Friday 29 October 2010

Seeing the woods despite the trees

Tonight's blog may be a little heavy in a few places and is guaranteed to be confusing in many, so I apologise in advance if it doesn't make much sense. I have a few things that I want to get off my chest, and none of them really link in fully with the others. But here goes anyway...

I realised some things tonight while contemplating life (as you do...) and looking through my school yearbook.
1) I don't miss school
2) College is my new normal
3) It's alright that I don't miss school
4) It's alright that college is my new normal

I don't miss school, I genuinely, honestly don't. I thought I always would, and I always believed that it would always be my favourite memory ever, my favourite period of time ever etc etc. Truth is, it probably always will be, and I have to accept that. But if I'm being 100% honest, I don't miss it. I mean, I still do miss school a little. When I'm struggling to deal with my workload or if I get a bit upset during the college day, I miss my teachers and I miss knowing the system inside-out. Other than that, it's not that bad. And it's alright that I don't miss school, I'm not betraying myself by admitting that.

I always seemed to have this belief that by missing school, I'd somehow be betraying myself/school/my teachers. Stupid, right? Well it's how I thought, and I realise now that it was a pretty silly outlook, but it was the one I had nonetheless...and it's one that's ensured that my first half term at college has been, well, less than smooth. Leaving school is a huge thing, and no matter which way I look at it, I don't think I could have acted any differently when handling it...but I'm no longer at school, I'm at college, and it's alright that I enjoy myself and actually begin to forget some of the little details of school that are no longer important...

I don't need to remember which room every teacher was in when I left, I don't need to remember my timetable and I don't even need to remember my teachers' names...but I do want to remember them. It's about choosing what to carry forward with me and what I can forget. I'm choosing to remember what I learnt, the memories I made and the people who inspired me, and that's great, that's fantastic, but I'm also choosing to leave behind the things that I don't want to remember and cloud over my life...and that's equally as great and fantastic.

I get up on a Monday, go to college, come home...and the system repeats itself until the end of the day on Friday. That's how it works, and that's how my life is. It's my routine, it's my normal, and slowly...it's starting to feel normal too. That's pretty much all I have to say on the subject to be honest, but it's a pretty important realisation for me. Basically, it's alright that college is my new normal and school isn't. That's it.

College is even kinda fun. Yep, I said it. Fun. I've made friends with a girl in my form, Chloe, who is also in my English class and choir, and she's really nice and we have a lot in common. When I started college, I didn't know a single person in my form, and that was the most worrying thing about college for me. Now? I talk to Chloe a lot...she even came and sat with me in a free we share when she didn't know where else to go. Maybe she was using me a little, but I really don't care. It shows something, and I like that.

And then there's my English class. Unlike at GCSE, when I really didn't like the class, I love the class. There isn't a single person in there who I don't like. Everybody seems to just get along, and I know that it's down to Jonathan (one of our two teachers) making us do so much group work. I recognised that a long while back and I'm actually incredibly thankful for it, because it means that I walk into my English room and feel happy. You can't put a price on that kind of thing. My Psychology class is equally as fun. I don't like everybody in there, but my teacher is pretty awesome and, as a whole, the class is good.

These things, they're new and they're scary, but they're also exciting and fun if we're willing to let them be. And you know what, I reckon that's the trick to everything: recognise the fear, and conquer it. (I know those points aren't exactly linked, but I think it's true regardless).

Besos
Rachel


Friday 22 October 2010

Hell in several contexts...

"It'S HELL in the Niger Delta" - I should probably have that tattooed on my forehead. I've just completed two days campaigning for Amnesty International's Shell Hell Campaign within my college. We had petitions and a pretty cool handprinting stall yesterday too. I'm not sure of the total number of signatures, but we had over 350 last time I counted at around 12pm today so I'm sure we'll have got quite a few more since then.

I got to help out with some current friends and some pretty awesome people that I'm slowly getting to know as well, so being a part of things was quite fun. I got to work on my confidence by going round every table in the learning café and asking people if they were interested in signing the petition, so that was good. I did realise something though: students fit into two categories - 1) actually caring about the world; 2) caring about nothing but themselves (though of course if they were impoverished and living in inhumane conditions, I reckon they'd have something to say about it...). Not only that, but they find this lack of basic human rights amusing. Yes, amusing. Ay ay ay...

College is still quite hellish, but it's slowly getting better. My tutor is pretty mental and likes telling me things such as ''your aim is to do the worst piece of work you've ever done" and "I want you to go to Student Exec and get them to start up a Dodgy Knees Club". He does give good advice though, so the humour is balanced out with sane comments too. I had an odd conversation with him and the Acting Principal yesterday morning about ''the ability to see the wood for the trees". It concluded with the AP spotting me in the common room about two hours later and asking me if I could see the wood for the trees yet. I probably responded with ''er, yeah, I think so...'' then shuffled off back behind the Amnesty stall.

My Psychology teacher has helped me quite a lot too. He's also a bit mad (though he's a Psych teacher, I can let him off for it a bit easier) but again, he's very good at giving advice. He decided to spend half an hour after college ended on Wednesday talking to me about how I was, what I wanted to do at uni and what it's like being a teacher. That, combined with a particularly moving comment my school Head of Year said at the Awards Evening last night, helped me to realise what I want and that I shouldn't let anything get in my way. He (Psych teacher) also ended an email to me with a smiley face earlier, how can you not like someone who does that?

It was my GCSE Awards Evening last night. I won three special awards - High Achiever, Outstanding Achievement (from Governors) and Outstanding Contribution To the Life of the School. I had to go up on stage so many times that the teacher responsible for ushering us all onstage told me "You don't need me, you've done this before". It was nice to see everyone again for one last time and I feel like I can finally move on from school now I'm no longer tied to it in the same way that I still have been since starting college. I'm not going to spend ages talking about it, because the things that I took from the evening are personal and there is a line between what I do want to write about and what I want to keep personal. It did spur me on to email my Psychology teacher thanking him for the talk we had after college though.

Have a lovely weekend, and ensure that you make room for some ''you time'' (as my tutor AND Psychology teacher both told me today...)

Besos
Rachel


"It's hard to take courage. In a world full of people you can lose sight of it all." - Cyndi Lauper - True Colors

Friday 8 October 2010

If I lay here...

...if I just lay here. Would you lie with me and just forget the world? I don't quite know, how to say, how I feel.

I always liked this song. Now, I love this song. It just symbolises two things that I know I will always remember.

1) Slow dancing to it at prom with Eliza. Whenever I hear it, I can be right back in that moment, dancing, singing and laughing with her and our other friends and not giving a damn about anything else in the world.

2) Singing it very loudly in the back of a minibus with 5 other girls in Croatia. It was during our final journey, our final half hour on expedition. We'd all been sleeping for most of the journey from Starigrad to Split Airport, but we all woke up around the same time when we were nearing Trogir (the closest, most lively town to Split) and the driver (a lovely woman who only looked about 21) turned the radio on. Throughout the week, whenever we'd been in the minibuses, we'd had an English-Croatian channel on. The signal/reception was horrific all week, we never managed to get through a full song without it breaking up and us missing parts. We pulled up to some traffic lights in Trogir and sat in traffic for a few minutes, it was quite bad because of a lorry up ahead, I recall. Chasing Cars came on the radio and all 6 of us instantly joined in singing along. Our driver turned the radio up because she could tell we all liked the song. And, without any pauses or moments of stopping, we all sung along for the entire song. I can never tell the story and do the moment the justice it deserves. There was just something that happened while we were all merrily singing along that sticks with me. We were absolutely exhausted and we just wanted to get on the plane and go home, but we all came alive for the first time that day. Some of our best moments were spent during bus journeys and I'm so thankful to have a memory that will always remind me of that.

Why have I just said all of that? You may well ask, I know I would be... I had a pretty bad morning this morning. It began with another awful Spanish lesson, was followed up by an hour spent uploading video footage for my CoPE video without the rest of the group I'm working with, and ended with me sitting in the common room with Fern and Keyana trying not to burst into tears. There are TVs in the common room that play random music (previously selected on the jukebox I think). Chasing Cars came on and, for a brief moment, I was dancing at prom then back sitting in a minibus in Trogir traffic.

I'm so glad that so many of my memories of Croatia (and school) link to very random every day occurances. Sometimes, in the midst of everything that's going on, something will just remind me of Croatia and I'm instantly reminded of how much I went through there and how much I've learnt. I'm not saying that this always happens right when I need it, but when it does, it's the biggest help I could receive. It's the small things, such as this morning. I had to carry three reasonably heavy bags across my village to the bus stop. My natural reaction to anything like this was always "I hate my life!", but this morning...I just found myself going "You carried three times this in Croatia up a mountain and back down again, what's the point in complaining?"

I used to always expect too much from life, from my friends and family etc. Over the summer, I've learnt to expect nothing, and appreciate the little details that everybody else misses. If you start complaining about the world, you miss the fun in it.

Besos
Rachel


"I can smell burning...am I on fire?!" - Catherine Drayton during our final night as happy campers

Thursday 7 October 2010

I Am Conjugating

OK...so at this moment in time, technically I'm studying vocabulary, but either way you still don't really know what I'm talking about. So, in short, I'm talking about the S word...

Spanish

I used to love studying Spanish. It was the one subject that got me through the day at school. Now I'm at college? It's the one subject that ruins my day. I'm assuming you can see my dilemma...

I mean...everybody knows that Ser is used for professions, nationalities (note: I just spelt that 'nacional'... I hate being a languages student sometimes) etc and Estar is used for conditions, illnesses, emotions etc, right? It's incredibly simple to conjugate irregular verbs and memorise all verb forms, right? It's positively easy to have full spontaneous conversations about Live 8, right? Wrong.

Did I think AS Level Spanish would be easy? No. Did I think I'd enjoy it? Yes. Am I enjoying it? No. It's a ridiculous circle that seems to go on forever. Even being a pessimist hasn't prepared me well for the hideous fact that Spanish is currently the most horrible thing I know of. You know what's more frustrating? I always LOVED it. Always. For the past three years of studying it, I have never lost my enthusiasm for it. And now, when it's more important than ever? Ugh...

I don't think there's a real technique to studying languages...particularly Spanish...you just have to study in the way that works best for you. But what do you do when the way that works best for you is the complete opposite of the way the teacher likes you to study? Do you go ahead and use your own methods or do you force yourself into doing what your teacher wants, even if you know it's having no positive effect on your learning?

As odd as it sounds, I'd never met a Spanish person until I met our teacher, Ester, so it's pretty odd just getting used to talking to somebody who is actually Spanish. There are obvious advantages to my teacher being from Spain, the main one being that she's fluent...so there's no consulting of gigantic dictionaries to find words when students need them. Her accent is much purer than that of an English person teaching Spanish, so it's easier to pronounce words correctly. She obviously has a good knowledge of her country. I could go on listing advantages, but they'd probably become a bit silly and make no sense. The glaring disadvantage is that she never chose to study Spanish, so there's a general lack of enthusiasm during lessons that was constantly present at GCSE. It's hard to be enthusiastic and passionate about something so difficult when the teacher has never been in your position. Yes, obviously she learnt English...but it's different.

On the plus side, I got through today's lesson without wanting to cry and/or quit college so clearly things are slowly improving. I'm hoping that it'll slowly get back round to being fun and that I'll find my enthusiasm again. I'm highly doubting it at the moment, but I'm hoping for it nonetheless.

(At least I got in a few good adverbs during this post...my English Language teacher would be impressed ;P)

Besos
Rachel


"When we stand in the face of the world falling down, in your hands you hold the pen. What's your answer for the end?"

Friday 1 October 2010

My School Prom

I just watched 'My School Prom' on iPlayer and couldn't help but get a bit emotional at it. It seemed to bring out a whole array of emotions that I'd hidden away when I left school. Looking back, the leaving period was the most emotional time of my life. However sad that may sound, it's true. It was, and I'm not going to downplay that fact.

Seeing the people in the show getting oh-so-excited about prom and then watching their own journeys reminded me all too much of my own. There was always that underlying fear of the future, but it was always masked by the joy of the present, the joy of prom, the joy of leavers' day etc. The build up to leavers' day and prom was immense. Everybody talked about it, everybody lived off the fact that they were coming for about a month, really. It never really occured to me at the time that it's never going to happen again. It has now. For the first time, I've just realised that school really is over. Forever. That's it now.

So, yeah, watch it if you haven't had your school prom yet, because I imagine it'll be very exciting/interesting/it'll make you want your prom to be tomorrow. Don't watch it if you already have, because it'll either make you depressed or make you wish you still had that entire period of time in your life to look forward to.

Besos
Rachel


"When the curtain falls for one last time and closes out the show, marching left, right, left, another step. Keep smiling as you go." - Needtobreathe

Beginning

I went to see my new college form tutor today. I've actually been to see him several times this week, but today was especially significant. The first time was after I had a semi-nervous breakdown over Spanish, the second was because he arranged to see me, today was again because he arranged to see me. None of that is really relevant, but he said something that a) surprised me and b) amused me:

"You can come to me at anytime, even if it's just to moan about something."

I responded with "you'll be fed up of me by the time I leave", which is probably true, but that's the inner pessimist in me coming out. He then repeated himself, saying "You can moan to me about anything". It made me think about how different college is in comparison to school. At school, I moaned to my form tutor a lot, my parents always used to tell me that she was there for me to talk to when I had a problem, and she was always amazing when it came to making me see things from a different perspective. I'd go as far as saying that I don't know anybody who gives advice as well as she does. But, and this is something that I feel almost uncomfortable saying, my new tutor, so far, seems exactly the same (except a) he's a man and b) he's not her).

I realised earlier that I was finding it weird barely seeing my tutor, because I'm SO used to seeing my school tutor every day (every day for 5 years, basically). I always expected that I'd find it hard to go to him if I had a problem, because it took me a long time to be able to let myself do that with my school tutor...but it hasn't taken me long at all. If I've left school with anything that I didn't have when I started it, I've definitely left with a hell of a lot more confidence.

Speaking of confidence, I joined a choir two weeks ago. Yes, an actual choir. Me. I'd have never done that in school because I was never confident enough while the school still had a choir (it seemed to disappear every other year then come back again). The smallest things can be the biggest victories, can't they?

I've kind of given up on maintaining high school friendships. I've realised that 'what will be, will be' and that if I'm supposed to be friends with people, I will be. So far, things are going well and we all seem to be holding it together while also making new friends and getting used to the fact that this is our life now. College. 7 hours a day. 5 days a week. It's hard, yes, I'm not going to lie about that. We've jokingly formed a club of people who are depressed about college. Thankfully, I seem to be slowly leaving that club now. I'm getting on with it, there's not much more that I can do. I came home today almost wishing that today was Thursday, and tomorrow Friday, because today was the best day I've had in about two weeks and I didn't really want the week to end while it had the potential to get better.

In other news: my blog finally has a purpose again! My posts are no longer me trying to find something to fill the posts with.

I've also decided to end my posts in a slightly different way from now on..enjoy ;)

Besos
Rachel


"No need to try to look into the future, when you still haven't dealt with the past." - Tim Minchin

Monday 19th July - 6:27pm, account of final two days

I slept in the tent with just Lauren on Thursday night. Jemma and some of the others slept outside. Just after we went to bed, someone shouted that Catherine was being peed on by a toad and Slaven and Jemma found it hilarious. Slaven was laughing and saying he had never seen it before. When we got up in the morning, there wasn’t enough for breakfast because certain people had just been helping themselves again. I ended up having crisps with Shannon. Lauren and Natalie were chefs. We packed our bags and tents and put them into the jeep and we got into kayaks and went for about half an hour to a place where we then got changed. I was in a kayak with Margaret which was a bit annoying but it did mean that I was with someone who could kayak well and I did push myself hard to try and impress her rather than be a bit lazy and rely mostly on her.

When we stopped kayaking we had a really short walk to a bar where we got changed into dry clothes. I borrowed 10 Kuna from Lauren so I could buy a drink then me, her, Shannon and Natalie got on a bus to go to the Starigrad campsite. We had a really nice discussion on the bus about what we’d learnt and what we thought about the experience. It was good because we all spoke honestly and we seemed to share similar experiences on stuff such as Lauren said she didn’t think we’d get along which I thought too. It was weird being that honest with somebody but somehow it also felt normal/natural.

Back at Starigrad, we put up tents then we went gift shopping. It was nice to spend some time being civilized and doing something that felt normal. Sam held a collection and we all chipped in to buy gifts for Slaven and Margaret. We got Margaret a mug with a map of Croatia on it and we got Slaven a bandana because he has lost one while on expedition with us. When we finished shopping, me and Lauren went to get showered and tried to make ourselves look presentable for the meal out. We snuck into the caravan site showers because they were apparently nicer than the other showers. I definitely got close to Lauren over the last few days which I really liked. We also went and bought postcards for everybody to sign for Slav and Margaret in place of a thank you card.

Everybody really enjoyed the last meal. We went to a pizza/pasta place. I was sat next to Natalie on my left, Lauren on my right and Slaven opposite. Miss Morris and Parko presented everybody with an “award” which was a bracelet bought at a campsite shop and me and Jacob won them for when our kayak capsized because Miss Morris found it hilarious. After we all got our awards, Jacob (team leader) stood up and presented Slav and Margaret with their gifts. Everybody was laughing and joking and lots of pictures were taken including two full group shots.

When we got back to the campsite we all went down to the beach area near the hotel and hung out there for a while. Slaven joined us too and we both laughed at a random woman dancing by herself rather wildly. Lauren decided she wanted to go to bed so I went too. We had just settled into bed when we started to get harassed by some random German boy. We ended up being harassed by several of them until Margaret came out and shouted at them. Me, Lauren and Miss Morris ended up going back down to the beach to get the others then we went to bed.

The next morning, we all got up ridiculously early and everybody was ready to leave at 8am but the buses were 15 minutes late which amused us because usually we were the late ones. On the way to the airport I was in a bus with Lauren, Natalie, Shannon and Izzy although we spent most of the time sleeping until we got close to Split. We passed through a town called Trogir and a market and we all discussed how we expected our expedition to be more like buying food from a market.

In the airport, we said goodbye to Slaven and the other bus drivers which was really weird and then we went to check in. There was a problem because Richard had never bothered to inform the airport that we’d have extra kit bags on the way home so I had to empty the majority of my big rucksack so one of the kit bags could go through as part of my baggage. I was a bit annoyed about it because I got volunteered into doing it and Margaret was useless as usual.

It was really dull waiting in the airport but it went quite quickly. We all camped out next to a wall underneath the flight board. The flight was OK, I was in 23A but I swapped with Catherine so I was actually in 23C because she wanted the window seat. Jemma was in between us. When we landed in Heathrow, we collected our bags and my big rucksack got filled again. Miss Morris was really supportive about it and kept telling me it’d be alright. We then met up with a World Challenge man to hand over kit and also Jasmine’s dad who picked her up because they were flying to Portugal the next day. We then said goodbye to Margaret and we went to get the coach home (which was also late). When we got back to school it was about 9:40pm and we were greeted by parents, Miss Bolton, Mr O’Brien and his daughter.

Since being home, I’ve slept a lot and have started to believe in myself more. I miss the times we spent as a group, Slaven's random stories and the water of the Zrmanja River for definite and I’ve been pining for a campfire quite badly. I also miss the coach journeys. I feel like I’ve changed and become more relaxed. I also feel like what I want from life has changed too.

Friday 16th July - 8:00am, Muškovci

Yesterday morning we all got up and Jacob and I made breakfast. We then made sandwiches and got shouted at by some of the others for being slightly late. It wasn’t our fault though because people were late turning up for breakfast so we couldn’t just get on with lunch until breakfast was totally over. When the bus arrived it was playing Misery by Maroon 5 which cheered up my morning and although I probably shouldn’t have, I stuck around by it until the song was over. We then kayaked down (up?) the Zrmanja River and also to the River Krupa. We stopped for lunch by a beautiful waterfall but there was a problem with the lunch because a barrel containing half of the sandwiches and the crisps hadn’t been brought on a kayak so some people didn’t get sandwiches. Margaret annoyed me again because she ate Joe’s sandwich then tried to tell me that I’d told her to so I was really unimpressed by her. Thankfully, someone from the kayak trip behind us had spotted the barrel, brought it and given it to Slaven so I could hand out the sandwiches about 20 minutes later. I was with Jacob in a kayak and the first part of the journey was relatively smooth however we managed to capsize twice within five minutes during the second part of the journey. Basically, Jemma and Catherine hit a tree and were hanging out of their kayak and even though Jacob paddled backwards, our kayak drifted and hit them. They ended up staying in the kayak and Jacob and I ended up underneath ours. I managed not to panic much but it was hard lifting it off me. It was pretty horrible considering I’m scared of being plunged into water and I ended up having to grip Miss Morris and Mr Parkinson’s kayak while Margaret pulled me back into mine and Jacob’s. My life jacket (that did absolutely nothing to help me float at all…) got stuck though so Joe had to jump out of his kayak and help me again which I was really thankful for. We then capsized again when we hit Chris and Sam who got stuck at the top of a small rapid and again, we ended up in the water and they stayed in their kayak. It was funnier this time though because I ended up just standing on a rock laughing and I think even Slaven was amused by it this time.

We arrived at the campsite relatively quickly so people just relaxed for a few hours in the water and around the table. Most people went jumping off the big waterfall but I stayed at the campsite and bathed my leg in the water because it was stinging from when the boat capsized for the first time and I scraped it on several rocks. Margaret decided to have a go at me because I moved all of the barrels except two - because the other two had belongings on so I didn’t want to move belongings too - and apparently “all of the barrels had to be moved as soon as we arrived” which nobody had actually told us.

Jacob and I cooked tea and I kind of lost the will to live at several points because he had problems cooking the soup (though it was Jacob who was supposed to be doing that anyway...) We also had problems with the spaghetti because our water source is 20 minutes away so everything was slow. Natalie helped calm me down when I was starting to get upset by it all. Some people said they liked it and Miss Morris said it was the best meal we’ve had so hopefully it was worth it. I was proud of myself for cooking from scratch considering the circumstances.

After dinner we discussed what we’ve learnt about ourselves while we’ve been here. I realised that I’ve actually learnt a lot and I feel like I’ve faced a lot of fears that I didn’t think I’d face. I challenged myself with the trekking, kayaking and staying away from home and I feel like I’ve grown in confidence. We also talked about how I was the only girl from my year and Miss Morris talked about how I’ve probably come on the biggest journey because of it.

We all toasted marshmallows around the campfire last night and Slaven played his guitar for a few hours. It was genuinely one of those moments where there was nowhere else I would prefer to be. It made me realise that I’d kind of fallen in love with the idea of a campfire. Today we’re kayaking then going back to the Starigrad campsite then going sightseeing then out for our group meal.

Wednesday 14th July - 10:31pm, Kaštel Žegarski

Breakfast at the hut this morning was rubbish. Most other people had beanfeast Bolognese but I had a breakfast bar I had leftover from yesterday. I was packed and organised pretty quickly so I had enough time to chill out and just do nothing for a while. Catherine didn’t want her Bolognese so Sam made her eat a bit of a pine cone which was hilarious. I bought three bookmarks for mum, dad and Jude from the stall outside the hut as well.

I walked really well today and didn’t cry or panic at all. Margaret had us playing an aeroplane game before we set off where she sketched a plane on the ground and we had to stand either in the engine, wings, passenger or luggage depending on how we felt we were within the group. I stood between passenger and luggage but Louis said I should be in the engine because of how I got on with it the best I could. It was nice of Louis to say it because it made me believe that I hadn’t just annoyed people which I thought I had and it definitely gave me confidence. I only stopped for stuff like laces or if others stopped too. I was often ahead of others and walking quickly. It was almost a good thing that I struggled so much on the way up because I hadn’t paid attention to the surroundings at all and so the walk down was refreshing and I got to enjoy the sight much more than the others did. When we were walking down one of the parts towards the end, a German woman behind us slipped over and was screaming in pain so me, Jemma, Catherine and Jacob stopped and Catherine went back to see if anybody needed a phone because we could’ve got the satellite phone from Margaret. The man with her who spoke English said they were fine thanks and he rushed off down to get mountain rescue. We met up with everybody else at the shop and chilled out for a while and had ice creams. I bought a bracelet, pens and a keyring.

On the final stretch of path, I was walking with Jacob when we came across Catherine, Jemma and Sam. Jemma said that Catherine was close to fainting and I knew that Jacob felt ill, Sam had already tried to find Margaret and it was impractical for Jemma to go on ahead with her diabetes so I walked on ahead and pushed on hard to the group. It was mostly in the sun with minimal shade and I had no map and my huge bag so it was really tough but I just kept thinking about Catherine and kept going with only two really brief stops for water. There was one point where I could have turned three different ways so I had to just guess and thankfully I picked the right way. I made the journey in about 20 minutes which I’m pretty sure was really good considering. When I reached the group and told them what was happening, Louis and Joe rushed off and ran to them and Miss Morris and Jasmine went off with rehydration sachets. Slaven went off too. I was really disappointed in Margaret because she didn’t even look at me or move when I explained the problem - even though that’s her job as team leader. Ugh! Jacob wants to complain about her, I'm not surprised really...

When we got back to the Starigrad campsite I had to do the shopping with Izzy, Chris, Natalie and Jacob and we got loads of food and stuff that we needed such as cooking equipment. We had way too much food so Jacob and I had to put some back and I think the woman at the till guessed that we were stressed and she knocked some money off the shopping so that we didn’t have to go into Friday’s budget which we would have had to do.

We then got on the buses to the wild campsite. I was on a bus with Jemma, Lauren, Shannon, Jacob, Sam and Margaret and it was a fun journey. Margaret slept for the journey so she stayed out of our fun which I was also glad about. We all had a laugh which was nice because we hadn’t really been doing that.

We’re now at the wild campsite and are going river kayaking tomorrow and will be moving to another new campsite for the evening. At the moment I’m sat round the campfire with Lauren, Chris, Jacob, Jemma, Joe, Oliver and Shannon and I’m listening to my iPod while Joe is killing ants and Shannon is trying to carve her name into the bench. Natalie has been throwing up all evening so I ended up helping her and Chris with tea because she didn’t do much. Margaret left us to it this evening so Izzy led the meeting and it was much more relaxed without her there. Catherine can’t sleep because Jasmine’s bag has leaked and her stuff is wet. Everybody seems to be getting along well and mum sent me a text saying “Dad says you are a star” after I texted them about the Catherine thing. We have proper toilets here which we haven’t had at the mountain hut so people are in a better mood about that. I’m glad we do because the toilets at the hut were never clean and the smell made people feel sick towards the end.

Tuesday 13th July - 7:25pm, Mountain hut

I was on a top bunk last night and only Miss Morris and Margaret were as well so it was almost the exact opposite of sleeping in a tent. I was also almost on a proper bed which was a bonus. I woke up one of the earliest so I had chance to gather my thoughts before everybody else got up. I had a horrible chocolate and banana flapjack for breakfast because we were low on breakfast. Never liked banana...

We went trekking up a mountain earlier and I struggled at first but I was definitely better than yesterday although Margaret threatened me with flying home because I asked to stop and open my water bottle. How pathetic is that?! Her attitude towards our team is getting on my nerves so much, she seems to just dislike us a lot. Joe was really supportive this morning and most of the group were amazing. He even made me let him carry my bag for part of the way because he wanted me to be able to get up the mountain. Unlike Margaret, he encouraged me but also made it clear I needed to get on with it, Margaret just tended to shout at me and she wasn’t nice at all. I’m accountant tomorrow with Sam. We had pasta for tea and I got a wash in the stream near the hut. Normally, I’d never do that anywhere…but being here it just felt normal. I went with Catherine and Jemma and literally stood in a stream in my underwear and got washed even though Joe, Oliver and Louis were around somewhere making a dam. I don’t know why but I just didn’t care and it was really liberating.

Slaven has been keeping us sane and entertained - he’s definitely part of our group now and there’s just something about him that draws people to him. He always has really interesting stories to tell and listens to everything we say to him in a way that Margaret doesn’t seem to. I’m chef with Jacob on Thursday and I’m looking forward to having some responsibility because I’ve really missed it to be honest. At the moment I’m sat at a bench with Chris, Sam, Lauren and Jemma discussing the accounting and telling random stories. We’re also moaning and just getting our thoughts out and offloading what’s bothering us. I quite like that we’re doing it because I’ve missed just talking to people like this over the past day or two.