Package hunting

Coming down for dinner some days ago I was met by a small red slip waiting for me at the table, telling me that someone had sent me a package, that no one had been home at the time the post person arrived and that I could come pick it up. Excited and quite curious I left the house in the early morning – well, as early as my mornings ever are – the next day and walked to the post office.

Once there I was kindly explained that; no, they did not have my package. I would have to go somewhere else to pick it up and unless I had a car it would be something of a walk. Did I mention it was raining? The clerk drew me a map and sent me on my way. Now, since I believe very few people reading this knows their way around Alloa I’m not going to describe all the roads I walked in detail, I’ll just tell you they were many. I also asked quite a few people for directions, to the ‘ATM’ as the clerk had marked the place holding my packet as on the map. Oddly enough no one had even heard of it, which I found a little peculiar, not so strangely – no one could understand the map either. It really was a poor map- I would show you but after having been rained on and then crumpled in my hand it really wasn’t worth carrying around, and I may have lost it at some point too. Possibly.

Finally, somewhere down a street I had never been before, I asked another random bypassed if they could point me in the direction of the ‘ATM’. This lady had never heard of it either but took me into the shop where she was going anyway to ask the shopkeeper as she figured she’d probably know since she worked in town. The shopkeeper had never heard of it either but after a brief debate with the woman I met on the street they managed to work it out between themselves where I was supposed to go.

Apparently, Alloa keeps a separate post office where you can pick up your packages. And somewhere near this office there is a tire service, known as the ATM. It also turned out that this office really was quite far away, not to mention all the time I had already spent searching for it, but the lady I had asked for directions was kind enough to take me down there in her car. And then, as it turned out we live on the same street, wait for me and give me a lift home as well. The kindness of strangers never ceases to amaze me.

Finally back at the house I had at least managed to figure out who the package was from, but I was still very much curious as to what was inside it.

As it turned out, my super sweet stepmother had knitted and sent me a throw along with other bits and bobs, like this star which my sister made especially for me. Admittedly it came with clear directions to hang it on the wall but I’ve never paid all that much attention when people tell me to do things and I figured the window was close enough.

And here is the famous blanket! Picture taken off my stepmother’s blog – because she’s much better at taking pictures than me and it would be a shame not to show this lovely thing from its best side.

Finally I feel like giving a small birthday shout out for my grandmother who has been faithfully following this blog, despite the lack in updates recently, and whose birthday it is today! Happy birthday grams, you know who you are because only one of my grandmothers actually reads my blog.

I’m a prefect! …Now send me my baby photos!

Yes it’s true, and in my opinion so cool; I’m a prefect! I knew Scotland was the place to be, just check this badge out!

Lena had her autumn break a couple of weeks back and I managed to talk her into getting on a train and come visit me for a few days. After the obligatory travelling incidents (I never travel anywhere without some sort of accident and I like to make sure that people who travel to visit me has to go through something similar) she finally arrived in the middle of the night, effectively stranding both of us in Stirling. Just in case I haven’t mentioned it before, Stirling is the closest large city to Alloa; it’s about fifteen minutes with the bus and sort of big. I don't really know, anything becomes big compared to Alloa. At last we finally did manage to get back and I spent the weekend trying to do some speed sightseeing, with myself as our tour guide despite me not really having seen any monuments myself, by showing her both Edinburgh and Glasgow in two days. My autumn break had already passed of course, which meant I had to go to school once the weekend was over and Lena had to entertain herself for some time. As I had expected, she used a lot of the time to sleep. Or so I’m told.

Anyway, you might wonder what on earth this has to do with my newfound prefect status. Or maybe you’ve all just figured this was some clever way of me to change the subject. But no, you see I got my badge the Monday Lena was here and I told her sheepishly, or not so sheepishly, that I was mainly in it for the badge. Seriously though, how can you blame me? Lena at least thought that was perfectly understandable.

In reality however, being a prefect is a little more than just wearing a cool badge. You have prefect duties which mean you patrol the halls or something, I haven’t really sorted that part out yet, and you’re also obliged to help out on parents’ evenings and such. And of course you have to set a good example for the other students, e.g. not coming in late or forgetting your things ect, ops?

At the moment, there’s not that much going on. I am battling a virus that may or may not be on my computer, and at this point the virus is winning. This week is really short; I don’t exactly know why but we’re free both Thursday and Friday, something I at least have no complaints about, and later this week I’m going to the cinema with some girls from school to see the new Twilight movie. Which is really just an odd thing to call it as it is named, and I should know this very well, New Moon.
Let’s look at that again, shall we?

I’m slightly worried I’m going to turn out like a Percy-ish prefect.

I feel kind of proud for keeping my post so short for once; normally I just can’t shut up, can I? I have to admit I have had a pretty bad writers block lately and this is the sort of thing that just gets worse the longer you wait. But, here it is. A new post, just for you! And the person you have to thank for that this time around is, wait for it, my mum. (And now you get the explanation for the second part of the title as well.) Because she has been holding my baby photos hostage; blackmailing me into writing this. So a big applause to my mum who has forced me to write and by that has given you all something to read. Ain’t that just wonderful?

CHALLENGE OF THE WEEK

Alloa vs. Blackpool, round three!
Scoreboard:
Alloa: 2
Blackpool: 0
Challenge of the week: Coolest school

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Blackpool; Lena’s school – Blackpool Sixth Form College:

Alloa; Ane’s school – Lornshill Academy:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now remember to press the button at the bottom of the page that says Alloa, I mean vote! Remember to vote! You have one week!

CHALLENGE OF THE WEEK

Alloa vs. Blackpool, round two!
Scoreboard:
Alloa: 1
Blackpool: 0
Challenge of the week: Prettiest view from room
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blackpool; Lena’s view:




Alloa; Ane’s view:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You have one week to vote (it’s easy; just click next to where it says Alloa)! Go, go, go!

The Big Gigantic Massive Catch-up post!

Hello all, apologies for tardy response! Or to put it simpler, I’m sorry the updates have been comming so slowly lately! Also, because of that this post will be very long! I’m going to try to cover ever event that has happened since last time, starting furthest away and working my way towards the present. Good news: I am happy to announce that I have started my new and better life (you know the one with all the pictures?)
Bad news: I suck at it, so if you read any further than this you have officially lost the right to comment on my tardiness at that area.

EDINBURGH!
Yes, as you may remember I was just on my way out the door and to Edinburgh when I left off. And I have to say, it is truly an amazing city.
A fact that might be fun to know; Edinburgh is really close! A 15minutes bus ride to Stirling and a 40minutes train ride to the capital itself, it’s brilliant.
If I am being completely honest, I may have been a little lost part of the time. Okay, a lot of the time. The fun, or not so fun, part is that after having wandered Prince’s street for hours I realized the actual main street was just a crossing of a bridge away. Of course, at the point that I finally figured that out it was almost time for me to go back. I’m not really that bothered though, I had a good time and the streets I was were still pretty cool.

And here are some pictures: I call it; man on horse. (Strangely enough.)

This picture is taken from Prince’s street and those houses you see are part of the Royal Mile, which is the main street.

And this is a cute little house from the same park as pictured above.

And this is just a funky flower bed.


I did find some cool shops!

And here I’ve finally found the Royal Mile! Go me!

The high street had a way older look than the other street I was in, and it had lots of these little thingies hidden around.

This though was, of course, the highlight of my day!

Guess where I’m going when I’ve turned eighteen, the opportunity is just to cool to miss out on! And to all of you who don’t understand the significance of this…well, I have nothing to say to you.
Okay, I have rethought that and considering my grandparents are reading this, I might have to make a few exceptions.

GLASGOW!
Yes, that’s right! Now, I’ve been there as well.

Okay, so I’ve not really seen much of the city as of yet, but all that shall be explained and I’m certainly planning on going back.

I went to Glasgow, more specifically the University of Glasgow with the whole of sixth year in my school to the open day, hence my non experience of the actual town. Open day itself was okay; I thought it was very interesting, but it got slightly boring after a while. The most common opinion among the students was actually that it had been a waste of time. But as I said, it was quite interesting; I got to speak to lots of teachers and they all insisted on giving me flyers on their courses so now I’m very aware of what’s going on at least. I think the problem was that we had too much time, it sound ridiculous, but after a while people really didn’t know what to do with themselves.

There were lots of cool stuff outside of the academic side though, so here comes some more pictures!

We got these really awesome green bags (that I just know Biljana will envy me for)!

And my Harry Potter experience continues! Glasgow Uni is really the (second) coolest school in the world, I’m convinced of it. Although, I have admittedly not seen Edinburgh uni, I might have to go there just so I can compare properly.
Envious? You should be!

And now to something completely different!
I went to a concert just this last Friday, it was great! It was in Alloa’s Town Hall and it was put up by something called Glasshouse. It’s a project here that gives young musicians the opportunity to practice and record their own music, I think. Anyway, it was a show put up by several different local bands, among them Fraser’s band Diallis. Sadly I didn’t take any pictures, please don’t hang me! But I’ll remember to bring my camera the next time something like this comes along.

Another thing I would say I am, shall we say moderately excited about?

...

WE HAVE HOUSE POINTS!

It’s true! We have house points, and at the end of the year one house will win a trophy! Isn’t it great? This place freaking rocks! As it is right now, Devon (my house) is at the bottom with 80points, Grange has 90 points and Forbraes is leading with 100points.
There was a Devon assembly meeting last morning though, and I learned that Devon has actually won the trophy three years in a row! How cool is that? And of course we want to win again, so we were basically told to get a grip next time!
In other school related news I am now a part of the year book commity! And I’ve joined the charity group, did I mention that? I think I might have forgotten, but I did, quite a few weeks ago by now actually.
And you’ll never guess who I got to meet last week!
This chap here:

(Picture from google images.)
Any of you know who that is?

Yes, yes without a doubt. It is undeniably Prince Edward. Indeed.

And he visited Lornshill! But of course we already knew that, the student body that is. That was expected. What was not so expected was when he just randomly walked into my Philosophy class, because apparently he had a few minutes to spare! It was great and I was kind of psyched about it, even though I'm starting to realize it really wasn't that big a deal.

It was cool though, now I can say I’ve met Prince Edward. And if my life goes completely down the drain and this turns out to be the only exciting thing that ever happens to me I can sit as an old lady and tell everyone over and over again how I met someone royal when I was young. How great wouldn’t that be?

(If that in fact happens, I want someone to shoot me. And then take care of my twenty one cats of course.)

A part of me thinks this should be divided into several posts, because some of it certainly deserves their own headlines. But I’m trying to bring the blog up to date with my life, so that I can avoid massive posts like this one, but for now you’ll just have to suffer through.
And maybe a miracle will happen and Lena will actually post something! How much fun wouldn’t that be?

CHALLENGE OF THE WEEK

Alloa vs. Blackpool, round one!
Scoreboard:
Alloa: 0
Blackpool: 0
Challenge of the week: Rooms

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blackpool; Lena’s room:

Alloa; Ane’s room:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this week’s CotW there is not much text, I hope we’ll be able to change that for the upcoming ones.
Now, you have one week to vote (preferably for me)! Go, go, go!

NB! Poll is at the very bottom of the page! (Don't ask me why, I didn't know how else to do this!)

“Would you die silently please?”

Yes, it’s true! The dreaded PIG FLU has finally invaded Lornshill! Which basically means the classes are reduced (very reduced) and that we have something new to joke about in drama. Hence the quote above which was actually my drama teacher to a student with a bad cough.

The student is now off sick.

Another funny episode was when the head of the drama department came in and my teacher explained that we were watching a movie because with only five people there wasn’t much use doing anything else, the reply she got was this: “What, are they all dying now?”

Of course it’s not all fun and games with this swine flu, at least I’m pretty sure the sick students don’t think so, and today we actually got a pamphlet on it. And also the teachers have been putting up posters with coughing people on. We’re taking this seriously I’ll have you know! Although, my drama teacher’s theory is that now that so many have caught it already they won’t bother closing the school. I’m not quite sure what I think about that…

But let’s talk about something more joyous! I was at an African themed barbeque last weekend, and let me tell you, Scottish people know how to party! The majority was admittedly Peter and Alison’s age, with quite a few twenty somethings and the odd representation of other ages. But it was really the most fun I’ve had in ages, everybody had dressed up in something they deemed typical African. This of course meant there was a wide range of costumes from ‘African outfits’ to animal themed outfits to movie lookalikes. Two people who stood out in particular were maybe the man dressed as ‘The African queen’, anyone know the movie?, and the younger man who had actually turned himself brown for the occasion and was running around in a hemp skirt. It was all great fun; the Scots are all very friendly and open.

Also, I feel it is my duty to inform all of you of this one thing I was recently made aware of. You see, the Scottish schools are very informative, I’m always learning something new. The latest is this; I don’t exist. I’m sorry to disappoint everyone who thought otherwise, and let me tell you I am just as surprised as you are! Now, one would expect this kind of information was something I’d picked up in philosophy right? Well, I’ll have to disappoint you again; it was actually Mr. Taylor, my modern studies teacher, who told me this. Then again he was only the messenger; the real source was … the IT department!

Now, to all of you who didn’t understand, this is just another great example of my shitty humor. The issue was really that I still do not have a log in on the school computers and apparently am not yet admitted to the big system, hence my non existence. But what fun would it be to just put it like that!?

And here! The promised picture of my school uniform, taken on photo day as well! By me admittedly, but never mind that.

To be perfectly honest I wasn’t all that excited about the jacket, it probably doesn’t help that I’m swimming in mine, but I think it sort of looks like a cross between a brass band uniform and a sailor’s jacket.
Update on the jacket, which really is a blazer, thing! After a careful study of the other students at my school I have come to the conclusions that my blazer is the boy version (which explains why it fits me so badly) and also I have to say that it’s starting to grow on me. Why? Because it has like thousands of pockets! It’s got three pockets on the outside and two on the inside, and to be perfectly honest, that is quite handy! So yes, it has definitely grown on me through the past week and now I think it’s just brilliant! I can fit everything in my pockets; whatever shall I do without it?

And then lastly a note on the Weekly challenge segment!
Lena and I decided together that the first challenge will be; rooms! Then I decided, admittedly without consulting Lena, that it will start first next week. Lena of course thinks we should just go ahead and start RIGHT NOW! But here’s the catch, Lena has just arrived in Blackpool and took a picture of her room right away. I’ve been here for nearly three weeks, and let’s just say my room need’s a bit of tidying (especially since my mom sent me everything I had forgotten and everything I didn’t know I would miss) before it’s presentable for anything. Since it is a weekly segment I’m going to try make it so that the poll’s are open just for a week so that it is just possible to vote for that particular week’s challenge, if I just manage to do that that is. But it can’t be that hard, I’m positive I’ll manage!

Maybe I also should mention that I am dead tired of waiting for Lena to get her ass moving and actually posting something, so I took the liberty of ignoring the one-post-each rule and just post something. Also, I have decided to start a new and better life! Meaning I’m going to start taking loads of pictures, because really, pictures are fun! And now if off to Edinburgh!