A Home-Schooler's Experience of a Sixth Form School

 The above is a random picture to really confuse you. Infer what you will.

Decisions, decisions! Recently I have been rather tossed... trying to decide what to do with my educational life.
I could either: study at home, go to college, go to sixth form or go live in a cardboard box by the side of the Thames.
It could be any of those, bar the last: (it would have to be a very comfortable cardboard box)
So, what to do?
Well, a couple of months ago I attended a spate of Open Days around the area....
I went to a university, a college, a girl's grammar school, a mixed grammar school.
Can't get more diverse than that :D

In the end I applied to a sixth form at a girl's (but mixed) grammar school. It was the only good one in the area. Last week I attended their open days on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

The first day I hated it. It was loud, noisy, everyone I spoke to swore every other sentence (something I am not used to) and I got lost. Quite a few times. Involving walking into the year 9's locker room by accident. Ouch. However, on the other hand: the lessons were really good and I enjoyed them, the teachers are all very nice, and I made a few friends.

The second day was not too much better. I spent it mostly thinking, can I face and will I cope, coming to this building every single day for the next two years, working and studying and doing homework and hearing gossip and eating gross school meals or squashed picnic lunches, basically in a secular enviroment? All for the sake of the experience and an easy way out to studying the subjects I most enjoy?

The third day was better. It was sunny, I had made friends, and I brought my own lunch. We did oil-painting in Art and composed character music in Music both of which I love doing. I'll also mention that some fellow students were talking about taking drugs, and that on the way home, some school boys knocked the window from the bus stop onto my head and found it funny. Then again, I had some really good conversations and a chance to witness to some of the friends I made. The atmosphere in the school is fun, friendly and hard-working, but just also very worldy.

So, that was my experience of a sixth form.
And I still have no idea wether I like... or hate it.
For a full picture, if I go to this sixth form, I will be able to stay at home and then catch the bus to it every day. Bearing in mind I will be having to pay for the bus.
The other alternative is staying at home or... going to college. I'll give you my impression of that college in a later post.
So yes, there are so many decisions that I'm facing. Am I scared? Yes. Terrified? Maybe even that. But I can trust.
Because in the end it's where God leads. He knows my future. He knows me. And that's the most important thing.

Herman the German (but it's a cake!) and a WEIRD coincidence...

You've heard of it, right? If you haven't, then by the time you've read this, my poor uneducated reader, you will! (Please don't let that put you off.)

Yes, yes, you're perfectly correct. It's the plastic container of bubbling dough, passed on by a desperate acquaintance... the friendship cake... it's Herman the German.

But, I hear you say, I thought he was your monkey?

He is!!

And here comes the weird coincidence. I was the only one on camp who to my knowledge had heard of the HtG cake version. And I wanted to call my monkey Horatio. Peer pressure forced me to call him Herman instead. And Herman rhymes with German so I suppose that was inevitable.

But that name was not original. It was already the name of a gloopy mixture.

Yet when I protested that I did not want my monkey named after a cake, no one believed me...

And weirdly enough, Herman the German was re-invented!!... as the name of a monkey.

My theory was that someone had heard of the cake, and so the name was floating around in the back of their mind, and popped up when I was looking for a nice name beginning with H.

But a-a-anyway, let's move onto the cake.

Right now I am wavering between abusing Herman with cynical wrath... or gushing about him in ecstatic praise.

On the one hand, we have been eating barely anything else all week.

On the other, he tastes rather... tasty.

Oh, please, you have to have heard of him! No? He's basically a mixture of sour dough handed to you in a container by a friend, usually desperate to get rid of him. You look after him for ten days (during which you become very fond of him), stir him to keep him producing bubbles, feed him milk and sugar and lumps of apple and cinammon and... well, numerous other things, and then at last, divide him into four and bake one of his babies.

It sounds rather gruesome, but it has a gorgeous end result.

The smell as it comes out of the oven... it's glorious. Really.

The other three parts, you pass on to your most devoted friends... or by the time you've finished with Hermie - anyone you can persuade to carry him away.

We've only just got rid of ours, after about four weeks worth of Herman clones. I'm rather sorry to see him go - he'd almost become a fixture - but on the other hand, I was beginning to worry about getting too fat.

So Herman got passed on to the populace.

I thought we were finally rid of him.

I then turned up at our Young People's Fellowship one evening, and guess what was on the snacks table? Slices of Herman.

And... wait for it, it gets much, much worse... My poor brainwashed (or Herman-washed) mother, told me this morning that she wanted to get him back from the friend we'd bestowed him to, so that she could pass it on to some interested family members!!

Those family members being people I will see in a relatively short amount of time...

I'm being haunted by Herman. I'd prefer the monkey.

A Tangle of Things... and Herman the German

Well hello again everybody!
I know its been rather a while since I last posted... I have a multimillion reasons for my neglect which I won't bore you with.
I'll instead get to the good stuff!
I spent the Easter Holidays... in Shropshire... on Easter Camp!!
We stayed at a youth hostel, in a tiny little village. It was really lovely, the wild, sweeping countryside... apart from a six chimney power station belching smoke on the other side of the hill. That's England for you.
The building was an old art-school, so with big rambling Victorian rooms and a huge staircase that you simply have to take the stairs three at time and whoop as you run down them...
Okay. I simply have to.
Well, the week was just amazing, as it always is!
We studied the Armour of God in the main talks, with informal discussion groups, bible studies in the morning, and prayer times for campers before breakfast - so it was pretty intensive!We learnt so much and had such an incredibly encouraging time.
We also went caving, did archery and the highlight of the week - laser paintballing.
AND - this is the most important part of the entire week, I think...
this little guy was made:

MEET: HERMAN THE GERMAN, sock monkey!!!!!
I need to add here that I am not responsible for his name. It was a unanimous decision that had nothing to do with me. I wanted him to be called Horatio, actually. But you know how once somethings been named, you just can't call it anything else? In this case, it was very annoying! But now it's stuck!

This was Herman in the making...

And now, of course, you'll want to know how to make one!!
You see I know these things...

 Sock Number 1

This is an absolutely awful picture diagram of how to make one. I'm sorry its only little but you can kind of get the idea I hope? The tiny little words in the bottom right hand corner read 'turn inside out before sewing', so basically turn the sock inside out before sewing and then back the right way to stuff it before sewing it up.

Sock Number 2

You can also customise your monkey! In this picture I demonstrated how you can chop off the ends of the paws to make ears, but you don't necessarily have to do this. Herman has bits of fluff for his ears. Another tip is putting a pipe cleaner in the tail, arms or legs, so that you can bend them as you want!

The afternoon we made these monkeys on camp, it was a girls only session, however the boys invaded and decided that they wanted to make one too...

... this unmentionable guy made a - I won't even call it a monkey - out of an old sock he had been wearing for the first part of the week. I was only told this after I had been admiring it. I then lost quite a chunk of my regard for it as I'm sure you'll understand.




      However, the result was this:

He was stuffed with plastic bags and his name is Spoon (for reasons I won't go into). Pretty impressive for a boy's sewing!

 Here displayed are some other colourful relations posing with Herman. There were just under twenty altogether, but I didn't get a picture of them all.

Anyway, unless you think that all we spent time on camp doing was making sock monkeys, I'll just add that this post was supposed to be sock monkey co-orientated!

They are so awesome though, aren't they!

Don't worry, I'll get over this obsession soon.

If you know of any other sock-thing ideas, please comment! And if you've made any sock monkeys please also comment, I'd love to see them!

I think I'm going to experiment making a monkey out of a baby sock, and turn it into a key ring or something. I made one for my sister with a age four to five sock and it only took me about forty minutes or so, they are so easy to make and so effective! Ah, I love these things :)

Blessings...

Yes, that is exactly how I am feeling right now... although hoping I don't actually look that bad in reality. :(
I have a streaming cold... and its JUST when I have so much going on!!
So - it is the perfect time to remember to count my blessings, its so easy to become ungrateful!
I'm so privileged, I have - a family who I love, lovely friends, a wonderful church, clothes and food and so many other things I don't deserve.
When I think of the millons of other children in this world, without homes, parents or things we take for granted, it makes me realise I really can't complain about a little common cold!
And it has its funny side...
I'm supposed to be recording a speaking test in Mandarin. Try pronouncing tones with a blocked nose... no kidding, its a joke!... ;)

The London Trip

So, I thought I'd just post the latest in my exploits...

Since January it feels like I have just been working, working, working... (of course), and so a little recreation and refreshment was needed!

Couple of days ago, met up with some friends in London and did a number of things which livened up the times of about thirty-odd Londoners; and a very happy guy in Camden.

I shall elucidate.

We went to Camden Market and haggled... I'm obviously the expert in haggling because my team came away with two items of wearable clothing for a fiver, reduced from... wait for it... twenty-five pounds!!

Thank you, thank you...

Of course. I will whisper in thine ear, that cheesy guy behind his stall was probably telling us porkies just to make us feel good, I can almost vouch for it that he got those clothes for two quid and made a three pound profit. You can tell by the cheshire grin.

However, it succeeded. It made us feel good.

And vice versa. 

So.

That's what haggling's about!

But I can't recount the triumphs without mentioning the failures. (You have to keep that balance, hm?)

One not-so-expert went up to a guy who was selling sunglasses for £5.

She said, 'Hmm, can't afford £5... not worth it... will you sell for £10?'

Well needless to say that that completely failed.

And SO cruel to the poor chap! His heart probably leapt to hear someone offering to buy his precious plastic sunglasses for double the price displayed! His pulse began to race; his low grey day suddenly rocketed into a golden sky.

And it was left to us to bring him back to earth: we walked hurriedly away...

But anyway. We can't all be genius.

Then, the Londoners...

Well, all I'm saying is, about thirty of them at some time in the day, reached a point where they noticed a peg hanging from their scarf/hood/handbag/coat... and read the epic words 'You've been Pegged... Pass it On!! :D' 

It made their day. Without a doubt.

Imagine the JOY it filled them with to discover that They Had Been Pegged!! By a group of cheerful and happy teenagers with nothing else to do (but they didn't know that).

What I want to know is, how many of them actually passed it on...

Were we caught? Ummm... only once! Over-protective guy with no sense of humour - well actually he did laugh in the end when he realised what it was!

The most hilarious was when a pegger crept up behind a couple who were having their photo taken. His actions have been immortalised forever.

a random photo of a pegger in action...

So, as you can see, my life has been rather interesting of late. These are just some scraps of it. You have heard... now Pass It On!!!....

Thoughts

I know this sounds corny, but... I have to say it...
...It is UNBELIEVABLE how fast this last year has gone!!!
I am positive time speeds up the older you grow. If I were a scientist I'd be working on a theory about that right now (thankfully I'm not. Could you imagine how boring this blog would be?!)
I haven't even had time to think about it until now... the holidays this year were pretty hectic. And epic. I lit my first firework and I didn't die!!! I didn't even burn my eyebrows!! so, yeah, ahem, moving on...
2011 has so many good memories, and so many special people in it - you know who you are!! <3 I rode on a powerboat for the first time, began the process that tries its level best to break teenager's brains into little bitty pieces (exams, for those who were wondering), ran around a field in my pjamas, published my first article and played a kazoo in a concert.
This year I'm facing the London Olympics, two years worth of igcse coursework in four months, five exams, youth camp in yorkshire, and becoming old enough to drive!!!!
But I'm not going to write anymore about this year, because if it goes like the last, my next post will be tellling you all about what happened in 2012...
Happy New Year guys!! :)

Anne of Green Gables

 When I have all the time in the world to blog, I can never think of anything to write; and then when I have a dearth of potential blog material I never have enough time to sit and write it out.
This is irony, apparently.
Well, this is one of the all-the-time-in-the-world-times so I thought I would do a quick little book review, just for a change :) (Such an original idea..)
I am currently re-reading the Anne of Green Gables series for the billionth time. They are the type of book you pick up and then have to carry on reading; corny I know, but it's physically true!
I grew up with Anne of Green Gables.
We were bosom friends and kindred spirits (back then, that is...) I used to desperately want red hair.
She ruined my childhood ideals. They could have been so innocent, so lofty. But no. She brought them down to the envies of red hair.
If only Anne had had a blog we would have all got bored of her... but alas this was not to be, and instead we are forced to like her and laugh over her and long for her to make up with Gilbert Blythe because we are all in love with him anyway and we know its going to happen so why prolong the suspense?!
So if you haven't read the books, read them. And if you have read them, read them again!!

(Was just wondering how I WOULD look with red hair... I think not)

Exercise - and of COURSE I'm not complaining...

(Lately the weather has been like this. And tomorrow I'm expected to jog in it! It's like running through a fog... It IS running through a fog, actually.)

Exercise? Why not?! It's as popular a topic as any. Very popular in fact, hence the naggings from parents and certain friends I could mention.
I thought I'd write about it since I do it so little. I'm not lazy (of course), its just that exercise is not a subject which fills me with enthusiasm.  Perhaps, mehopes, my blogged musings might inspire me...
Well, I actually went for a little jog to the postbox the other day, which incidentally is just down the street. People who saw me probably assumed I was being chased by a knife-wielding mugger.
Unsurprisingly, nobody offered assistance or even bothered to check if I needed it; there's society today for you!
I reached my destination wheezing like a dying fish and then forced myself to turn homeward immediately; since one of my reprehensible parents had told me that it was only when you were in pain that you were truly exercising. I think that is an unspeakable falsehood. Exercise is defined as 'improving your health' and I cannot believe anything is improving when you're hobbling along in agony. :(
So, I there I went in the style of an old, old lady. As a thought, I hope the old lady watching me from by the bus stop realised my manner was coincidental and a result of my exercise rather than a crude mimic. It's not good.
Well, all I can say is that maybe I should have asked for a treadmill for Christmas. Then at least I would be able to perfect my agonies unseen...
But it's not happening.
Apparently I am to go jogging with a friend tomorrow. A friend whos family win long-distance RACES and who go trotting 8 miles before breakfast. And who apparently is going to make me run 2 miles at least and who I know is going to watch me turn purple and will laugh in my face...
And I KNOW it will be foggy tomorrow...!

And Back Again...!

I cannot tell you what a relief it is to be able to write these words - without worrying about how many marks they are going to get!
Because that is what I have been doing for the past several months.
And until next year, I am never going to have to do that again!!
So yes, two exams are over, and I can begin to breathe once more.
Don't raise you eyebrows; I actually did stop breathing from stupendous horrorification at several points during the past three weeks.
The first paper of my first exam went pretty well... except that I fell asleep during the exam. Embarassing to say the least. :( It was the first paper of the Bible Knowledge O-Level (which by the way is fantastic - I recommend) and it gives you treble the amount of time you need to do the paper. Unless, of course, you write slower than a very (very) elderly snail. Obviously, the time slot has been created for people who write slower than elderly snails.
After painfully trying to write as slow as possible, to thought-process my answers in what felt like a ratio of years, I finished the paper with fifty minutes to go. So I decided to just look and look and look again over my answers to make sure they were as correct as I knew how. The sun was shining, the room was quiet, the inviligator was preoccupied so I didn't feel self-concious, and with my hand propped under my chin, I drifted into a doze. I opened my eyes to find the inviligator staring straight at me. That's when I felt self-concious. I bit my finger and sat it out.
Prior to the second paper I suffered a horrific attack of nerves, as instead of a one hour journey it took us THREE HOURS TO GET THERE, making me ONE HOUR LATE FOR MY EXAM.. it makes me capitalize just thinking about it. A frantic phonecall revealed I would still be allowed to take it, as I was the only candidate sitting it there. I rushed into the exam room and the invigilator smiled benignly and said, 'There's no need to feel stressed...' I draw a veil.
So, on the whole, that one went pretty well.
A week later, I sat my English Language exam.
To cancel out any repeats of the previous horrendous episode, I stayed nearby at a Bed and Breakfast the night before. This disreputable place was a supposedly four star establishment.. and I must say, it was very nice and elegant.. however, we were bonged into a newly built basement room down a flight of newly installed wooden stairs.
The room had no signal, no tv, no wifi connection, and when we tried using the beautifully decorated en suite, the toilet seat slid off its hinge and catapulted its unfortunate occupant onto the floor. Not good.
This was not its only problem however. Oh no.
No, it was after a perfect cooked breakfast the next morning, when we went to the room to collect our things and hurry to the exam... and the door would not open.
The key turned in the lock, but the door refused to budge.
In general I have nothing against doors. They can be prestigious to look at, they can be interesting colours, they usually keep you safe.
But this one I hated quite frantically.
I knocked and banged and kicked.
We called the girl and she knocked and banged and kicked and also pounded.
She called a handyman.
He was unavailable.
Time was ticking... but my heart wasn't ticking. This was one of the points at which I stopped breathing: my heart had died, dropped like a stone, and drowned somewhere around my feet.
I sent up an arrow prayer and put my shoulder to the door... and, somehow... it opened!!
God is so good, that there was amazingly no traffic on the way to the exam and I made it with fifteen minutes to spare!!
For my last paper, I stayed in a B & B again, but this was a different one, just a little further down the road. The landlady was a lovely motherly woman who told us that the rush hour traffic was unbelievable and that she would serve breakfast at seven thirty to give me plenty of time.
I went to bed happy.
The next morning, we got up slightly late but in good time, and ordered breakfast. The breakfast took a quarter of an hour arriving, we dashed for the car and onto the road... and found the traffic at a standstill... with twenty minutes till the exam was due to begin.
Three minutes to go, and I got there.
So all in all, taking those two exams was a crazy, terrifying but also enjoyable and amazing experience.
I'm just wondering.... how am I going to cope, taking FIVE of them next year?!

The Red Rose

This is a beautiful story that I heard the other day...

It was England; it was wartime.
Somehow, through a friend, a young man and lady had started writing to each other. They wrote often, even whilst he was away fighting at the warfront, and through their letters they found they shared a bond, and became very close.
One day the man wrote asking for a photo. The lady refused.
After a while he repeated his request, but she again refused.
Then finally, just after the war was over, they decided to meet each other.
The man asked for a photo, so that he would know what she looked like when he came to meet her at the train station.
She refused, but told him she would wear a red rose, so that he would know who she was.
The day came; and the man stood waiting on the platform as the train drew in. It crawled to a stop with a whirl of smoke, and several passengers alighted.
As he stood on the platform he saw a young dark-haired woman wearing a lovely green coat, walking towards him, and straightaway he thought: 'It must be her!' But when he looked, he saw that she was not wearing a rose; and she passed him by and walked out of the station.
Then he turned, to see an old lady with a stick, hobbling towards him. In the lapel of her brown tweed jacket she wore a red rose.
His heart fell, but he thought to himself, I must be polite, I will take her to the restaurant and I will make sure she has a wonderful time. I must not show my disappointment.
And he greeted her with a smile, and took her arm and led her out of the station towards the waiting taxi.
Then, just as they stepped out of the station onto the pavement, the old lady turned to him and said: 'My dear boy, as we were nearing the station, a young lady in a green coat told me that you were waiting to meet her here, and she gave me this rose and asked me to wear it.' She looked at him, and smiled.
'She told me it was because she wanted to see how you would treat her when she was old.'