The hiiiiills are aliiiiivvvveeee…

Things I may have forgotten to blog about recently:

• I finished my A levels
• I finished school
• I watched the Extended Editions of LOTR back-to-back with my friends
• I’m going to Austria in four hours

YES my lovelies I have done/will be doing all those things, and have been so busy with all the excitement all of those things bring, I have completely ignored you. Frankly, I’m not sorry, but there you go.

So about a week and a half ago I had my very last exam (it’s always Physics, why I did the subject I don’t know). Overall, the majority of my exams went well, with only three being really terrible. Unfortunately, the way the marks go those were my three most important ones, but hopefully I will have managed to scrape the grades required for Durham, or my second choice RHUL. If not, then I’ll take a gap year and reapply, which I’m not too bummed about since a couple of my friends will also be doing the same, and I’ve thought up all these amazing cool things I can do.

As for leaving school, officially I have done this, though I’ve been going in afterwards for rehearsals and such so it hasn’t felt like such a big deal yet, and I’ve had time to adjust. We all celebrated with a dance/prom like thing in which the teachers all drank far more than the rest of us put together (boys’ and girls’ schools) and made fools of themselves. It got really awkward and most of us left early – though it was still an experience, and was fun at times. I got hit on by a stranger for the first time, and blew him off rather smoothly if I say so myself, which I admit, made me feel quite flash afterwards.

And though I’ve been to numerous parties and things afterwards, I have to say the highlight of the week was my LOTR marathon with my friends, which seems to draw the reply of “you have friends?!” from anybody else I tell. Still, we revelled in our geekery for what should have been eleven non-stop hours, but what ended up being more like fourteen. Oh yes I’m so cool.

Finally, in four short hours I will be starting on a 24-hour coach journey to Salzburg for my last ever Music Tour with school (you may remember I’ve been to Tuscany and Spain previously) – hence the rehearsals. I’m feeling a little sad about this since this really the end of my school time, and of course the only thing I’m sorry about leaving is the music department who have been my muses for the past four or five years. Still, I’m also quite excited about the whole thing since from past experience I know they are the most fun holidays ever – even if Austria is nowhere near a beach, or not quite as hot as either Spain or Italy. But for all my moaning about holidaying with my family in Switzerland, the mountains are beautiful, and I’ll be sure to take a load of photos for you. Something else quite exciting is that I’ll be performing another violin solo there, which has blown my mind a little bit, to be doing something like that in the home of Mozart. All this has eased the pain of the long coach journey, although I count myself as a bit of a veteran of these and live and sleep quite happily on them now – plus I see 24 hours through Germany as quite pitiful compared to previous 25 and 26 hour journeys in the blazing Mediterranean heat.

So people, I will be back in a week and a bit… I’m not sure if I’ll have internet access in Austria and in any case it will probably be at an extortionate rate. I’ll also be conserving my iPod for those long journeys so you probably won’t hear from me. But I promise that I’ll be back with a video of us singing the do-re-mi thing on the steps in the Mirabel Gardens, a la Sound of Music. I know you’ll be so excited for that.

Tags: Austria, exams, friends, holiday, LOTR, Music, music tour, summer