Skiing

Hey guys,

So my family and I went skiing a couple weeks ago. We live pretty close to the mountains so we drove there on a Wednesday after everyone was done working. On Thursday we went into one of the bigger cities around there and I got to see the university there as it is the closest university to where I live that has a veterinary program. We also went shopping that day. From there we drove back to our hotel which was about an hour and a half away. I ended up driving there and as we were getting close and I was exiting the highway I went to change lanes and there was an elk going to cross the road. I went around it and scared it enough so that it would not cross the road. When we looked onto the grassy area that this elk came from we realized there was a whole heard of elk with it.

The next morning we woke up early to go skiing and snowboarding. We got there around 9 or 10 and all did a practice run on the bunny hill before going half way up the mountain a couple times. After a couple runs of half of the mountain we decided to have lunch before continuing. After lunch we went up the whole mountain and split up so my sister and I could do a couple runs where my parents would do one run before we went home. After we were done we went to another hotel that is part of the Fairmont chain to get some hot chocolate before heading home.

The next morning we drove back home. It was fun to go snowboarding again especially since I hadn’t gone in 3 years. It was easier than I thought it would be to come back to it after all that time. Anyways it was’t the most exciting trip but I got some beautiful pictures that I thought I would share with you.

Ashley xx

2015 in review

2015 was an amazing year for me. Just looking back on it I have changed so much and done so much since the beginning of the year. I started 2015 off in Greece with my family which was a lot of fun. My mom, sister, and I also took a day trip to Cardiff, Wales after Greece. After they left I couldn’t wait to go meet them in the Bahamas later in January. After the Bahamas I was back in London for quite a while before I was going to see any of my family again. I started booking courses to fill my time besides volunteering at Brownies. I took several courses: photography, anthropology, psychology, book keeping, comedy of YouTube, and more. I met with my family friends and got to go to discos. I also hung out tons with my cousin in London. February was a bit of a bleak month for me after the excitement of January and going back to London with little to nothing to do. In February I went on a day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon as well where I made my first real friend since I had gotten to London.

When March rolled around things started to pick up. All of the courses I had chosen started in March. My older cousin who I never see decided to come to London to go to a concert. The three of us cousins met up one day and went for Sunday roast besides going to a market, doing some shopping, sight seeing, and going for drinks. During this time I learnt more about who my one cousin really is as I have only met him a few times and he is about 15 years older than me. Later that month my younger cousin and sister came to visit me. It was my cousin’s first time in Europe so I got to show him around London and when my sister met us we all went to Dublin, Ireland. We all got to hang out with my older cousin, who lives in London, as well. I also took my younger cousin to Windsor before he left. Mid-March I also got a little job dog walking. I got to walk this dog named Pierre 3 days a week. This gave me something more to do making me happier.

April was when things started to slow down a little bit and I decided I wasn’t happy with how things were going and how I was trying to put in effort to make friends and have things happen but I still only had one friend. This is when I decided I was going to move back to Canada at the end of May/beginning of June rather than wait until August. During this whole time (end of 2014 on) I was also helping my cousin with his business. I can’t remember if it was the end of April or early May but I helped him prepare and went with him to film his advert which was fun. The same day I went to my family friend’s house to have dinner and watch a movie. Those full days where I got to see people who I knew cared about me and who I cared about were the days I looked forward to most.

In May my friend and I went to Ascot besides planning a small weekend trip with 2 more of her friends to the Isle of Wight. During this time I also met another friend while taking a class. Her and I got on well and she liked to write and make films. I went over to her flat to make some short silly videos after her and I had gone to a play and after party put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her, I, and a friend of hers went around London one day taking pictures to scout locations for her new film. It was so much fun just spending a day with people like them, who are so creative and friendly. One weekend in May I also got to dog sit Pierre which was fun and filled my days besides going to a craft making class were I got to make creams, scrubs, and lip balm. Later in May my cousin and I spent the morning of my birthday together for breakfast before I had to take off to walk Pierre and go to Brownies. That day in Brownies I was put in charge and was hosting a Canada day to teach the girls about Canada. I was also going to make my promise that day. The weekend after my birthday was the weekend we went to the Isle of Wight. The day before that I had helped my cousin with his business again and got to see his new office. The day of the Isle of Wight trip started early: a bus ride, 3 train rides, and a boat ride away. It was fun though. We explored the whole island and 3 days was enough for the trip. The last day we hung out in Portsmouth and I had gotten sick. By the time I got back home in London I was exhausted and went right to sleep. I had family friends who were my age come down from Scotland for a weekend that I met up with. We went for lunch as well as to a couple of art galleries, one including the National Portrait Gallery. We explored London a bit more, had some warm drinks, and headed home. It was a lot of fun to see them and just get to chat to people my own age who knew my family for a day. My mom came to help me move at the end of May. Before we started the hard work of moving we decided to go to Vienna, Austria for 3 days. I was meant to go on a big Europe trip with friends but that never worked out so my mom said we could go to Austria before we went back to Canada. Vienna was a lot of fun and since I had made a friend in London who was from Austria she had told me everything that I had to see and try. We got to see the Spanish School of Riding which was something on my bucket list. After Austria I got to see everyone one more time before leaving. I got to go to one more film party and get burgers after, get a drink and dessert while overlooking the river in Kingston, have one last Sunday roast and watch cricket in the park, have dinner with family friends from Scotland and England, and have dessert with family friends.

I came home the first week of June thinking that once I came back I would be happy with lots filling my days again. This was not the case though. I was happy to see my family and cousins but I had lost pretty much all of my friends except for one on/off friend in Canada. I was also missing London so much. I was so happy to see my dogs but the lifestyle, independence as well as my cousin and everyone I had met in London I was missing. In June I got to go to a women’s FIFA game, Japan vs Australia, with my dad and two cousins. I also got to see Ed Sheeran and One Direction in concert which was amazing! I love both of them so much it just made my June. I was really waiting for the day in July where I got to go back to the UK even if it was not for very long. June kind of rolled by as I got settled back in and got to go horseback riding a couple times.

When July hit I was so excited to go back to the UK. My dad and I went to the UK because he had a meeting in Cardiff, Wales. We flew into London and stayed just down the road from my old flat. We got to see my cousin for dinner which made me ecstatic to see him again. The next day we went to our family friend’s house for a BBQ and got to have some strawberries and creme as it was around the time of Wimbledon. After the BBQ we were off to Cardiff for 3 days. I was by myself most of the time in Cardiff other than dinner time. I did a lot of shopping and exploring. We met with another friend of my dad’s from university who lives just outside of Cardiff, he hadn’t seen her for over 20 years. She was really nice and we had dinner. After my dad’s meeting was done in Cardiff we drove back to London to catch an early morning flight to Dubrovnik, Croatia. We decided that since we had gone all the way to Europe we would go somewhere else besides the UK so I chose Croatia. We were there for 3 days before heading back to Canada. While in Croatia we drove to Montenegro. Both places were really lovely.

August was when my whole family went to Orlando, Florida. We went for a week and got to go to Disneyworld, Universal Studios, the Kennedy Space Centre, and more. It was hot but a lot of fun. This was our one summer vacation this year that was all four of us. We also met my cousin and his parents there as our trips overlapped by a couple days.

After all of this travelling I was staying in Canada until Christmas. Things were slow again. I got back in contact with and old friend I hadn’t seen for about 5 years and we met up for coffee one day. During this time I tried to get a job but wasn’t very successful as I didn’t want a basic job, such as grocery store or clothing store, but I wanted something more. I wanted something that I could use to find my interests in for university. I once again did not go to university this year. End of September/early October I ended up volunteering at a veterinary clinic. I am still volunteering there. I love it. Through volunteering there I have learnt that I want to become a veterinarian and I love surgery. I never would have thought that I would love surgery or want this as a career choice as I used to be so squeamish about blood but I have gotten over that completely.

December was when I went to Cancun, Mexico on a family reunion. It was a week long trip where I got to see everybody. It was lovely seeing family who I hadn’t seen for about 2 and a half years again. I was also really happy to see my cousin from London again to update him on how I’ve been and see what he’s been up to. We came home from Mexico on December 31 so I started 2016 back in Canada for the first time in a long time.

I hope 2016 is filled with joy, self-discovery, love, wisdom, and ultimately happiness. I hope you had a great 2015 and have an even better 2016!!!

Definition of Success

Hi guys,

This post is going to be a bit different but I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I only have about 3 more weeks in London before my mom comes to help me pack up to go home. I am starting to think if there is any last things I want to do while I am in England before I go home to make the most of my time here. I am also starting to think more and more about what I am going to do when I get home. When September rolls around am I going to go to university or am I going to be working or travelling? The thought of this scares the crap out of me.

The dictionary defines success as “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose” and “the attainment of fame, wealth, or social status”. I don’t totally agree with this definition. I defiantly don’t agree with the latter part. When I think of success I think of moving forward in the direction you want. I also think of what I want and what I consider success. I think success is different for everybody. I can say I want to be successful when I get older but what does that really mean. I know when I get older I want a house and a car and so on but is that really what success is. I know I want to do something I love with my life. I want to do something I am passionate about and something I can put my heart and soul into and care immensely about. I want to do something positive that makes other people feel positive as well. I want to be proud of what I do and confident in myself as I do that.

I, like many people, see celebrities or millionaire businessmen or women and think oh I wish I could have what they have. In reality I don’t really want what they have. I don’t want fame and money doesn’t matter that much to me. Of course you can’t say money doesn’t matter at all because of course it does to an extent but in the whole of things it is on the bottom of my list of worries. I do want to be successful and want to be respected and known for my work. This to me is so much different than fame. I want to be well known for my work in what ever profession I choose but I do not want to be famous. I want to be able to live comfortably and be able to travel, even if it is for work. I just want to make the most of my life. I want to be able to think back when I am old and just say “ya I did that and it was awesome”. I don’t want to ever think back and regret not doing anything. I don’t care if what ever I did sucked at least I can say I tried it.

Your life cannot be compared to anybody else’s when measuring your success. I struggle a lot with this. I don’t compare my success with my sister so much as with my cousins. Growing up I was compared a lot with my older cousins. The thing I learnt from this was, that since my cousins are 4 and 8 years older than me, I can’t compare myself with them or else it will just make me feel worse about myself. You cannot be expected to be accomplishing the same things as people significantly older than you. In my family on the other side there was also quite a competitive cousin rivalry. My cousin was always made out to be the smart one who would make something of himself where as my sister and I were just the pretty faces or the one who could make people laugh. I don’t take making people laugh as a bad thing at all in fact I love being able to do that. To see people smile because of something you said just makes me feel good about myself. I do struggle a lot with being known as the not so smart one though. I find when it comes to school I do struggle but when it comes to other life skills or communication skills I thrive. I think being academically smart doesn’t mean everything. Being compared to somebody over one skill set just isn’t fair. Everybody is different and has different skills and strengths. Just because one person is good at something doesn’t mean everybody is good at that one thing. If that’s how the world worked it would be such a boring place.

Bumps in the road happen and there is nothing you can do about it. I am in the process of learning about this one in particular.  When something goes wrong it is not the end of the world. There are so many different paths to reach a goal and just because one person goes a certain way doesn’t mean you have. Lately my mom has been telling me “after high school everybody starts going on their own path in which ever direction they want to go”. Where I am right now this is a bit of a struggle for me to deal with. I know everybody goes there own way but linking back to comparing yourself is where I struggle. When I hit a bump in the road I defiantly don’t want anybody to know about it. I start to think why, why me. I just think why do I suck at life so much. I constantly see things that give me motivation and inspire me but why do I feel like I could never do that or I just don’t have the resources or the knowledge to do that. I think if I truly wanted to do something I could figure out how to get the resources or some place to go to gain the knowledge. I get stuck in a rut sometimes which without outside motivation I sometimes find very hard to get out of. When I do finally get over that bump in the road though I have an overall feeling of pride and accomplishment. As hard as it is to get over that bump or out of that rut in the end it is always worth it.

I don’t want this to be super long and lecture ish but this is just something really relevant to me right now. I just want to add that I don’t think success defines you as a person either. You can be super successful but just be a horrible person. If I truly had to choose I would rather be a great person with little success. I can hope and try my hardest though to be the best person I possibly can be and work to gain the level of success I hope for.

Anyways I am done now. I hope this makes sense and doesn’t just sound like a load of mess on a page. I will try and be better at posting things; I know I’ve been terrible at posting for the past while. I am sorry about that. I am still doing my 100 Happy Days and will try and post more update type things as well.

Ashley x.

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