared the absolute living hell out of me, if he had fallen over then all I could think was that there was absolutely no hope for me and my clumsy self!) stayed with me the whole way to the summit and for the life of me I couldn’t pin down his name. I know I would never have reached the peak if it wasn’t for him, shear determination and a packet of Haribo Tangfastics that I had saved specifically for that night.
I almost gave up on several occasions, absolute exhaustion and fear threatened to overcome me at any moment. Every time we stopped for a break I thought I was going to fall asleep. When James said it was time to move again tears came from nowhere, but he grabbed one arm and my guide grabbed the other and hoisted me to my feet, up we went higher and higher until we started to see the sunrise over the clouds so far below us. That was the moment I knew I could do it, my phone had died from the cold so I had no idea what time it was but when I saw the sunrise below and Stella point above and beyond that Uhuru Peak I knew I was almost there, to give up now seemed as impossible as the whole climb had felt 6 hours before and I pushed myself that last hour and a half, to the Summit of the worlds highest free standing mountain.
All the pain is worth it for that view!
I didn’t summit with anyone but my guide, I was about ten minutes behind the first group from my team to summit. When I got to the rest of the team I was swallowed whole by a group hug and burst into yet more tears at the sight of my team mates tears. Then there was the queueing for photographs (other groups had summited at the same time as us), the realisation that my camera had died from the cold, losing the friendly square that a kind man had given me for good luck on the bus to London, my phone getting a second wind and switching back on for photos at the summit and finally a member of my team collapsing from hypothermia in his legs*. This all happened in about 30 minutes and then it was back down the mountain.
Me and my Guide at the summit!
Heading down was arguably harder than the way up. Firstly the ground was no longer frozen so it was like walking down the biggest sand dune you have ever seen in your life, secondly it was about eight in the morning and I had had about two hours sleep and thirdly there was no motivation left in my entire body. I’d made it to the top, I was done, I just wanted to curl up on a rock and go to sleep. This was not helped by the fact that every couple of meters I would fall on my back and lie there like an overturned beetle until the James caught up with me again and put me back on me feet. By about the fifth fall I told him I was staying put and he would have to drag me down because I refused to fall over again. So that is essentially what he did after I had one more cry, this time asking for my mum and pizza. He took my bag on his back, threatened to piggy back me down the mountain, took my hand and led me down the sand dune of death with complete ease despite his allergy to dust (wise career choice there…). When we reached solid ground I got a complete second wind and marched of into the distance only to be met with yet another impossible downward climb and had to sit for about 20 minutes for someone with a bit more technical skill to show me the correct path.
Finally, after what felt like a life time, I made it back to base camp. I was met by my porter who gave me the biggest hug and a cup of pineapple juice which lasted all of five seconds. He led me back to my tent, took my boots off for me, ran to fill my water bottle up, gave me a well deserved fist bump and zipped me into my tent. I should have had a nap here, I was exhausted so it should have been easy but I just couldn’t fall asleep! I spent the rest of the time we had at base camp packing as best I could with my sunburnt hands, eventually admitting defeat I had to get someone to help me stuff my sleeping bag back into it’s compartment.
We had lunch and then set off again down the mountain. I think we had been walking all of two minutes when I had to stop. I couldn’t breath properly, my vision was blurry and I was about 90% sure I was going to be sick. I was right. Up came my lunch, up came my pineapple juice, up came my Tangfastics and, you guessed it, out came the tears. Altitude sickness is not a fun thing, why it only happened to my on the decent I do not know but I am very glad that it didn’t happen before then because I don’t think I would have managed to summit if it had. Instead of the four hours it should have taken me to get down to the last camp of the trek it took more like six and it was pitch black by the time I arrived. My porter, being the absolute amazing human that he is, guided me to my tent, took my boots off for me and even offered to take my dinner to the tent. I refused this last offer as food was about the last thing I wanted. I struggled into my sleeping bag, closed my eyes and passed out till morning.
Heading back down, the summit in the distance, just before I saw my lunch again.Our last view of the summit on the final day climbing down.
The last day was definitely the easiest but it also felt like a never ending trail of trees upon trees. I was impatient to get down but also very aware of how slippery the ground was and if I was to go to fast the likely hood of me ending up on my backside was very high. When we finally made it to the bottom there was an enormous sense of relief. I signed out, took of some layers, found my porter and that was it finally over. This is where my porter very kindly put aftersun on my hands for me and took my day pack off my back. He even carried it all the way onto the bus for me. The final day was a good day for chatting and reflecting on the day before. For myself it still sort of feels like a dream, I know it happened but there was such a big build up to that day and then for it all to be over already is just surreal. This was by far the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life, there is no way I would have made it with out the support of my team, my family, my friends and the amazing guides and porters.
Team RGU and Team Brunel on top of the World!
I took on this challenge partly to prove to myself that it was possible (partly because a certain RAG chair who shall remain nameless convinced me it was a good idea) and also to raise awareness for an amazing charity who do work all around the world. If you would like to donate to Childreach International you can still do so on my fundraising page linked below.
Representing RGU RAG at the top of Kilimanjaro!
*this team member is absolutely fine and still has full use of both of his legs. The guides acted amazingly and got him down to base camp quickly and safely and part from feeling a little bit silly for not listening to the head guide about wearing more layers no harm was done.
Our last day in the village of Marigha. We felt so welcomed and accepted by the people in the village that it made us sad to think we had to leave. I know that we will all miss the children so much. In terms of building work we were back to sand chaining and shovelling. We wrote our names in chalk, along with the footballer names the children had given us, on the walls that we plastered the day before. Just like that it was lunch time.
There was so much going on after lunch; parachute games, frisbees, skipping, chase and ball games. Just before dinner we had a game of football with the older boys in the village. I think it is safe to say football is not really my game, although I did manage to tackle someone with only minor injuries. Then they put me in goals… bad idea, I prefer to run away from the ball rather than dive in front of it.
After dinner we went to the house next door where they had prepared some cous cous, some people tried their luck at eating it traditionally by making it into a ball and just eating it off your hand. Unfortunately I am allergic to cous cous but it was really old fun to watch everyone trying to through handfuls of it into there mouths.
We then went back up to our house where the villagers were waiting for us to show us some traditional drums and dancing. It was an amazing experience to be involved in the dancing and some sort of take on the conga in which I ended up piggybacking one of the younger boys because he couldn’t reach my shoulders!
So this concludes my Moroccan Adventure. It was one of the most amazing experiences and I feel so privileged to have been a part of it. In the speeches that were given that night the village council told us how grateful they were for what we had done for them but I want to just say that I am grateful to everyone involved in making this project happen, to the village for taking us in and trusting us to build such an important feature in their community and to friends I made along the way.
If you had told me this time last year that I would be sitting here listening to Avicii I would have no idea who you were talking about. My iPod is full of metal and alternative music, because that is what my friends listened to, it’s what boyfriend at the time listened to so it was therefore what I listened to. But Avicii has been the sound track to our first year at RGU.
I am currently taking a break, I’m making my scrap book from a recent study trip I took to Paris. The reason I am taking this break is because the song “Wake Me Up” by Avicii just came on and I realised how much it sums up my experience this year. The song is all about being lost and not knowing where you are going but you know where you are right now. It is about becoming a new person without even really realising it.
This has been a difficult year for me, a lot has changed in my life that I thought was permanent. I have met the most amazing people during my first year of Art School but I have also lost touch with people who I thought I would always have in my life. I have realised who my true friends are, who I can count on and that my mum is always there, even if it is 11 at night.
I felt so lost when I started first year, I thought I had made the biggest mistake of my life coming to uni. I didn’t think I had what it took to make it through (even my lecturer told me that when I started she thought I was a D student, then I got a B for fist semester!). Most people will see that I have changed physically, I have longer hair, I do my make up differently etc. but I am also more confident in myself as a person and in my work, that B definitely helped. There are so many songs out there that sum up an experience, a song that will take you back to a moment from the first note; for example the song “Barbra Streisand” makes me think of my last day of 6th year in the pouring rain run-skipping home with my friends because we never had to set foot in that horrid place again. I hated that song but it was the song that was playing in the common room as the last bell went and everyone was released into the world of higher education, so part of me is fond of it.
I think the reason “Wake Me Up” has only come to my attention now, it has been playing in clubs and parties all year, is because first year is over. I get my results back in just over a week and then I’m free for three months until second year. Everything is about to change again. I am moving out of halls in under a month which is going to be bizarre, the friends that I have made here are all going home and I won’t see them until after summer, one will even be on the other side of the world in New Zealand! I am moving into a new flat with amazing people in July and we can’t wait to make it home, just like we did here at halls.
I’m not saying that I have “found myself” this year, god knows I’m not that deep! But I do know now that the next three years are what will shape me as a person. The friends I have made this year will be there with me learning and growing as well and when it is all over we will be wiser and older and hopefully we will find ourselves amongst the chaos of becoming adults.
If you know me personally (or are a Facebook friend) then you will probably know that I am going to Morocco in June to help build an education centre, to be quite honest if you do know me you are probably fed up of hearing that. In order for me to go on this trip I had to raise £1750 for Childreach International, I can now proudly say I have reached that target, and I think it’s fair to say it has taught me a lot.
One – fundraising is hard work
There is no easy way to ask people for money, especially when everyone you know is a student. They just simply do not have the cash to hand out to you on a silver platter, you have to beg like your life depends on it and this still only results in minimum cash intake.
Two – Plan ahead
I am so unorganised it hurts my brain. When I put my mind to it I get the job done, when I organised a battle of the bands it didn’t go horribly wrong (yay). I wish I had known this at the start because I could have organised so many events if I had just planned ahead and thought about the resources that I had available to me. I could have raised a lot more money if I hadn’t mucked myself around for so long.
Three – Failure is an option
Just because you failed the first time doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try again. Like I said everyone I know is skint, but just because they didn’t have any money the first time I asked for help doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have money the next time I asked. Failing is an opportunity to rethink you strategy, it is not a disaster.
Four – Learn from your mistakes
This links nicely back to three. I made a profit of £139 from my battle of the bands, by far my biggest amount raised at once. This didn’t mean it was perfect though. I made a lot of mistakes while I was organising this event but it has taught me a lot about how to plan one in the future ( if I ever want to go through that again) like try not to make an event the week before payday, or maybe give yourself longer than three weeks to organise it and try not to go to paris for a week the week before your event. All bad ideas but hey, alls well that ends well.
Five – Don’t be afraid to ask for help
God I wish I had just asked for help when I was struggling. There was help available to me, I was just to scared to admit I was having a hard time to ask for it. If I had asked then I would have saved myself a lot of stress. If there is help available take it, don’t be scared that you need help, everyone needs help and there is always someone who is willing to help you.
Six – If you have friends and family, use them
This isn’t as mean as it sounds, when I say use them I mean ask them to help you out. I asked two of my flat mates to work the door at an event and they were more than happy to do it. Leaving them to handle the door meant I could run around doing the ten billion other things I had to do that night. I also asked a friend to help me set up and some others to go around with collection tins at the end of the night, I could not have done my event with out them. Your friends will help you out because they love you and want to see you succeed, it is the same with family, I wouldn’t have had three of my bands for Battle of the Bands if it wasn’t for my sister. I am eternally grateful to everyone who helped me out, thank you again from the bottom of my heart.
Seven – Your loved ones will more than happily throw gunge at you
One of my fund-raising ideas was to get people to dare me to do things. One of these things I was dared to do was get gunged. My flatmates happily agreed to through all sorts of disgusting things at me, my mum and sister were thrilled with the opportunity to film it, while other friends kindly donated all sorts of questionable food stuffs for the gunge. Give people an opportunity to embarrass you and they will lap it up. Another thing I learned that day: Gunge is cold!!
This year has taught me a lot about myself and fund-raising has taught me a lot about life and how you will only get out what you put in. I am so happy that I managed to raise the money I did and I can not wait to go to Morocco in June, Childreach does great work all around the world and I am proud to be a part of it.
So this dream pretty much mimicked my tuesday night…up to a point. I went out in town with my friends, got reasonably drunk, lost and then went to bed. This is where it changes from what actually happened. So in my dream I had left my bedroom door unlocked so when my friends returned from their night out they came into my room. While I was fast asleep tucked up in bed they stole all my comic books and hid them in various places around the flat.
When I “woke up” in my dream I realised that someone had been in my room and left the light on…and that is when I saw it. My comic book box was sitting with the lid off, completely empty! I ran into the hall in a state of panic because I had to find my comics before I started work which was in 2 hours. I knocked on all the doors and searched everyones rooms and eventually found my missing items. This is where I woke up to go to actual work…I don’t know if I made it to work in my dream though.
“I love you more than Ketchup” – if I say this to you feel special. Seriously. My love for ketchup knows no bounds, it is the first thing I ask for in a restaurant, it is the first thing I put on my Asda delivery, it is the last thing I think about before I go to sleep…ok maybe that’s a bit far but you get the idea. I have an addiction.
Today I put Ketchup on my curry. I was judged, severely. I enjoy ketchup with my curry it gives it a bit of extra flavour and also cools down those accidental extra hot disasters. Even the one person who loves ketchup as much as I do questioned my decision when the bottle left the fridge. I guess it just comes down to personal taste, obviously I am alone in the world when it comes to ketchup and curry.
“If I could marry them I would, but I think that would be a bit illegal.” – Evie on Olives…I can’t stand olives. See? Personal taste, it just so happens that my personal taste is a bit on the stranger side of normal.
I’m looking for the one who understands and accepts this. Then and only then will I say “I love you more than Ketchup.”
So I am now half way through my first year at Grey’s and so far so good. I passed my first semester with a grade B and I have made life long friends that I honestly don’t know what I would do without.
That doesn’t mean it’s been easy though, the first day I moved into student halls was terrifying. I honestly think I couldn’t be more socially awkward if I tried, not to mention I already knew I was 2 and a bit years older than my youngest flat mate Alison. As it turns, I shouldn’t have worried, I’m one of the lucky ones blessed with a flat full of wonderful people, minus the one who doesn’t speak…
In total there are seven of us in our flat but unfortunately one of our flat mates never did warm up to us and spends most of her time out of the flat or in her room…sometimes we wonder when she eats, or even if she eats. Maybe she is secretly a vampire, but I’m wondering off on a tangent here. Anyway about my flat mates, I don’t even know where to start! So I guess we shall go alphabetically by room letter shall we?
Room A: Evie, I am fortunate enough to be living in a flat with someone on the same course as me which makes life a hell of a lot easier for both of us. Evie was the first person from my flat that I found, thanks to the powers of Facebook, before we moved in. She was just as scared as I was which was a relief and she was also panicking about how on earth she was going to fit all of her clothes into the tiny wardrobes that are provided for us. Lucky there is plenty of floor space which is where her clothes usually end up when preparing for an night out on the town! If you want to know about obscure, folky, irish sounding bands Evie is the girl to go to. Her iTunes is filled with the most chilled out music which is great to sit and do work to in the kitchen, which we often dominate due to the crazy scale we are sometimes asked to work at. She is a lovely, caring person with the inability to get properly mad at people without giggling, also she comes in handy when I fall asleep in lectures and need to be woken up due to the fact I am snoring…
Room B: well thats just me 🙂
Room C: Rachel, Studying the social sciences she loves nothing more than to make fun of mine and Evie’s course because we just draw pictures (really it’s much more than that). This girl has more nail varnish and make up than Boots and Superdrug combined, I have had to rescue her from the Benefit counter once this week already! Also an awesome cook, she made us the best christmas dinner of cola marinated, honey roasted ham, it sounds unusual but trust me on this it was amazing. Another flat member who didn’t know how her clothes collection was going to fit in her room, it is impossible for me to go shopping with Rachel and not buy anything. Unlike Evie and I she is extremely organised, I have rarely seen her room in a mess, and the sight of mine stresses her out to the point I don’t think she has ever stayed in it longer than five minutes. She doesn’t like hugs or children but has a big heart and did I mention how jealous I am of her hair, dip dyed teal!
Room D: Alison, the youngest member of our little family, just recently turned 18, she is one smart cookie studying Radiography, which I can hardly even spell. Probably the only one of us who didn’t struggle to get her clothes in her wardrobe, but i think that might be changing with our bad influence… I’m quite impressed by her patience during freshers week I can’t imagine how annoying it must have been to watch everyone go out while she had to stay in, that didn’t stop her having fun though and I have photographic evidence. But now she is 18 and she will experience the cramped sardine can that is a night club and hopefully have a good time! Alison is a good listener and has, unfortunately for her, been there for a couple of my emotional break downs…uni does that to you.
Room E: Angie, studying PR, if I wasn’t doing art I would love to study her course, it just seems so interesting. This girl is crazy, but in the best way. Known to us as the grumpy teenager it is best to stay away when she is hung over. Despite this reputation she is the one who quite literally catches me when I fall, I have a tendency to faint which has lead to her cradling me on the ground outside a certain Aberdeen club which shall remain nameless to protect my dignity. Angie is the one with all the dance moves, which most of us have picked up apparently. It is a common site to see our group doing the “Angie dance” which can only be described as a zombie, robot type action, it’s a lot better than it sounds…
Room F: The one who doesn’t speak…
Room G: Leanne, Studying children’s nursing, is the flat mum. Always there to look after us and make sure we turn the hob off after cooking! Leanne such a happy person with an amazing laugh, seriously I can’t even explain how contagious it is. I thought that I would be the one in and out of A&E at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary (especially after being taken there in my first week of uni…life drawing classes are just to warm) but Leanne holds that record, my favourite story is when she sprained her ankle and we got to go home in a police van, obviously the downside to that story was how much pain she was in, and police officers do not know how to drive slowly on cobbled roads! This girl also has the best music on her phone, it’s pre-drinking law that her phone is put on in our flat before a night out. Also good if we are just chilling in the kitchen, however her power can also be used for evil, she put Cheryl Cole on the other night…I left the room.
It is safe to say I would not have survived the later half of 2013 without these ladies and for that I owe them a massive thank you. They were there for the good times but stuck around for the bad times too and I know exactly what they are going to say about this post if they read it but I don’t care I just wanted to get it out there that the trick to surviving university is to surround yourself with good friends and don’t be afraid to let them in. It is something that I have always struggled with but I took a chance this year and I am glad I did.
