croissantkatie

I got back from Portugal on Thursday and promptly slept a great deal. Portugal was good, if too hot for me. It was certainly interesting to go away with such a large group of people who I'm not related to. It took a while for us to learn to live with each other, mainly surrounding the issue of food. Somehow, a large number of my friends were unaware that I ate a large amount. This is partly to do with the fact that I often ate little in school due to feeling ill. One day my life will revolve fractionally less around food, but that's a fair way off. The beach was only about a two minute walk away from our apartments, so for that I have to take my hat off to Hattie who did all the research and organisation surrounding the holiday. We built a rather nice fort system, complete with reservoir, reserve reservoir (Max pointed out that the inhabitants couldn't drink it due to it being salt water, the rest of us insisted that the population knew how to desalinate the water), administrative centre (we gave them public libraries and a free education system) and a poor district which was outside the main city walls but inside the outer walls (complete with union head quarters and numerous brothels). We also built a hill fort and buried numerous people. My friends are kind of crazy. I enjoyed parts and didn't enjoy others. But then again, I tend to feel that way about most holidays. My friend Alex though gets a special award for knowing exactly when to offer anyone a cup of tea. His super power is knowing when to make tea. It is quite possibly the most awesome super power ever.

Also, note to self: next time I go on holiday, make sure that my friends are aware of my issues with heat, as well as my mental health issues. Everybody was really understanding when I told them that I didn't feel up to something emotionally, but less so when I said that I couldn't go out because it was too hot. I really dislike heat stroke.

When I got back from holiday, it was to be greeted by vast amounts of bunting. This was because, whilst I was away, my village was hosting a week long music event in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support called Fringe in the Fen. This confused me partly because just the other week, in a nearby village, there was a Fen Edge festival, which struck me as being rather "yay! we're not part of the fens! we're on the edge, get it right." And yet now we're part of the fens. Cue inbred sterotype jokes here. I went to the final performance of the week though and it was beautiful. A concert band, a chamber orchestra and a combination of local choirs performed. I had to come home at the interval as I was exhausted, but what I heard was amazing. And then I got to watch the firework finale from my bedroom window. I had been trying to sleep, but it was rather loud so I figured I might as well watch it. Rather nice.

Also, as a last little note. I saw Deathly Hallows yesterday. McGonagall is my absolute favourite.

I am currently bogged down in a pile of history coursework. I am not enjoying it. At all.

But I am trying to be positive, so I will write about my recent trip to Bruges! I went for three days from Sunday to Tuesday with my Mum and Dad. It was awesome. I had the most amazing hot chocolate and in general ate lots and lots. The ground was covered in two inches of hailstones when we arrived. It was like walking on tiny balls of polystyrene which was rather weird. Very slippy! We went on a boat trip because the weather didn't look too bad, and then promptly got bucketed on. It was still good fun though. We mainly spent time wandering around, looking in shops and stopping in cafes. Although we did go to visit the Church of Our Lady briefly. The atmosphere in there was rather odd though. Part of it was used to display art and house a museum, whilst other areas were still in use as a church. As a result, it ended up feeling like neither. I haven't been to a church in about two years though, but it just didn't feel comfortable to me. Overall, a really fun trip, even if I ended up incredibly tired. The only real downside was getting stuck outside the port of Dover for 2 and a half hours due to a force 8 gale.

My brother got back from a school trip to New York thos afternoon, and very kindly brought me back a fridge magnet to add to my collection. I am running out of space to put them on my fireplace though, and may have to put some on the actual fridge. When I move out, my fridge will not my bare!