18 Years

Hello again!

Sorry for the long absence! I have a lot to talk about. The last post was on the Sixth-Form social -- so is this one! Sort of. There are multiple socials throughout the year, and this year, I was able to go to the second social of the year! Last year, I was visiting family friends that weekend. I will, however, leave the social until a bit later, because I want to describe the last few weeks in chronological order.

To start is October -- the entire month. Again, apologies for the long absence. Though to be fair, not too much happened. Aunt Maria came to stay at the beginning of October; her daughter got married back in September, and I mentioned her on the blog. Speaking of Christi, her daughter, we got to watch the wedding video. I felt sleepy in places, because we watched the video in the evening.

Granny also came to stay, later on in October, on the way up to Essex to visit my cousins for baby Huw's birthday.

An old photo, because the world needs more cute babies. Also, siblings being siblings.

Me and my parents also went to the party. My sister, alas, did not, as she was on a Scouts thing. The party was fun; it was held at my aunt Helen's sister's house (because Uncle Will and Helen are staying there until they can buy their own house). I got to hang out with my cousins once removed (Helen's sister's children), which was very nice. They're much younger than me; the oldest is roughly 8, so they were all very lively and energetic. It was nice getting to know them better. Huw appeared to enjoy the festivities, in as far as a one-year-old baby can understand what's going on, let alone appreciate it. 

Half-term was good -- my family went to Croatia. It was very sunny all week; this in spite of the fact that from Wednesday onwards the weather forecast was constantly "tomorrow, it will be rainy". It did start raining heavily on Saturday, though. 

View from the plane

On the first day, we walked around Dubrovnik to get our bearings. We found a nice (non-sandy) beach not far away from the place we were staying, as well as an ice-cream shop that we proceeded to visit nearly every day of the holiday. 

On the second day, we went on a boat trip, which took up most of the day. It was fun -- we got to visit three islands. The tour was a booked event, so there were quite a few other people on the boat. The first one had a sandy beach, 20 minutes' walk from where the boat docked. My mum and I went to the beach, while my sister and my dad went to a botanical gardens place in the town where we docked. The boat stopped there for roughly an hour and a half; I initially planned to walk back and forth from one side of the island to the other, though it was 20 minutes up and down an incline, so I'm glad I changed my mind.

Island no. 1

View of the shore

On the next island, we went off the beaten track, by which I mean we wandered off in search of another beach and found a rock beach, which was deserted apart from us. Probably not the right one. On the third island, we went snorkelling -- we were the only ones, for some reason. I cut my knee on one of the rocks, though not too badly. 

A beautiful sunset

On the third day, we walked round the Old Town. It was fun, though my mum thought it was a bit clogged with tourists. There were also a lot of steps.

The port

Spacious street... 

The view out to sea

We also climbed a mountain, on the Friday of that week! At the top of the mountain was an old fortress which had been converted into a museum on the war between Croatia and Serbia in the 1990s, The museum was interesting, though I was too tired (and hungry) to climb up many stairs.

Dubrovnik! (Most of it, anyway)

Old Dubrovnik! (AKA the Old Town)

Sunset on the coast while up a mountain. Completely worth it.

The rest of the time in Croatia, we played games in the house, which was good fun. Also, on the Saturday, the storm finally broke; it was quite spectacular. There was lots of rain...thankfully, we had nothing planned except games. Because when the weather forecast said it was going to rain on Saturday, it was actually correct. We left on Sunday -- helpfully, it was an inset day at school the next day, so we were able to get back late. As it happens, we did.

Nice view, even though it's dark.

Skipping forward to my birthday, it was fun! Quite a few people said happy birthday at school, including teachers. I got, among other things, a pair of ear-defenders, some new pyjamas and several books. I wanted the ear-defenders because when I listen to music, it leaks out of my hearing aids, so other people can hear as well, which isn't helpful to yourself or others when you're listening to music in the Study Centre and others can hear and get distracted. Another funny thing happened; on my way to Core Maths period 5, I saw a bunch of year sevens outside the Maths block. One of the boys, who had apparently discovered the wonders of pulling faces and making silly noises, gasped and said "Wow!". Unrelated to me, I assume, but still a pleasing reminder of when I was in year seven.

I also went to a restaurant on my birthday, with my family and several close friends. It was the same restaurant that I went to after getting my GCSE results. It was nice to be able to spend time with my friends.

This is the quadzilla burger, from the GCSE results.

On the Friday after my birthday was the social. I went as Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. The social was promptly shut down at 9:00, because one of the people there had a knife. As I don't have any pictures, I will include pictures from the previous social.

If you think about it, Darth Vader is alien, as he doesn't come from Earth...

I was planning the Fright Night social to be the one where I didn't get cut out of the selfie...
Oh well, maybe next time.

Another -- fortunately less severe -- mishap at the social was that around 15 or so minutes before it got shut down, the lights started coming on, for some reason. They usually don't do that until the end. Though I guess technically it was nearly the end.

The day after that, I had a big party, with most of my family coming along. Though here, I stretch the definition of 'family' to breaking point; my godfather and his family and my godmother (unrelated to my godfather) turned up, as did my friends, Sarah and Harry. The two friends who came along on Wednesday were unable to make it for Saturday, which is why I invited them for Wednesday.

I also feel like this blog is symbolic, given that I'm now an adult; as a result, I'm going to do a summary of my teenage years. For some reason.
I started secondary school as no ordinary student. Then, as now, I had glasses, hearing aids and CHARGE syndrome. Though I also had relatively few friends, having spent most of my childhood up till then in Africa. You could say I was sort of a refugee from Africa as well -- my citizenship is British, but towards the end of year six, when we were in Africa, a civil war started, and we got evacuated out to England. If we had stayed in Africa, I would have gone to boarding school, and wouldn't have joined my current school until year nine.

I feel like I went through much of secondary school without close friends, partly due to bullying. Partly due to my own confidence issues and insecurity; if I could go back in time and change one thing in my life, I'd change that -- convince my younger self to seek out my friends, to spend more time with them. Though like I say, it was partly bullying. Several boys in my year (I won't identify anybody) were rather unkind to me from around year nine to the end of year 11, and most of my year treated it as some funny rivalry -- Severus Snape and the Marauders. They kept out of it -- it wasn't their business, or they liked the boys too much to care, or they underestimated the severity of it. So I felt isolated and alone, and like even my friends would choose the bullies over me. Sometimes I still feel like that, even though the bullies are no longer around, and even though I know my friends will never give up on me. Over the last year, I've been keeping a sort of calendar in my head -- for instance, a year since the last major incident, a year since I last saw the bullies. Now it's more than a year since I last saw them, and nearly two since the last major incident. Even now, I don't know whether my insecurity is fully part of my nature -- just a natural trait -- or if it's partly inspired by being bullied, feeling lonely and isolated, feeling like nobody cared or defended me.

Though I guess in some ways I have been a normal teenager -- I've had exams and tests, I've been unfairly grumpy towards parents on occasion, I've fallen in love. No details on the last one, though. Also, the confidence thing is quite common -- several of my friends have also lacked confidence in the past, but have built up their confidence to become confident and seriously cool people. In the right environment, confidence can flourish. Mine had already started to, though it feels like a slow process sometimes, thanks to my friends.

Regarding being bullied, if any readers are being bullied, you're not alone. Depressingly, bullying is somewhat common in today's society. Just remember that you are special, unique and amazing. There are people who care, and who will support you, if they know you need it. Because that's the key thing about why my friends didn't support me: they didn't know it was happening. I kept it to myself and my parents. So my advice would be don't do that. Talk to teachers and close friends, as well as family, and if they make fun of you, or they don't care, then they were the wrong people to trust. But you can always find somebody to trust, somebody who cares.
"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." - Matthew 7, Verse 7.

I have to say, reading the last few paragraphs, it's somewhat depressing. Certainly it was painful for me to write it down. Sorry about that, I was legitimately expecting it to turn out like the saccharine stuff I wrote for the Valentine's Day blog. How I figured that when I was talking about being bullied...
By the way, the link I posted in the last blog talks about that sort of thing (mental health issues, confidence issues, the like), if you're interested in it.

Random Stats:
Gallons of alcohol drunk since turning 18: 0
Time spent climbing mountains: Roughly an hour and a half ( 45 minutes going up, 45 minutes going down)
Book I'm currently reading: The Romanovs: Ruling Russia 1613-1917 by Lindsey Hughes. It's a good book, all about the rulers of Tsarist Russia, helpful if you're studying the Russian Revolution at A-Level.
University UCAS application: Done
Universities I'm applying for: Kent, Derby, Wolverhampton, Reading, Suffolk. Reading is my top choice.
Also, this blog only goes into detail up til the 9th, because if I tried to catch it up to the present day, it would take forever to finish it.