Update, Baking, and Over Thinking

Hey guys,

So this week I really haven’t done much as you could have probably guessed from my last post. On Wednesday I did go to Brownies which was fun. I also tried a Jaffa Cake for the first time there. I also started my 100 happy days. I am going to be on day 4 today. I will do a post after every 10 days of writing them. I am looking into booking a trip with my friend right now to go into mainland Europe for about 2 weeks before I head home. I am also now starting to look into going to Ireland with my sister and my cousin for a weekend when they come here to visit. I have signed up for some more courses as well to try and fill up my time. The only not so fun bit is that none of them really start until the end of February. Last night I got to Skype with my cousins though which was a lot of fun. We had people in two different parts of Canada, one in Hong Kong, and then me in the UK. It was nice to talk to them all like that though it was like we are all together just hanging out at somebody’s house. I think that Skype call alone was the highlight of my week. It really just assured me that where ever I am or they are we will all always have people that care about us. People we can call at 3 am if we are lonely or need to just talk. The fact that my cousin stayed up till about 5 am to talk to us just made me realize how grateful I am to have them in my life. Even if we did’t grow up in the same country or city and we only used to see each other every other Christmas that he is willing to stay up to talk and just put a smile on our faces it meant a lot. It meant a lot to me the day my mom and sister left as well that I was able to call my cousin and just talk to her for a couple hours and in the end we were both in tears but it just was reassuring that even if I am alone in person I am never really alone. I am just very grateful to have them in my life and I love them.

I am still on the countdown though 3 more days until I see my family!! I am super excited. My mom has booked my sister and I to swim with dolphins, which I am both excited and terrified for. I just really hope that dolphins cannot sense fear. When we were in Wales we went to Cardiff Castle which was cool but some of the stairs especially stairs with cracks in between them terrify me. I was walking up them bravely but at the same time very slowly and with the feeling of needing to pee myself. So I figure if stairs give me that feeling (if you couldn’t guess already I’m afraid of heights) then who knows what dolphins will do to me. I have a fear of being bitten or drowning (even though I can swim) or even worse just being attacked by a dolphin or for that matter anything in the water. I will let you know how it goes.

I also think I will make cookies today. I know I know I’m going away but I’m going to take the cookies with me. Plus baking is something I enjoy and is calming and gives me something to do as well as snack on. I found a recipe online of oatmeal peanut butter chocolate chip cookies that I am going to try.  I’ll let you guys know how they turn out and maybe after I make them I will add a picture of them to this post or I will just make a post for them on their own.

On a whole other note since I am going home at the end of May I was looking at trying to get tickets to the One Direction concert that is coming to Canada. The only problem was that there are like no tickets left. There are a couple but they are so expensive that I cannot afford to go. Say what you want but yes I do like One Direction I think they make good music and are all cool people. I really do wish that one day I can see them live. I know I saw them at the BBC Music Awards but they only preformed one song (Steal My Girl) and they were on the far side of the stage so I couldn’t see them very well. Next time they come to a city near me I will definitely go and get tickets early. My schedule when they announced the concert at that point was just so up in the air and unknown where in the world I would be that there was no point in getting them. One day though I will go. There are so many concerts I want to see though such as Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, Taylor Swift, Bastille, Hozier, Kodaline, the 1975, of course One Direction and more. Going to concerts to me just is a magical experience. It makes me live in the moment and forget about everything else and let loose and just makes me genuinely happy.

I am still thinking about starting a YouTube channel but I guess my only worries that are stopping me from starting one right now is just think oh what will people think of me or what if nobody likes me or my content. I guess really if I want to start one I shouldn’t worry about that. I also think about what would my channel be about. I could do like travel stuff and my experiences here as well as the differences between the UK and Canada. At the same time I could do like vlogs but I feel like I don’t do enough to do a vlog. I also think oh I could do something like the YouTubers I like to watch (ThatcherJoe, Caspar Lee, Zoella, Tayna Burr, Jim Chapman,  Pointlessblog, Connor Franta, Bethany Mota, and more) but then I’m also not sure what I would really do. I am kinda putting it off for now until I decide because I just think your first video will kind of guide you into your niche of YouTube and the way you start off your channel is important. So I am really not sure what I want to do.

Anyways I should finish cleaning up and bake my cookies and get ready for my trip with my family. I will let you guys know how the cookies turn out. I probably won’t post while I am on holidays but I will post once I come back and let you know how it went especially with the dolphins.

Ashley xx

Mid week update

Hey guys,

So I know my posting over the holidays until now has been a bit sporadic but I promise it will go back to posting weekly.

This week, well half week,  has been the loneliest I have ever been. I think I have been lonely before but never like this; this is being homesick. I was looking online at symptoms of being homesick and how to help it and what I got out of that is that I have every symptom of homesickness. When my mom was in London with me we discussed when I was going to go back home and that was going to be in mid July when my dad was coming to visit me, as he is attending a meeting in Wales at that time. After long talks with my one cousin and my sister I decided I wanted to go home earlier. So I have been talking to my parents and going home at the end of April or in early to mid May is under very strong consideration right now. I do love the UK and I always will and who knows maybe someday I will come back to go to university or something but for now I just really want to be at home with my family and friends. I think when I came I had this ideal picture of what it would be to live by myself; freedom, friends, travelling, and more. I feel like I have not gotten or become the person I want to be but at the same time I don’t want to leave quite yet because I feel like I don’t want to disappoint anyone especially myself. At this point I don’t even know if I want to post this because it is quite personal. I feel like this is just a space for me to write though as if it was a journal so maybe I will post it so I am able to look back on this and know how I felt at this point in time.

I still have 6 days left before I go on holidays with my family and I am quiet excited and I am already packed for the most part. I am also still waiting for a pair of shoes I ordered as well as a laptop cover to come in the mail. I ordered this laptop cover just after New Years and I’m surprised it’s taking this long for it to arrive.

I spent Monday handing out my CV which is not something that comes easily to me. I am very proud of myself for being persistent and self motivated and completing this task though. I printed off 10 resumes and in the end was only able to give away 2 of them which is a bit disappointing considering I went to over a dozen shops. Everywhere said you have to apply online now but you can only apply if they have job vacancies. When I went online none of them had very many job vacancies or if they did they were very far away, like in Sheffield. I still do want to get a job but I have a feeling it will be a lot more difficult than I thought it would be.

Yesterday I walked all the way to B&Q which is about 2.6 km both ways. It was cold and rainy and windy and just not fun. I made it though. On the way back I decided to walk to the nearest tube station though which was still about a 20 min walk but it was nowhere near as bad as the walk there. I was wet and muddy and cold so when I came home I just decided I was not going out again I would just sit at home with the heat on. I also watched an episode of “White Collar” with my cousin last night. We decided once a week we would watch something together just to keep each other company and have something to look forward to during the week.

Today I did a lot of laundry but it is frustrating not to have a drier when I was bedding. Washing laundry is an all day task as my flat is small and everything has to hang dry. Since my mom and sister left I haven’t been sleeping as well. I tend to wake up really early and not be able to sleep even though I am going to bed pretty late, as I am talking to my family. I have been waking up early and doing laundry then going back to bed and being able to sleep for an hour or two more than waking up and starting my day by hanging laundry.

Yesterday I also signed up for some more classes. I signed up for a book keeping class and a comedy of YouTube class. So starting at the end of February all the way to the end of April I will have classes. I am hoping this will help me meet people as well as giving me something to to. I am also really hoping that through taking those classes as well as the psychology and anthropology classes I will have a better idea of what I would like to do in university and do as a job. I think I will be going to school at least for my first degree back home and just to a bachelor of arts and start at the very beginning with an undeclared major and minor. I think I want to take human ecology though as well as psychology and who knows maybe business or teaching or some sort of theatre. I am really not sure yet. I know that is one thing my parents want me to figure out while I am here but I am not sure if that will happen or not yet.

I was thinking about it and I feel as if when I came here I should have had more of a plan rather than just saying I’m going to move to London because I like the city and I will just figure it out when I come here. I feel like before my family was here for Christmas I was doing okay and accepting that it was okay to just go out for an hour or two then sit at home and watch Netflix. Or I was at least telling myself it was okay. When my family left I felt as if I was back at step one and sitting at step one broken. I think this is why I really want to go home. I think about it and if I went back home I would get a job, much easier than in London, I would have my friends and family, I would start riding again, and I would maybe audit some classes or shadow people. I feel like I can’t really shadow people here as I don’t know anybody especially I don’t know anybody in jobs I would want.

I find it odd too that it is so rainy and wet in London but my skin is so dry. I’m really not sure why this is but it is not fun. I also think that I am going to start doing something like “100 Happy Days” but I will write them doing in a journal a family friend gave me than every 10 days I will post them. I think if at the end of the day I reflect and find something positive than I may become happier with myself. So I am going to try it for 100 days and if I feel like it is helping and is something I enjoy I will keep doing it. I even find writing posts quiet calming and it puts me in a better mindset already. I guess it just gets all my feelings and concerns out there. Maybe somebody in a similar situation will see this and just know that they are not alone in these type of feelings.

So for now I think I’ve put a lot out there and I just need to post it and digest it and reflect on how I feel and what I want to do. Anyways thanks for being considerate, kind, and understanding with my situation right now.

Thanks,

Ashley xx

2015 so far…

Hey guys,

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while I was on holiday. As I said last time I was in Glasgow for a week, for Christmas, and then I went to Athens, Greece. Greece was pretty cool; we saw lots of historical landmarks. We visited a lot of the temples for Greek gods as well as the Olympic stadium. We drove around Greece quite a bit. We went to Sparta one day and saw a fortress, we also went to see monuments built for Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, and many more. Greece was a lot colder than we thought it would be as well. I learnt that 70% of Greece is mountains and people can ski in Greece. Yes there was snow in Greece! We also learnt that in Athens they have these things called brown outs were about half of our power would go out every night. We spent New Years in Athens as well and to our surprise the restaurant we went to was fairly empty. We also learnt that in Greece there is a fully functioning medieval town that a lot of locals go to. It is hidden behind a mountain and not visible to passers by so not very many tourists go there. We tried to find this town but were not able to and we had to come back to London the next day so we decided to go back to Athens. Then next day we flew back to London and the four of us stayed in my one bedroom flat. It was squishy but we managed to make it work. My dad helped me fix some fuses and lightbulbs I wasn’t able to do by myself. The next day my dad went back to Canada and it was a girls week. My mom, sister, and I did a lot of shopping last week. My sister and I also went horseback riding and of course it poured almost the whole time and the last five minutes of the ride it stopped raining. It was fun though. Thought this trip I realize how much I miss my family and spending time with them and just having other people around you all the time. I have truly learnt that even though London is such a big city and you will always have people around you it can get really lonely. I think that is the worse type of loneliness, being in a big crowd of people and still feeling alone. Yesterday was the last day my mom and sister were in London so we decided to go on a bit of a road trip and went to Cardiff, Wales for the day. We went and saw the castle in Cardiff and then went to Newport and did some shopping in a huge box store type of mall. My mom and sister left today, actually just about 2 hours ago. I went to the airport with them and dropped them off and came home. I really don’t have a lot to do this whole week. I am just really looking forward to seeing them again in about a week and a half.

I was thinking last night just how much I wish I was in my sister’s place and got to do 5 months here living with a host family and getting to go home now. I really wish I could have gone home with them or they could stay here, but as my mom says this is my time to find myself and discover what I am passionate about and what I want from life. It is hard and I’m sure after I see them again I will miss them even more when I have to leave them again. I don’t think I really realized how much I missed them until I saw them again and started spending time with them. Being apart has made my sister and I so much closer but at the same time we miss each other when we are apart and I really miss my mom. My sister and I are both such mommy’s girls that when she leaves it hurts and it just makes you want to break down and cry even just thinking about it. I know I will see them again soon as my sister is supposed to visit me in March for a week, but March just seems so far away. I am seeing them in 11 days now and 11 days seems like eternity.

I am seriously thinking about starting a YouTube channel now as well. My mom, sister, and friends have all told me I should think about  telling some of my stories that way so they can all hear them rather than me telling the same story 10 times. I think I might start a channel when I come up with something to say on it. If you have any suggestions or advice could you please let me know; whither its on starting a channel or creating content or even a channel name.

Anyways I think I’ll leave it there for now as I try my hardest to keep myself busy for the next 11 days. I have a couple things to do as my sister burnt out my lightbulb by hitting her head on the fixture. Oh also for anybody who live in the UK do you know any good private hire taxi companies?  Thanks. I will hopefully update you before I leave to see my family again and then probably sometime when I am with them.

Ashley xx