Cardiff

So I'm back in Cardiff. It's wonderful here. I still have the house to myself which is very helpful as I hadn't tidied up properly when I left in August and now there are lots of things I brought down from home that also need to be tidied before people return!

I had a lovely time talking to Judith, Rich, Jenny and Ben in the library yesterday and it actually felt like being home. My parents were probably offended by my constantly referring to Cardiff as 'home' but that's just the way I think about it these days.

I've finally managed to get a few of the Alton Towers photos onto flickr but I'm having to do it by manual upload so it's a fairly slow process! Hopefully when they're properly online I'll be able to pick through and post a couple on here.

It's my 21st birthday tomorrow. Well I suppose it's today now actually! I don't feel much different. Which isn't strange at all. 21 sounds older but I still maintain that 21 is the party age and it's at 22 when you actually become a 'real' grown up. Conveniently my 22nd birthday will be just after I graduate (assuming I graduate that is - here's hoping) so it seems an appropriate time to become a 'reak' adult.

I've pretty much decided I'm going to run in the elections for Students' Union exec this year. It may sound like too early to be deciding but I read somewhere the other day that campaign planning starts as early as October! This paragraph is all pretty much to say 'please vote for me' if you're a Cardiff Uni student. You are also very welcome to wear a silly t-shirt and come campaign with me!

I went to see my lecturer about ideas for my dissertation topic yesterday and he (predictably) told me I need to narrow down the topic to one idea, one movement, one event or one composer. I wish I had 4 years and 200,000 words so I could write about everything I'd like to cover! On the plus side he did say that my ideas were very good and it was an ideal topic to look at.

Fun as it is to be 21 I'm getting quite sleepy so I'm going to finish here. Goodnight!

Update

So I haven't posted for a while. I blame flickr because the uploader wasn't working so it took ages to get pictures online. I'm still miles behind.

So here is a pic from Soul Survivor as promised:

It shows the ridiculous amount of mess we made around our patch of campsite!

Since Soul Survivor I've been at home and done various fun things. Last week I went to Alton Towers for Emma's 21st. It was amazing! We went to the waterpark, stayed in the Alton Towers Hotel and then went to the main theme park the next day with their celebration party day. We got to wear fancy-dress items. Many tiaras were worn! I took lots of photos there but with flickr not functioning I can't show you any of those either!

I did manage to upload a photo of my new haircut:

and a photo of my new fish:

Ellen and Sam got me the fish for my birthday. They are called Toby and CJ.
I love the fish! I always wanted a cool pet like that. We're mildly concerned about getting them down to Cardiff but the nice man at Waterworld was very helpful and gave us some bigger fish bags to transport them in.

I have a few more days in West Kirby and then I'm going back to Cardiff on Saturday. I'm quite excited about going back. I'm also enjoying the fact that my birthday celebrations started on september 9th and are going to continue until september 24th. Today my lovely father bought me a new stereo system for my birthday present. It's very very cool!

Survived

I shamefully haven't posted for weeks! I was waiting until I'd uploaded my Soul Survivor photos onto flickr but seeing as that still hasn't happened I thought I should probably just get on with posting and then I can add the Soul Survivor pictures when they're online!!

Soul Survivor was brilliant! I was stewarding for the first 6 days and then I was a 'delegate' for the students/twentysomethings week. When I arrived I met a couple of people I knew from stewarding last year who remebered, hugged and welcommed me. This made me feel a lot better about that fact that I'd backed out of the first week! I had a great week of stewarding and meeting other new people which was more easily facilitated by the fact that we were camping with all the other people who were working on site.

I had some concerns about whether or not I'd enjoy the students week (Momentum) as the last time I was a delegate at Soul Survivor I wasn't overly impressed and then decided not to go at all in the following years. Loads of the people we'd met in the previous week were also staying on for Momentum so everywhere I went on site I saw people I knew. We seem to have grown up a little since our previous excursions to Soul Survivor. This year we were admitting tiredness and going to bed - in the past we denied all knowledge and stayed up half the night for no apparent reason. We generally also managed to avoid any ridiculous behaviour apart from the following: Nick threw lots of things. Like cutlery, chairs and pistachio-nut shells. And I thought the best way to get the boys back for watergunning me was to grab the supersoaker and fight back. This was going well until I forgot to watch Rich for a minute and ended up with a bucket of water thrown over my head!

I feel there should be an insert at this point - a mini rant about the Severn-Bridge toll!!! IT costs £4.90 to cross the bridge to get into Wales. I find this totally ridiculous and I was most displeased that I had to pay to get back from Soul Survivor to Cardiff. 'Why didn't you just drive up to the Wirral?' I hear you ask... The answer is that I left various things like my computer in Cardiff and I needed to bring them home with me.

So anyway I finally arrived on the Wirral. Since I got back I've been 'catching up' with a lot of people and doing some relaxation. My mother has us all clearing out our stuff so we can sell the things we don't need in a car boot sale tomorrow morning. I do happen to think it's a good idea to clear all the junk out of the house so I'm going along with it. When it's all gone I'm going to try and clear my mum a girly chill-out space so when my dad and brother are watching programmes about cars and guns she can escape and watch The West Wing.

That pretty much brings you up to speed with what I've been up to so I'm going to stop. Since it's become tradition to add photos to each blog entry I will post one of my newly-edited fairground pictures and a newly-edited Cornwall picture: