This year…

This year has been full of… well, milestones for me. Certainly some I did not want to achieve, and others I couldn’t see coming, but overall, I think 2008 has been the most momentous year of my life. On the bad side, I’ve made pretty rubbish decisions this year. At times I’ve realised it and then go and make the same mistakes again – so I doubt that will change. I was over-optimistic when choosing my A-levels, and gave myself far too much work to do, more than I can realistically cope with, and yet because of those decisions, I’ve also ended up with the best teachers possible. If I could choose again, would I choose less work and worse teachers? One milestone I definitely saw coming, but didn’t really know I’d react the way I did, was to turn 17. I woke up on my birthday, and for the first time ever I closed my eyes and tried to pretend it wasn’t real, and that I wasn’t really a year older. I am dreading being 18, for no reason apart from the fact that I don’t want to grow up. Being 16 was the best thing that ever happened to me, and so I’ll move onto the good parts. Well, before I do that, I suppose I should mention that I did my first public exams, which were pretty easy looking back. I did really well (although I could have done better), and so that was a good thing. The best thing though, was the two-and-a-half month summer holiday I got afterwards, and this summer I spent the most time away from home with my friends that I ever have. I went to Italy on a school music tour, and Wales on a Christian camp. I grew so much closer to the friends I went with, learned a lot of new things (like

• always take more money abroad than your mother thinks you will need (I think I still owe people for pizza they bought me),
• if you visit a place abroad which features heavily in a book you are planning on reading, then read the book before you go so you’re in on the joke (Volterra, for the Twilight fans),
• if the guy you fancy tells you he’s gay to get you off his back, then it’s time to stop flirting with him (I wish I were joking),

- life skills I tell you) uh, and where was I before I rambled off on this over-long sentence? Oh yeah, I had a lot of fun. I had some of the most terrifying and upsetting times of my life over the summer, but also some of the best. I also made a few really important decisions over the summer, like how much I hate school. Seriously. I’d always thought that it was okay, something I had to do, but I realised that I actually have a problem with my school, and it’s attitude. It’s the best place for me, but it also kind of sucks. Still, I have enough good times outside school not to have to think about it too much – like my youth group’s weekend away in Norfolk. None of the people in my year could come, so I shared a room with a couple of my friends in the year above – and since it was their last weekend away, on the last night I unashamedly joined in with one of them in a few celebrations, although I did tell her not to roll down the grand staircase in her sleeping bag because the leaders were right there. I also told her not to open the door leading from the showers when I could hear a leader behind it – she wasn’t listening, opened the door, saw the leader looking puzzled at us, turned, tripped as she tried to shut the door and fell flat on her face while I collapsed into giggles. We had to pay for it the next day though – “cleaning the girls toilets will be Ann and Jo. We figured that anyone who stays up for a couple of hours in the girls loos must know them pretty well”. Yeah, it’s been a good year. 2009 isn’t looking quite as promising; I think there will be some pretty big changes although I’m not quite sure what. I don’t want to look too far into the future, I might not like what I see. So, I’m going to look back, and remember the good times. And to finish off with incredible cheesyness, I’ll share some of the best pictures of 2008, while you can listen to the obligatory “reminiscing song”. It was a hard choice, but I opted not to go for the throw-up factor, and went with my current favourite, Flightless Bird, American Mouth by Iron & Wine.

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Finally, did you know that I read all of the Harry Potter series this year, without having read it ever before? Did you also know that this year I did not cut my nails once, preferring to bite them instead? Yeah, bet you really wanted to know…

Tags: camp, church, embarrassing, friends, life, loves, me, money, school, summer