What have I been doing?

Well. It's been a while, and though I mostly write these blogs for myself, I do feel that I have let my blogging slip a bit in the past few months. Truth is I've been busy. I don't just mean a little busy. I mean my calendar gives me about 2 free days a week, if that. So right now I'm going to give you a breakdown of my life, things I've been doing and a little about each one. Onwards!

Exams
I had my end of IB, end of school, end of mainstream education, end of an era, potentially the end of everything exams last month. May was hectic and hellish on some accounts. Sometimes I felt less stressed that I had during the 2 years of IB because I had to concentrate on exams only. There was so coursework or homework, only revision. There are 6 days left 'til our results come out, and frankly I don't know where I stand. I came out of each exam thinking that it hadn't gone badly at all, but what does that really mean? Who knows. Time will tell.

Post exam week
So right after my final German exam I was ready to welcome summer in with wide arms and lots of muscles for a pre-summer-holiday-shop. It was good, I bought some clothes and a bikini and had a nice time. Of course exams and school were still with me and I thought I had to speed shop because I had to get home to revise. Which of course I didn't have to do at all. Bliss. Monday I went out with all my 'IB buddies' to celebrate the end of everything resulting in a sleepover and thus getting up early for an 8.10 clarinet lesson which I had to cycle to. Highly amusing when still slightly drunk from the night before, especially for my clarinet teacher. I also went to the gym that day, but I'm pretty sure I ate the weight that I lost in picnic snacks and the BBQ my friend had the day after. It was glorious weather and it was lovely just to relax and eat and talk and do nothing else.

Italy
Next day. Italy. My oh my, I don't think I've had such a lovely holiday in a long while. Roman culture from 4 days in Roma. Walking round, sunny days, good food, beautiful people and exciting sights. Then a week in rural Tuscany in a mansion farmhouse with a brick yard, resident cats and rustic furnishing. It was just beautiful. We ventured out to some hill towns during the week, tasting a lot of wine and sampling the best hot chocolate I have ever had. The weather was quite an event in itself. With days so hot that you could barely be bothered to do anything other than lie in it and read dozens of books. Rain showers so hard that standing outside for 5 seconds would no doubt result in you become very very wet and hailstones so big that when driving to the airport on the motorway people had to put on hazard lights and stop under bridges for fear of their metal cars being dented. Standard Italian weather.

A week at home to rest
To see friends and to catch up with British life as a whole

Before heading to Spain
Ah, my first trip to Spain, and my first trip away without parents or a plan. We had rented an apartment which was so ideal it makes me squeal with joy every time I think about it. White walls, marble floors, a large balcony, a pool and the beach literally a leap away. No joke. We ran down into the sea in our bikinis with our towels and popped back home to get drinks and food during the day. No money, no keys, nothing else needed. Such a beautiful area with the mountains as your back drop whilst you swim and Africa onwards ahead of you. Nothing less than a beautiful relaxing, exciting place to be. Especially when the party doesn't start 'til 3am in Puerto Banus!

The Lion King
So our flight home was delayed by 5 hours... and I didn't get into bed until 6.30am the next day. This was also the day of Charlotte and I's trip to see the Lion King which we had got tickets for from our friends for our birthday. It was a good job it was amazing otherwise I would have been sleeping in the comfortable theatre seats. So good. So much colour and exuberance and wonderful singing. It made me want to be on stage singing those words pretending to be a lion everyday as my job. If only.

Other things since...
Include having my first driving lesson - bit late on that one. Music concert and various picnics with various friends. Garden parties, TV days, reading days, rainy days and very very hot days.

Wimbledon
I get a bit obsessed and glued to the screen this time of year, because of Wimbledon. I cannot play tennis at all, though I have tried and failed many many times, but that doesn't make me less interested in the sport when for two weeks the BBC broadcast live tennis from the Wimbledon championships. This year I wanted to take my obsession one step further, to actually attend the event in the flesh. So I did a bit of research on how to get tickets if you didn't get any through the ballot they have every year. Camping is the answer. So on Sunday I packed my tent, sleeping bag, food, clothes and Pimm's and off I went with some friends to camp in The Queue for the 2011 Championships. Little did we know that arriving at 5pm on Sunday for 'Manic Monday' was a bit too late to arrive. People had been queuing since Saturday morning. No joke. Despite this, we got our place in the queue. Number 1564. Not good enough for a show court ticket. We decided to stick with a ground pass. 9.30 on Monday we were in. A beautiful sight to behold. We watched the Murray match on 'Henman Hill' with strawberries and cream and Pimm's (no Wimbledon trip is complete without these, even an amateur knows that!). Went to see some doubles matches and junior matches on the other free courts and then decided to queue for resales for the Federer vs Youzhny match. Such a good decision. Within 20 minutes we had our tickets and were running at full pelt to court no. 1. We managed to catch the whole match bar 25 minutes, and what a good match it was. We left running on a high, but ready for bed.

Now I'm home and normal life has begun, though next week it's all off again with Benenden music school, theatre trips, exam results and more music concerts. I think this has been my best, if not busiest summer so far. I have had so much fun and I'm barely 2 months into this 4 and a half month extravaganza!

The Theatre

I am truly in love with the theatre. Just the occasion, the formality and the way it makes you feel. For a brief 2 or 3 hours you get to know a character so well - their insecurities, fears and vulnerability, but also what makes them tick, their thought processes and reasonings.

Being able to escape your own world is something which I think marks a great play, something which captivates you by the beauty of the scenery, the words or the acting and for a few hours you forget to check your watch and your life outside the auditorium. All that matters are the characters. What they say should involve you. It should make you feel like you should help them, run up give them a hug, celebrate with them, just be there to point something out.

Then I think of all the dedication these players have bought with them to the scene. I find this especially in Shakespeare. It’s not easy to understand and it’s easier to mis-interpret than to do so correctly, I just think of the sheer amount of work involved in understanding the language, actually making it mean something and letting it sound so natural, that I could easily find myself naturally wanting to adopt the Shakespearian language in the interval and after the performance.

I think that’s why I want to work in theatre, not to get up on stage and perform it myself necessarily, but just to be involved in the process. My dad always used to say, why be the spectator when you could be the performer, the producer or the director.

Warwick and Exeter now. So indecisive.

After all this time

TOK is sent off, German individual oral is over, philosophy coursework handed in, maths coursework handed in, English coursework handed in, Biology coursework almost done, Music coursework done, Extended essay sent off to Sri Lanka. Seeing a trend? Finally after so many months of turmoil everything is finally drawing in and coming to an end. And finally I revise to my heart's content. And, seriously, I want to revise. A lot.

I gave in my university choices to the school today to okay them. Warwick and University of East Anglia. After many pro and con lists, scrutinizing of the prospectuses, traveling from the very very top of England to the very very bottom, endless discussions with friends and teachers, interviews, rejections and offers, I have finally made my decision, based on nothing but what I want. And I am very happy and so excited. I feel that I have exhausted school and I am ready for something new in terms of education (if I could take my friends life would be perfect!). But yes, extremely happy and ready to revise to get my 38+ (I WANT 40) points that I need to get into Warwick.

All I can say, is that I am ready to sleep for a month. Hibernate. Though preferably, I would like to sleep and wake up as some kind of super human genius who just knows everything and will pass exams with flying colours, getting 45 points out of 45 points. Yes, that would most definitely suit me fine.

Friends

Yesterday was strange. A couple of my closest friends came home with me and we ate pizza, chocolate and watched Pride and Prejudice all together snuggled under one blanket on the sofa. We were just laughing about things that no one else would find funny and making funny comments about the film that no one else would understand.

Once they had all gone home I got a text saying:

'I love you :) Me and Helen cried on the way home just thinking about all going off to uni and not seeing each other that often. I'm going to miss you all so much.'

Thing is over the past two years I have made amazing friends, all of which are different and none that I will ever get tired of talking to. It scares me a bit that we'll all have to say goodbye soon. I don't think I am ready to leave school for that very reason because it means leaving people who I love.
Of course I am excited to meet new people and to build new friendships with different people, but I am afraid of forgetting what I had and losing touch with the people that knew me so well and that I could just be myself around because making friendships like that take time. Just thinking about this makes me realise how much I appreciate my friends. We don't do anything out of the ordinary and that's what I like. I like just sitting on the sofa eating rubbish and talking about things that don't matter. I can look for comfort in these people and I can be a source of comfort for them and I think I will miss having a people in my life like that for the first months of university. Friendships like the ones that I have built over the past years are not immediate, but they are something I really want to work at and make more of.

I just really don't want to forget the friends and memories that I have already had because I just want to know these people forever.

In my last post I commented on my love of snow. Now I am here to express my dislike of the very same substance. Or rather, my temporary dislike for it. It's hard to stay annoyed at it for long seeing as it cannot retaliate and the fact that it does look so pretty, and even more so close to christmas. This, however is an open letter to snow:

Dear Snow,

You are so pretty, so beautiful, so soft. You are just the right amount of cold and wet for you to be fun to run around and play in, but you do cause so much disruption. As an avid fan of yours I am highly disappointed with your timing. To be frank I don't think it is fair to cause pain to so many wonderful people who need to showcase their talents in the form of annual Christmas concerts. Due to your less than perfect timing all three of my planned Christmas concerts have been cancelled leading to day full of nothing to do and immediate boredom and lost time. These are things that I look forward to, Snow and seeing as these concerts were the last of their kind for me I feel that I can be rightly upset. Now, you better hurry up and leave so I can go to Denmark. If you do not comply, there will be serious consequences which include me hating you forever. If you do let off, then I will slowly begin to love you again, though it will take time.

Yours

Julia

Snow

Monday I wished and wished for snow. I didn't want to go to school, and sure enough the snow came. I was going to go to school, but I couldn't get there and back, so I decided not to and much to my delight at 11am the school was declared closed. We all thought that Tuesday we would be back at school, the snow was a thaw and I could already see it was melting. I was constantly checking BBC weather which claimed that the snow would be heavy all of Tuesday night and the following day. It sure delivered. I woke up to so much snow. More than I have ever seen before. Immediate happiness. Snow is just a rarity here. Most people like it despite the interruptions. It makes everything so beautiful and I suppose it takes people back to times when they were younger and celebrated the first snow fall in exactly the same way as they do now. Yes, it is disruptive and after a while it does become incredibly annoying, but you can't help but love it for a while. Everything is brighter and all the ugly features are hidden, it's fun and exciting especially when it comes up to your knees.