Mull Over This

In true gap-year style I'm discovering new things about myself and the world around me. As much as my framework has shifted it has also stayed much the same, both intentionally and unintentionally. At the core things have remained the same but just become clearer and it's often without realisation that I catch myself saying and doing things that prove (more to myself) what  I'm about. 

So with this I have claimed my own philosophy: "for the experience" is always a good reason to do anything. 

Of course this is completely subjective but whoever you are, whatever you're like it's bound to get you out of your comfort zone! 

Pretty Pictures

Click the pics!

Midnight at Hyde Park

Autumn in Sicily

Lonesome

50/50

Peek-a-boo Simona

Look at their faces

Oh Susanna

Like the Elephant Graveyard from the Lion King

Picture through a telescope

Trust

Grapefruit Face

Toss the Bucket List!

The beautiful Turquoise Coast of Turkey

A collection of new things I've done- some exciting and some not so exciting. Remember you can click to enlarge the pics!

It is whatever you think it
is!

* Be strip searched
* Become involved- or at least interested- in politics and human rights
* Hitch-hike
* Sit under a Baobab tree
* Attend a New Years Eve party (have never done this!)

Volunteering at Walk the Walk Moonwalk-
walking marathon that only started at midnight.
I was on crowd control! lol! 15 000 (women mostly
it was for breast cancer.)

* Live in a château
* Get a tattoo
* Do a mountain trail by myself
* Work as a pub cleaner




*Not freak out at seeing snakes (Europe's most poisonous at that and more than one)
* Make/be friends with unlikely people
* Sleep on the street
* Try to support local/up & coming artists/musicians/photographers as much as I can
* Cook meat (not my proudest but hey, not all lessons can be fun)

* Build a huge snowman

* Like wine
* Shop for chickens (er... to keep)
* Miss no one
* Pretend I'm Australian and have people believe it (until I answered Fosters when asked what beer I drink)
* Send a message in a bottle
* Pick olives
* Date a Pakistani ( very short lived! Oh and no offence to anyone)
* Volunteer/Charity work- it's addictive
* Cycle as a mode of transport (took me a while to pluck up the courage!)
* Swim in 9 degree water
* Write a Wikipedia article
* Book the first and cheapest bus to anywhere
* Climb a volcano
* Smoke weed with F.W De Klerk's niece (let's see who actually reads my blog...)
* Have no money
* Write an essay on WW1 (the joys of being an nanny...)
* Get involved in my community
* Dress up as a (three) Musketeer
* TEFL qualification
* Be involved in a mass protest

Caught right in the middle of the 'Black Bloc' anarchists was
pretty scary.

* Faint from being ill
* Sleep under the stars for two weeks
* Run for charity
* Have more money than ever in my life
* Jump from a 10m cliff into the sea (10m looks a lot different from a jagged cliff top!)
* Get free drinks... not just for me but for whoever is with me (guys & girls! seriously, it's quite a skill!)
* Be completely self-sufficient (see above!)
* Farm

Hyde Park March 26th Protests 

* Listen to my gut feel/inner voice (which isn't always the voice of reason!)

* Learn a language
* Ride on the back of a motorbike
* Been to (need I say it, illegal) underground party

* Love my country

* Au-pair

Middle one: Thomas 'Tom-Tom' Blackler
 my GPS where ever we go!

Trekking through Wadi Arugot

Bedouin Market Beer'sheva on the
hunt for chickens

Sweet Simona checking on our chicks

A swim before our dive in the sparkly waters of the
Turquoise Coast

And things that (hopefully) I'll be doing soon but take a bit more planning:

* Drive a 50 seater bus
* Squat
* Learn to dumpster dive (hopefully while I squat)

Mt Etna

Still Retching at the 'R' Word

The royal bandwagon is about to collapse. No, wait, it already has by the looks of these ad's. 

Unfortunately the painfully obvious and nauseatingly obscure tarnish the few good ones. All of which appeared in the same morning paper the day before the wedding.

Apologies for the shoddy scanning job, I had to keep from gagging each time.

If you think ad can't get any worse
look up the definition for 'royale'.
Wait, I'll save you the trouble 

You have no idea how refreshing this was
after spending an hour on the
tube surrounded by
Royal Wedding this, that and the next

Huh?

Just throw in the 'R' word and you're good to go.

Easyjet rescued my numbed senses with this
full-page orange number.

Voetsek!

Hard earned wages for these babies, hopefully they'll see a lot
more races in the future!

Ask me to run a kilometre a month ago and that's about the response you would have received (along with an indignant wave of the hand). If I was feeling particularly perturbed by the question it would probably have just been 'Tsek!'.

And since I have an international readership, no wait, I don't. All three of my followers (thanks guys!) will know what I mean. But just in case there's a foreigner lurking around, 'voetsek' is a very impolite way of saying 'go away'–  I'm sure you know what I mean.

Okay, well here's why I won't make a very good writer: I get distracted too easily…

Anywaaaay, nearly 8 weeks of training and I'm able to run 9km–  haven't tested 10k yet–  in a reasonable time. Let's not mention the three asmathic incidents that have caught me off-gaurd whilst training. The third one had me in hospital this past weekend. 

However, I think it is safe to say that without pushing too hard I can do a good time… 

There. I can run. Quite a distance. 

Erm… that's all I wanted to say… Oh, and I needed some new takkies coz I'd worn the old ones out with all my running.

You'd think after nearly 6 months of training I'd
be skinny... not a chance. Thought I'd have
my guns back by now...