War & Piste...

A friend of mine is bringing out a book...NEXT WEEK! I've had a sneaky peeky already, I have in fact read the entire thing and I canNOT stress enough how much you need this book in your life! Check out http://warandpiste.com/index.html for the inside scoop and take a look at the blog entries. Have a read of this one: http://warandpiste.com/blog/archives/79 for a good description of just what a chalet host is. I'm hoping I'll be more "wonderful creature" than "fuck-up artist"!!! LOL!

Good luck Alex Thomas http://warandpiste.com/about.html I hope the book launch goes off with a bang and that the book does as brilliantly as it deserves to. I promise you that if you get this book, you'll love it! You'll get snow sports, travel, adventure, fun, romance, friendships, a giant rabbit called Snowli, the Austrian bomb squad and so much more. Head to Amazon on the 13th of October!

Indian summer - hot stuff.

So the move is done! Hurray! It was horrendous. Had to keep the keys a few extra days to get it all done, but I'm now in and settled with my friends. Moving happened during our mini-heatwave, our late Indian Summer heat. It was amazing weather, didn't enjoy it so much when I was schlepping boxes about and moving furniture, but after that was all done, it was brilliant. We had a BBQ last Sunday and it was hard to believe that we were in England on the 2nd of October and not in the South of Europe on a hot summers day. It wasn't just the weather that was amazing though, so much about this last week, has been totally, mind-blowingly amazing. That BBQ night was tremendous, making new friends, meeting such interesting people, feeling that flutter again! Brilliant! A friend, VB, said that a year was a milestone and that things would change. She was right, wise old bird that she is. A polar shift one could say.

I'm packing again, I'm off on holiday. Going to Portugal tomorrow to spend a week with my Dad. It'll be so lovely to see him and spend some quality time with him because, unless he comes to see me in Morzine (which is doubtful, he's not a winter sports sorts of person), I won't actually get to see him until next May/June - yikes! That's the problem with a global family really, everyone spread out over the globe, but thanks to social networking and Skype etc. the world really does seem much smaller than it actually is.

I've been practising my chalet menu. So far I've cooked about eight things out of the recipe book (not even a tiny fraction of it really!), and they've all been received well! Going to wow my Dad with a recipe or two this next week.

Got a new snowboard this week! I went for a Bataleon Violenza 153 and it came with Burton Escapade bindings. Pretty sweet and got it all for £200, which I thought was a bit of a bargain! It's in my room and it's the first thing I've laid eyes on for the past few days, helping to get my excitement building for the coming Alpine fun season!

Just a last little thought for today, as I sit here in this gorgeous living room, in this gorgeous house that's in a beautiful bit of countryside, I feel so incredibly lucky and grateful to have such wonderfully giving friends around me. KH and LH have taken me and I really can't thank them enough. I mean, doesn't it just blow your mind when someone really helps you out and welcomes you into their life?! It blows my mind and I'm so stoked that I can count on friends like them. Not only them though, AH, DS and DM helped me move, not just once, but twice and I feel so lucky to have such wonderful friends.

Time to get on with the suitcase, swimwear and summer stuff is the order of the day, it's still 30+ degrees in Portugal! Boof! :)

Higgledy-piggledy house

It's lunch time. I'm surrounded by boxes, junk, tat, eBay packages and just tonnes of mess!! Got until Thursday to get it all done and dusted! I hate packing and moving. I'm also a bit sad to leave my higgledy-piggledy house.

Going to stay with friends for a couple of months. Makes sense, save up some money before I head off to the mountains and work my season as a chalet host (earning tuppence a week!!).

I hate moving, I hate packing, I hate sorting through stuff. I especially hate it when you come across stuff that triggers sad memories. It's a bit weird because I came to this house under really awful circumstances, the break up of a 6 year relationship, on the brink of teacher training, having lost my dog a few weeks earlier. Now I leave in a MUCH better state of mind but it still hurts when you come across photos and other reminders of your past life. But then again, I still see him, so every time I see him it's a reminder of happy times, when we were in love but also of the bad times with lies, betrayal and lots of sadness. It's been a year. Apparently it will take half the length of your relationship, to get over it. So I've got a couple of years to go. Urgh. Hoping that distance will help the healing go faster.

I am an optimist though and I'm much more a glass half full person, so I've got to look forward and when I do, I'm in awe of what's about to happen. It's something I've wanted to do for a long time. Go to the Alps and work a season. Imagine, I'll wake up in the mornings, see the sun rise up over the mountains, warming the slopes that I'll be riding... it fills me with all sorts of excitement! New friendships, new adventures, maybe even new love?

So as I chuck more stuff into the charity bag and think about loading up the car to do another tip run, I am hopeful, happy and looking forward to the next chapter!

Mobile technology - don't yawn!

So I'm just trying out this blogging by email, from my new BlackBerry Torch. Let's see if it works?!
:)
Sent from my BlackBerry®

Start lines...Finish lines

So then gang, I am on the sprint to the finish line!! Friday was the end of my time in school, I'm glad it's over because it was really hard work, and to put in so much effort into something that you're not sure about, is quite a draining experience. I've still got a load of work to do to complete the course, one assignment and a mammoth essay. Had the dreaded PDP evidence folder interview, that could've gone better but I passed. Anyway, the teaching is over and I am still, as yet, undecided about whether teaching is for me. Apparently I'm alright at it and all my friends can see that I'd be a good teacher and that I enjoy it, but for some reason I'm still uncertain.

I did my first ever open water swim race on Saturday morning, I'm definitely recovering from that! It was a harrowing experience, despite having swum that distance before in the pool under race conditions, when I got in the lake I panicked. It was cold, it was unknown, it was murky and scary. I thought I'd be OK, I had a mantra to repeat to myself (I'm just going for a little swim, that's all it is) but as soon as I put my face in the water I freaked out. Thanks to my wonderful friend Nic, I got round it, but only because she didn't leave my side and encouraged me the whole way round. I'm going to do it again, of course I am, I'm no quitter and one bad experience will not hold me back.

On bank holiday Monday I did my first 10k run! It was brilliant!! I absolutely loved the experience. My furthest training run was only 7k so I really went for it on Monday and my time isn't too bad, did it in 1:10:40, plus I went for a wee half way round (not Paula Radcliffe stylee, I actually ducked in to a portaloo) so one could say that was about 3-4 minutes so race time could be brought down to 1 hour 7 minutes. But anyhow, adjustments aside, I'm totally stoked with a time of 1 hr 10 and it's totally spurred me on to do more. I'm already entered for the Tunbridge Wells 10k in September but I need to do more in between, maybe even a half marathon?!

That's quite a lot of achievements I feel and to top it all of it was my birthday on Tuesday, I turned 34. I hope that my 34th year is going to be much better than my 33rd. 33 was full of heartache, loss, loneliness, stress and lots more bad stuff, only towards the end did I turn a corner and have some good stuff happen. I can be proud of that good stuff because it was all my own doing as well, and that's one valuable lesson I've learned over my annus horribilis, that is actually about me, about my strength and my power and my decisions that make the good stuff happen! I am finally learning that I am actually the master of my own destiny and if I want something I have to put in the hard work to achieve it, and now I know that I am actually capable of it! So it's been a year of self discovery through all the bad stuff, and I'm ready to put that bad stuff behind me. Eyes to the front, the future is beckoning me and who knows what that future might hold?!

Crap at blogging...

Goodness me, I am so utterly crap at blogging! I can't believe that so much time has passed since I last wrote something. I'm great at Twitter and Facebook but when it comes to this...

I guess though that I've had a fair bit on my plate over the last few months, what with a 6 year relationship ending, starting my PGCE, moving, mending a very broken heart etc. Well now I'm about a month away from finishing my PGCE and I canNOT wait for it to be over. I'm still undecided about teaching! One thing I'm going to do before I decide to embark on a teaching career is go to the slopes and do a snowboard season. That's definite. After years of not being able to because his job was important, he didn't want to do another season just yet, the time wasn't right bla, bla, bla, well guess what, I think the time is right, now.

So finish PGCE. Find a summer job. Pack up life and head to mountains somewhere. That's the plan. Just to add a little extra to my plate, I'm competing in a lake swim event and a 10k run at the end of this month. That's a total first for me, well in my adult life anyway. I'm actually really relishing the challenge of getting fit and I'm looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead, not just the fitness ones.

I'll endeavour to blog a bit more often :)

Day One

Well that was day one. I'm absolutely pooped as I've spent all day on high alert pretty much. Feel like I spent most of the day wandering the corridors (which all look identical, by the way) trying desperately to keep up with my student. We were shadowing students today you see, and of course they know where they're going so tend to steam off at a million miles an hour... More shadowing tomorrow.

I don't know if I'm cut out for this teaching malarkey at all. Really. One positive thing I learned today is that the way they teach science is that they concentrate on biology first, then chemistry and then physics as the year progresses. So that essentially means that I should get away with not having to do any physics! Much awesomeness!

Having said I don't think I'm cut out for it, I can see why people like teaching and it certainly does take a certain kind of resilient person to do it. Even just helping out in the classes today, I can see that those moments when the penny drops and the kids actually 'get' what is that they're doing and learning, are worth it. I can also see how some kids just get completely left behind in the system. With so many pupils and most of the attention going on the ones that are misbehaving, the quiet ones that are struggling just get forgotten. I think there's too much pressure on teachers to be too many things to the kids and do too many things in their working day. I think I saw some examples of good teaching today, but also some less than stellar teaching.

Wonder what tomorrow holds?

Change

OK folks, it's all change around here. Seven weeks ago my dog died (we'd been together for 18 years and three months), then three weeks ago my boyfriend of six years broke up with me... the night before starting my PGCE! Yep, timing, it's all in the timing I would say.

So here I am, three weeks into a horrendous break up, three weeks into getting to grips with my secondary science PGCE, and it's the night before I start my first school placement. Holy moly! I am terrified, not just about school but about pretty much every aspect of life to be honest.

I'm surrounded by packing boxes and newspaper and trying to get on with packing away a whole life. It's too much for one person I tell you. But I am just one person now and need to get on with it. I hope to get the keys to my new place this week and then I'll be out of here, a new life, a new challenge, a new single me. First things first, it's my first day at school tomorrow, so I'm going to get myself sorted now, get my bag ready, my lunch, layout my outfit and then try to get a good night's sleep... EEK!!!