My School Story

Yo! Yup, the second post of the week but only because I didn't post at all last week. Again, sorry about that... However, I'll probably start poosting more ofter cause I have lots to say and tons of free time.

So today's post is about school life. Now some people love school and some people absolutely hate it and I think that's down to the fact that different people have different experiences with school. I am currently about to go into Year 11, (I think that's grade 10 in America?) and that means the dreaded GCSE's. Having already completed one of my two GCSE years, I find myself dreading the prospect of having certain subjects this year. I took Business and Economics, Art and Drama as my 3 electives and then I also do all the standard subjects plus triple science and French. I don't have a problem with French because I am quite good at it but with nearly ALL my other subjects, I find myself hating something about them. If I'm not stressing over how many pieces if artwork I have to do per week, I'm almost definitely stressing over my English assessment or my Business essay, and I HATE it. Sometimes it gets to me and I'll have a mental breakdown but most of the time I chose to ignore it until it's too late.

I've never had the best experiences in school and I went through a stage of depression when I was in Y7. It wasn't the lessons that made me depressed but more the people I was hanging out with. Now don't get me wrong, all my friends in Y7 were lovely and I am best friends with one of them now however, for some reason, I found myself dreading breaktime and lunch because I really didn't want to see them. It might have been the fact that some of my friends were always fighting or the fact that two of my friends were so childish and would find something dirty to laugh about in nearly everything you said. I know it doesn't seem like much but it just got way too much for me. I cried a lot and tried to pass it off as stress to my family but deep inside I was just confused at why I was feeling as sad and linely as I was even though I had a massive group of friends.

As I went into Y8, myself and 5 other friends separated from the bigger friendship group and suddenly I found that I wasn't as depressed as I had been in Y7. Now Y8 was definitely the easiest year in terms of lessons and test and stuff like that but I found it the hardest in terms of socialising. I found that I'd get anxious at the prospect of going to even the smallest of gatherings outside of school. Now I don't have anxiety attacks or anything like that but I did panic quite a lot about small things. Sometime whilst I was in Y8, I searched the internet for how to deal with anxiety and I came across a blog that told me to try and put myself in situations I wouldn't normally be comfortable with and firce myself to to go for it. This really helped me and I started to be less scared if doing things outside of school.

Now Y9 was my happiest year because I met my bestest friend and I had a small group of really good friends that I still hang out with to this day. My main group of friends had gone from over 10 back in Y7 to just 4 and I preferred it this way. I felt that I had finally found the people that I could tell anything and totally be myself around. I was still friends with eeryone else but I just hung out with them less. Lessons in Y9 were easy but then came the process of chosing our GCSE's. Now I'm not gonna go into detail but I think the teachers piled way too much pressure on us about it and I was not in a good mind set. I was worried that I'd make the wrong decision and screw up the rest of my life. I didn't turn out like that and I'm glad.

Y10 wasn't really all that eventful. I was stressed from lessons. I found some I really hated and then I found some I loved. I made some really good friends from drama and I put myself forward for lits of opportunities.

It's the summer holidays right now and we only have a week before I go back for my final year or school and complete my story. The holidays have been great but I have to complain about the amount of English homework that has been piled on us. We have to complete an old english past paper, make a presentation on Work Experience and then answer 24 other questions each of which needs me to find 2 separate articles, highlight stuff and then answer an hour long question! And I have 24 of them!!!! I swear that much homework is agains the law. Or it should be.

Sorry, rant over. That was a long post, I'm sorry if it bored you. I'll have a new post out by next week, maybe sooner and yet again, thanks for taking your time to read this!

LucyLou (:

PS. Did you ever get stressed out over socialising like me?? Maybe I'm just an oddball... Byee!

Sun, Sea and Monopoly

Okay so I know that I said that this would be out early this week but it turns out that I couldn't use the internet in France and then I couldn't upload my photos so it got a bit annoying but I did manage to post it eventually even if this post is a bit later than planned... Sorry.

So I've just been to Aix-En-Provence, which is in the south of France, on holiday for a week.We always go every summer because my grandad has a house in Aix so it's very cheap to stay there because we don't have to pay for accommodation. Going to France is always my favourite part of the year - except for maybe Christmas - because I love being able to kick back and relax for a while. The only downside is the fact that it takes A LOT of factor 50 sunscreen to avoid severe burns.

We left at 4 in the morning on Thursday last week so we had to get up at 2:30am and needless to say, I wasn't in a very good mood. We had to get to East Midlands Airport by 5:30 because our plane left at 6:30 and we wanted to get good seats so we thought that leaving that early was a good idea. It was a good idea in a way but, we somehow managed to be the last in the queue even though we did leave 3 hours early.

                                                    The sky is so nice and blue in France.

However, being the last in the queue turned out pretty well for us because it meant that we got seats right at the back of the plane and those seats are the safest because if you crash, you are the last to die... oh yeah! Get in there!! We also got to deboard the plane first so yeah, we got lucky.

So after getting out of the French airport, we had to catch a shuttle to Aix because my grandads car was already there so, of course, that meant communicating with some French dude trying to work out which bus to catch. It was fine in the end and it took around three quarters of an hour to reach the house.

       This is our family joke - If we were to make a band, we would call ourselves Toutes Directions.

Three days after arriving in France we decided to go to Calais which is a lovely town with a little beach that we love. There's no sand, just pebbles, but the water is so clear and warm. I went swimming with my sister and I tried to convince her to swim out further with me but she gets scared of sharks so ended up swimming in circles for a while.

We also went to the Saint Croix du Verdon which is the nicest place I've ever been to and we discovered it a few years back and ever since we've been addicted to going there every time we are in France. Saint Croix is a big lake where you can go swimming, sunbathing, have a picnic or even hire out pedalos - whatever floats your boat. We always get a boat, float out to the middle of the lake and stay there for a few hours. I would happily live there for the rest of my life.

Saint Croix du Verdon.

We spent quite a lot of our free time playing Monopoly as it is a tradition and we always have to have a game that lasts the whole holiday. My properties are the green and the yellow ones because I think the colours look nice together and they get me lots of money! Hehehe *evil face*. We also played a card game called Spit quite a lot which is really fun and if you don't know the rules you should definitely look it up and play it. We have taken out the rule that you spit on the card pile though and we just hit it and say "SPIT!". I think that's a bit more hygienic. 

On the last night, we had a late dinner in the back yard and I noticed that the ants in France are very social. Yup, social ants. I say this because every time they pass each other on a wall, they stop for a minute and touch faces. I think it's really cute and I wish we had social ants in England.

This is a picture of the grape vines that shade the back yard in our house at Aix.

We got back to England on Thursday and it was pleasantly warm. I mean, not France warm but quite warm for England. I missed our car and my room but apart from that, I wouldn't mind if we left England and never came back. 

Again, I'm really sorry for the late post and I will try and write another one this week. I hope you enjoyed my photos and that you are all having a really good summer. Or winter. Wherever you're from. Thanks for taking your time to read this! Bye for now.

Life Decisions

Sup!

So I'm off to the south of France with my family tomorrow and we have to set off at 3am which is really exciting cause car journeys are always so much more fun when it's early. Anyways, as I have no time to pack tomorrow, that meant doing it today. Packing isn't something I'm normally that bothered about, I just throw in sone clothes, makeup and shoes and I'm sorted! However, today was different. See, my sister is going to France for 3 months as part of her university programme because she's studying French and Spanish so we had to pack all her crap that she insists on taking with her into 6 suitcases. Now to any normal person, 6 suitcases sounds like a lot but oh no, after around 3 hours of packing filled with crying, snapping and yelling, we still haven't managed to pack all of my sisters crap. It's driving me crazy!

This is what I've been trying to do all day!

Anyway, after watching her have a mental breakdown on the bathroom floor it got me thinking, I really don't want to grow up. Growing up means having to make so many important decisions that are going to influence what you can or can't do with your life in the future. I spent so much time stressing over which GCSE's to choose, so much so that I couldn't sleep and I spent more time crying then I did eating. Now if I couldn't even make a simple decision like that, how the hell am I going to make other, more important decisions such as A levels or universities??

I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up! I like animals and writing and I can't exactly be a story writing zoo keeper can I? I don't even know if I want to go to university yet! I don't like the idea of living with strangers nor do I like the idea of living in a tiny room with no bathroom. Plus I have the attention span of a fish so the prospect of learning only 3 things scares me because I know I'll get super bored with my life.

Decisions Decisions...

I know that one day I want to go on a gap year to either Australia or America because I think that I need a break from England. My friend and I often talk about how we're gonna move ot America, meet the guy of our dreams, get married and then never have to work, ever however, I somehow think that it aint gonna happen like that. Maybe we can go on a gap year together but no matter how much we don't want to, we are goung to have to come back and become adults one day.

I think the point of this blog was to stress that no matter how much we hate the idea of growing up, everyone one day will just have to hold their nose and dive in at the deep end. It scares me to death but I'm just thinking about things that I can look forward to in the future. Meeting an amazing guy, getting married, having cute kids and looking back and thinking I'm glad I made those choices.

Wow, that was deep. Sorry if it was a bit too much for you. Anyways, as I'm off to France for a week, I'll probably do a blog about it and I'll put in some photos. You can expect that early next week, maybe even Sunday but for now,

Au revoir and thanks for reading my blog!

Lucy Lou :)