so, things that have happened to me since my last blog post:

- started back for my final year at warwick
- it was the christmas holidays. snow, champagne, new years fun, etc.
- I completed two TEFL courses (teaching english as a foreign language – the second was a booster course that specialised in teaching english to young learners. I passed with full marks yay =])
- I quit my job at the library
- I moved into a different halls of residence at uni to be with a close friend. this was probably the best thing that happened to me in the university year
- I applied to be a teaching assistant on réunion island and got the job, hurray =]
- it was the easter holidays. chocolate, coursework, revision, more coursework.
- it was exam period. my final year was fairly crappy for lots of reasons and work suffered as a result, so exams did not go so well and I didn’t get the results I had hoped for. but nevermind eh =]
- I graduated, despite the rubbishy exams – hurray. got to wear a silly hat etc.

things that are coming up over the next few weeks/months:

- going on a little caravan holiday in wales with uni friends. this has become an annual thing in the past few years, should be good fun =]
- family holiday to the norfolk broads
- hopefully some kind of summer job, no luck so far though…
- moving to la réunion, EEEEEK

so another reason for me writing this blog was that I’m going to be away for a pretty long time, chilling on my tropical island, and I would love to see everyone before I go. I’m planning a kind of mega-super-duper-hyper-massive london meet-up of both home and uni friends, which is going to happen on a weekend at some point, date undecided as of yet. it would be loooovvvvvely if you could all make it, especially those of you I haven’t seen in over a year!! I’m going to do a facebook event for it eventually which will have more details, but for the moment please could you let me know which of the following days would be best for you =]

Sunday 21st August

Saturday 27th August
Sunday 28th August
Monday 29th August (bank holiday)

Saturday 3rd September
Sunday 4th September

I’m thinking it will be a hyde park based gathering with games and picnic and drinks, and then moving on to a pub or going for a meal if people fancy it (or just sit in the pub all day if it’s raining). so yeh, please let me know if you can do any of those days, and which ones! =]

I think that is all the news/announcements I have! hope everyone is fine and dandy and enjoying life.

much love, s
xxx

what are everyone’s plans for summer? I think we should have some kind of a gathering, so write on here to say when you’re free. :]

I’m working weekdays at the mo as a cleaner at a school in penn, which is as fun as it sounds. howeverrr, in two weeks the school breaks up for summer so no more cleaning for soph. :] then I’ll be going up to warwick to sing at the graduation ceremonies (rosie, this means you get to hear us chamber choir lot singing the ‘warwick fanfare’ – it’s horrendous and has fake latin in it, so enjoy that!), then I’m free for a week again, then I’m going caravanning in wales with a group of uni friends, thennnn I’m free again, and thennnn I’m going to peruuuuu!

which is VERY exciting. :]

I’m going over there for a month (catching three separate planes to get there, which is the part I’m most nervous about currently :S), to do conservation work in the amazon forest. should be pretty great. :] I also get to do a little nip over to machu picchu while I’m there, which is equally exciting. so, I guess I’ll do a blog about that when I get back! I’m sure there will be lots to say and squeal about. like monkeys and parrots and pumas and things.

in the meantime, I’m keeping myself busy reading about a bazillion books for next year, and doing this online course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (ie. TEFL). I’m hoping to be able to use the qualification I get from that to go and teach abroad after uni. fingers crossed. :]

so, that’s all my news really! let’s do summery things like picnics and barbeques. discuss.

over and out x

I had a splendid trip to Arran again back in January, there’s photos on Facebook. And then after an exciting bout of family illness problems I had my work cut out for me with university this semester!

Still, my major project has come along fairly nicely:

SEE – Sneak Preview from John Kingsnorth on Vimeo.

Crikey, its strange to think I’ve handed in my last ever photography project…

And now we’re in the mad rush of Degree Show preparations! And they overlap! Which is exciting and hectic and daft.

So IF anyone wants to seeee the shows, which maybe we could do a nice gathering around, it is in Cambridge from the 3rd – 11th June. I am most free on the 5/6/7th for that one.

The show is also in LONDON and is called ‘Seeing the Ordinary’ (I designed the website for the show heeeere > http://www.seeingtheordinary.co.uk Woot woot.) We’re on there from the 11th – 14th June, and I’m invigilating at some point, so maybe we could meet up and the end of that and do a food, or something. Not sure on the exact date yet though.

OTHERWISE I think a meeting-up with punting is long overdue, so come to Cambridge! Provided I am unemployed, any time from the 17th June to the end of the month I will be doing very little =]

I have been doing a little bit of job-hunting, but its hampered by the craziness of exhibition preparation at the moment! There may be a slight chance of buggering off to Zambia for a while (madness?). We’ll see!

Hope everyone is well and fine and I look forward to hearing from you all again.

p.s. Robyn, your wedding photos look splendid, must be fairly chuffed with them =]

Edit: Oh yes, I went to Stockholm in February too. It was bloody cold. And we walked over the lakes. Because they had, like, ice on them, omg. It was cool, photos on facebook :]

So, most of us are going into our third year of university soonish (omg, WHAT), and for me that means a year out in the Merde, teaching English to French school kids. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve not done much to prepare myself so far. Because of this, I’m feeling pretty nervous about the whole thing and haven’t really got excited about it yet… but hopefully once I’ve sorted out a place to live, got over the trauma of going out to France all on my ownsies to move in with foreign strangers, and managed to deal with all the legal housing/bank account stuff that I can barely understand as it is in English, then I’ll settle down and have a great time.

I’m going to be teaching in three schools: my main one is a lycée (kind of like a sixth-form college but there are three year groups), and two collèges (secondary schools). They’re in a really nice area, in the south of France near Aix-en-Provence which is a lovely town I’ve visited quite a few times, and also near Marseille, so I’ll be quite close to the coast. My friend Amy (who I think everyone has met?) lived out there for a while and her mum lives in a town very close to where I’m going to be, so it’ll be nice to have a contact out there in case of disasters.

All in all I’m pleased about where I’ve been placed and the schools I’ve been assigned to. Although working in three different ones seems like a lot, I think it’s quite common to be placed in more than one, and one of my friends who was out there this year found that even though the kids in one school were a load of chavvy French brats, the kids in the other were much nicer. Hopefully mine will all be nice, but even if not, in all the different year groups across three schools, there’s got to be at least one nice set of students. I hope :]

So, yeah, I just thought I’d tell you a bit about what I’m going to be up to next year. As I said, I haven’t found housing yet, which is kind of my main worry, but it’s very common not to have that sorted out until a couple of weeks before, when you actually go over there, stay in a hostel for a bit, and visit estate agents and stuff. Some of my friends have been provided student accommodation by their lycées, but I wasn’t lucky in that respect Fingers crossed it’ll all work out for the best, anyways.

Onto more general stuff, I was really sorry to miss Quasar the other day because I was feeling poorly Hope you all had a great time, and maybe we can meet up for coffee or a picnic or something soon? Let’s plan things! *puts on planning hat*

My holiday has been pretty good so far… I spent a couple of weeks away with choir – we went on tour to Cornwall for a week which was loads of fun, and then came back to campus to sing at the degree ceremonies, which was also awesome. We did ten ceremonies across five days (paid ) and the rest of the time we had the whole of campus to ourselves, went out for pubbing and clubbing and curry-ing, etc. Funnnnnn times (although a load of people went down with swine flu, which was sad times but I wasn’t one of them, luckily for me).

Next week I’m going to Wales with some friends where we’re aiming to squeeze ten of us into a six-person caravan, which should be interesting…then I’m going to Wales again at the end of August with the fam. It’s clearly the place to go, eh John?

That’s pretty much all my news! This was long, so I think it’s best to end it here before I bore your socks off (sorry if this has already happened). Hope you’re all having a great summer and hopefully see you soon.

Peace! x

I have now finished my first degree. There’s a funny thought. It certainly went out with a ‘phhwut’ instead of a ‘bang’. But with all the work handed in, all I can do now is wait for results and begin pondering my research project (we don’t actually do a disseration, :/ so who knows where the Hons in my BA Hons will come from?).

As I write this I can hear the girly screams of one housemate being beaten at Halo downstairs, and the undead moans of Nazi Zombies being shot at from next door. It seems video games have consumed the house entirely.

Anyway, I am not totally unoccupied now, we managed to get the university to give us a degree show! They offered us gallery space in the toilets, but when we threatened to take the matter higher we were offered the gallery instead. Although the juxtaposition in the toilets between the STI informational posters and platinum printed delicate flowers would have been quite emotive, I’m sure.

I got myself into designing the website for the exhibition, which was rather a mistake considering how much time it took away from doing my projects, but it’s nearly finished now: Exposure37 Exhibition Website.

Can’t really think of much else that’s going on here really. I’m hungry, lunch time, ttfn everyone.

Also I’m very excited about the new series of Stictly!!

Glad to hear that everyone seems to be settling into another year of uni.

Toodles.

x 

 

Just thought I’d post a quick blog to update you all on the current going-ons in my world. I went for an interview last week at Aylesbury College for my dental nursing course and I’m happy to say that it went really well. They offered my an unconditional place so I shall be starting in about one month’s time. I’ll tell you a bit of what happened. When we first arrived, we had to do a primarily multiple choice test for literacy and numeracy. There were only 24 questions for each and we had unlimited time. Easy, or so you’d think. I started with numeracy as I thought I’d struggle the most with that. The first question was something like 5 + 5, by which time I was starting to feel pretty confident. But I was seriously appalled at how bad my mental maths is! I only got one wrong in the end and I hope it was partly down to nerves that it took so long. It wasn’t until I’d finally finished the literacy section with a sigh of relief that I noticed that everyone (except the man who was printing out our scores) had left! i felt really stupid especially because I was the only one of the group with A-levels (I think). We then had a group discussion and individual interview which went well. It will be a struggle at first to adjust to having a full time job and then going home to a pile of college work on top but I’m hoping that it’ll all be worth the effort.

Our assembly at the weekend went really well. We had a peak attendance of over 27,500 on Sunday, including a section of Spanish and Russian speakers from about 25 different countries, including Argentina, Chile and a lot from the far flung corners of Europe. It was wonderful hearing everyone sing together and the Spanish section waved at the end. One highlight was obviously the drama and both Damian and my brother-in-law were absolutely brilliant! I was so proud of both of them to have the courage to do it as well as having the privilege of being asked. There were two new publications released which I’m looking forward to reading. We saw many old friends and met a few new ones too. There was also 146 baptised on Saturday, which was great to see.

Hope you are all enjoying the summer despite the distinct lack of sunshine.

Toodles.

xx

We (Damian, Ophelia, my sister Dionne and her husband Martin) went to SW19 on the 23rd June, the first day of the tournament. We woke up at half past 4 (it was worth it) and caught the train at about 6ish. When we arrived at Wimbledon, it was about half 7. There was only one queue to get into the grounds this year (if you hadn’t bought a ticket previously) instead of two so instead of queueing up just outside on the road, we were sent to the far end of a VERY large field and about 20 minutes later, were told that we just over 3000th in the queue. Luckily, the weather was nice and we spent the next four hours queueing for coffee and doing sudoku as well as having friendly arguments with fellow queuers about who we were backing for the trophy.

After looking at the order of play, we went to court 11 and stayed there for pretty much the whole day. We saw Elena Baltacha win her first round match and Alex Bogdanovic lose his. This actually proved to be very useful as last year, I managed to get Elena’s autograph. However, I was confused as it appears to say ‘Billy’. Apparently, her family call her ‘Bally’ and we joined it screaming “Come on Bally” at the top of our voices. Then we had a real treat. The third match scheduled for our court was Martat Safin!! He is even taller in real life than on tv although that was highlighted by the fact that his opponent was Fabio Fognini who looks as if he could comfortably rest his head on my shoulders. Fee and I were so excited that we spent quite a lot of time persuading the court attendants, who had the reserved front row to leap out of the way at the end of the match so we could scramble down and get his autograph. Which we did, very successfully. Although I did feel a tad bad as poor old Marat was totally surrounded by people and he looked petrified! Who could know that a scribble on a piece of paper could mean so much?

By this time, it was about half past 8. So we wondered around the shops etc and went on a few more courts to catch the last few glimpses of live play. By about quarter past 9 we were shattered though and decided to call it a day. We got home about half 11 and were totally exhausted. We were pleased to know that we were on tv for quite some time both in Elena’s and Marat’s matches. Fee asked Elena for her autograph so we were on the highlights.

Just more, briefly, on the subject of Wimbledon. I have never been so emotionally drained as I was on finals day. Coverage started about half 1 (although they didn’t start playing until about half 2 due to rain delays) and I was glued to the tv until half 9 when the match finally finished. I was in tears before they’d even started playing, just hearing Roger and particularly Raphael give their rendition of the poem “If”. I love his Spanish accent..I went through the highs of Rafa being 2-0 sets up and the fear of knowing that the world’s best tennis player wouldn’t give up so easily and wondering what was going on and the lows when Roger levelled the match and even got ahead in the 5th. I was on my own towards the concluding stages of the match and I was so nervous and had to jump in my car and drive up the hill to my sister Adele’s house because I couldn’t stand watching it alone! But the joy (and relief) I felt when he won was immense. I used to ridicule people (if not openly, then mentally) who cared so much about sport. But it was the best match I’ve ever seen in my life and I will never forget watching Raphael drop to the ground whilst screaming at the tv in happiness..it was great.

Enough of that. Other news. Hopefully, I will be going back to college soon! I talked to my boss about the possibility of becoming a dental nurse and he said that he is happy to train me. So I have applied to a course that begins in September (as you now have to have the piece of paper as well as the experience to qualify). I have already started learning the odd few bits and pieces but I’m just really hoping they’ll accpet my application. So I’ll keep you guys posted.

Something else which I find really exciting is that our big assembly at Twickenham is coming up again. Every year we have a drama (about 45 mins long) of a Biblical scene that we can learn from. It’s always a highlight of the three days but Damian is actually participating this year! For us, it is a massive privilege to be asked and I can’t wait to see him with his sandals and tunic- plus, it’ll be great to see him a bit browner as they have to wear fake tan to be more authentic. 25,000 is pretty good for your first audience!

Hope you are all well.

Robyn.

x

 

 

 

This comes after a catastrophic computer death last night. My laptop, which I’ve had for a total of 5months, decided to corrupt its hard drive file tables. It still worked ok, but then good old chkdsk tried to correct the problem. After that it didn’t even switch on. But by finding hidden Acer recovery partitions and staying up half the night I’m back online in less than a day. It’s scary how much I (we?) rely on computers everyday. If I’d have had to send this beast off to Acer for repairs it would have been harder to keep in touch with people, and what about all the music, and the work too I suppose! As it is I have all my work backed up and a quick trip home this weekend to install software again is a good excuse to get some washing done.

I’ll be blogging again soon with a bit of a major rant so prepare yourselves for that, it might be bordering on controversial. Otherwise my course and things are going ok, about the same as last semester really. We had some photography theory lectures earlier in the term which were really interesting. I couldn’t understand why so many people in the class hated them. There seems to be a real prejudice against artistic photography (as in not for commercial money making purposes, for the purpose of ‘expressing oneself’ or something) on the course, and the BA students all hate us soulless FdA students. It’s quite interesting! Unfortunately our main lecturer has decided to leave so at the moment we don’t have a course leader for after Easter, this is quite a shame as our last one was really awesome.

Anyone got any plans for the Easter holidays? And has anyone who’s at uni found a house for next year yet? I’m thirsty for news!

Peace out.

Since I’ve spent so long doing this ridiculous stuff I wanted to share with you the outcomes of what I’m about to hand in. So to start with I’ll show you one of the three CD covers I designed and two of the book covers I did for my ‘Digital Imaging’ module. That is, ‘Photoshop for Newbs’. I got a bit carried away with my arrogance trying to prove that I wasn’t a newb. A mistake I won’t be repeating. Hopefully.

So, ‘Shooting For Story’ my other photographical module was based on religion. I messed this project up a bit and ended up with lots of poor quality writing and a set of passable final images. Hopefully that means ‘passable’ in the examination sense of the word. Here’s the three ‘scene setting’ shots from my final ten.