Well...after much nagging by my father i have set up a blog where you can follow my gap year. Having been in Jamaica for 2 months (i dont count this as part of my gap year as i was just going home, but hey pretty cool place and loads of people go there on their gap year!!) Mum, Ben and I flew to Singapore en route to Sydney to start the first bit of my Gap Year and also our first family holiday in AGES!! We were only in Singapore for one night and 1 and half days so of course it was full steam ahead with shopping plans the most importnat port of call and then ofcourse eating the amazing food. Singapore can only be described as Surreal, there was really no feeling or soul to the place and i just felt like i was in a much warmer far more humid UK. The road signs, radio stations, TV stations were all in English not to mention I think we heard about 2 people not talking English...it was a little bit despressing to see the amount of Westernisation that had occured. In fact the best thing about Singapore was Changi airport - which is just amazing ... having used it for every case study at my A2 Geography course with Mr Howitt (my geo teacher) raving on about its technology etc. it really lived up to what i had heard! We then made our way after our very brief stay to Sydney. We stayed in Sydney for 4 days, in an amazing hotel, which had the view of Sydney Bridge and Opera house (if i can work out how to use this thing then their should be a picture of it somewhere!!). Sydney was amazing - a little like London but with a more beachy vibe- every 2nd shop was a surfers shop. Of course only being ther efor 4 days, we were pretty hectic trying to visit as much as possible. We visited Bondi Beach (no i did not go swimming - i do have some sense) however Ben did and ... well - he was adopted obviously!! It was amazing and the most incredible thing was - there was absolutly no rubbish - not in the sea or beach and having just come from Jamaica this was hugely obvious. We also went to Orlando at the opera house, which was... dissapointing - Orlando was being played by a woman who was obviously the understudies understudies cleaner, but hey the experience was great!! We then made our way to Perth to stay with my 2nd cousins (for all of you who know me and my family they might as well be aunts and uncles!!) which was - like Sydney .... FREEZING... now i know that Australia is very South, i am not that geographically inept but ITS MEANT TO BE WARM!!!! Anyway in my true fashion i did a bit of a cool runnings and wore about almost every item of clothing that was possible!!! We werent staying in Perth for long so we did the usual touristy stuff like go to the market in freemantle and go on site seeing tours with Johnathon who soon became our tour guide, going on roo hunts as i was desperate to see one!! (which i did!!)
We then made our way to Port Headland to visit Jonno (another 2nd cousin) or Speedy as he is known and his partner Fran. The best thing about Port HEadland was that it was WARM!!! there really was nothing to do there, well in the town as it literally is smaller than Lechlade and the only people who really live there are those working on the iron ore mines and noats etc. Speedy and Fran took us off to Karijini, an amazing national park where we went gorge walking and swimming (yes i swam ... but it was freezing to say the least!) in the most amazing settings (hopefully followed by a picture at some point) where i really appreciated my knowledge of geography, i took to lecturing whoever would listen about the geology formaitons and the amazing erosional powers that would have been needed to create such gorges - webby and howwy would have been proud!! We stayed in the near by TOm Price - a small community for the local miners and a few aboriginees where my cousin of some sort lives with his girlfriend, we went and watched his basket bal GRAND FINAL and the 5 of us made the huge crowd of 2 into 7 people - it was a record breaking number of spectators. When we got back to Port Headland we went on Speedys boat whale watching... i have never seen more amazing creatures, they are SOOOOOO big and also so amazingly graceful which was completly unexpected, we got so close to 2 of them that we were actually worried they would tip the boat over...AMAZING experience. The weather was perfect - warm (well for me which probably means it was pretty hot) and the water was like silk, not a ripple in sight ... beautiful.
We then made our way back to Perth, where i was dropped of at my 2nd cousin something removed house while mum got back to Jamaica to deal with the hurricane damage and Ben went back to school, (sorry momentary evil laugh!!). I am here until the 30th of November and having never met this family and never lived away from home like this you can imagine that i was somewhat scared, but excited. I have had 3 trials for jobs, one at the equivalent of the work i did on the flying Pig and i cannot seem to stop thinking that my destiny is to be with burgers...hmmm. Well i then have to today decide what jobs to do and for how long, i think that once i am working and have a routine back in my life that i will not find this experience so scary and nerve racking. It is hard to fit into a family that you have never met especially with 2 boys in the house too... i seem to be missing the obvious people more than i thought i would, my family and school (you dont realsie what you have until its gone... i would almost give this up to just go back to shcool and be told what to do!) and of course my bestest friend loo, but as i said it will be an amazing experience and i am sure that it will be far easier than i imagine!
While i am out here my email address is rachel@lechladetrout.co.uk (original i know) or r_small@hotmail.com please email me with news etc, for those of you who are my facebook friends i am checking that pretty regularly too...i would love to hear from you!!
With love,
Rachel
We then made our way to Port Headland to visit Jonno (another 2nd cousin) or Speedy as he is known and his partner Fran. The best thing about Port HEadland was that it was WARM!!! there really was nothing to do there, well in the town as it literally is smaller than Lechlade and the only people who really live there are those working on the iron ore mines and noats etc. Speedy and Fran took us off to Karijini, an amazing national park where we went gorge walking and swimming (yes i swam ... but it was freezing to say the least!) in the most amazing settings (hopefully followed by a picture at some point) where i really appreciated my knowledge of geography, i took to lecturing whoever would listen about the geology formaitons and the amazing erosional powers that would have been needed to create such gorges - webby and howwy would have been proud!! We stayed in the near by TOm Price - a small community for the local miners and a few aboriginees where my cousin of some sort lives with his girlfriend, we went and watched his basket bal GRAND FINAL and the 5 of us made the huge crowd of 2 into 7 people - it was a record breaking number of spectators. When we got back to Port Headland we went on Speedys boat whale watching... i have never seen more amazing creatures, they are SOOOOOO big and also so amazingly graceful which was completly unexpected, we got so close to 2 of them that we were actually worried they would tip the boat over...AMAZING experience. The weather was perfect - warm (well for me which probably means it was pretty hot) and the water was like silk, not a ripple in sight ... beautiful.
We then made our way back to Perth, where i was dropped of at my 2nd cousin something removed house while mum got back to Jamaica to deal with the hurricane damage and Ben went back to school, (sorry momentary evil laugh!!). I am here until the 30th of November and having never met this family and never lived away from home like this you can imagine that i was somewhat scared, but excited. I have had 3 trials for jobs, one at the equivalent of the work i did on the flying Pig and i cannot seem to stop thinking that my destiny is to be with burgers...hmmm. Well i then have to today decide what jobs to do and for how long, i think that once i am working and have a routine back in my life that i will not find this experience so scary and nerve racking. It is hard to fit into a family that you have never met especially with 2 boys in the house too... i seem to be missing the obvious people more than i thought i would, my family and school (you dont realsie what you have until its gone... i would almost give this up to just go back to shcool and be told what to do!) and of course my bestest friend loo, but as i said it will be an amazing experience and i am sure that it will be far easier than i imagine!
While i am out here my email address is rachel@lechladetrout.co.uk (original i know) or r_small@hotmail.com please email me with news etc, for those of you who are my facebook friends i am checking that pretty regularly too...i would love to hear from you!!
With love,
Rachel
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