Thursday, December 30, 2010

I've just read the other girls' first posts (see left) and realised I don't write nearly as well or as interestingly as them, but people insisted I kept a blog so here goes...

Our short flight to Sydney was nothing compared with the next two - Syndey-Singapore for 8 hours (with Captain England) and onwards to Heathrow in another 14. For someone who hates flying, I was mostly just bored. We got fed a lot more meals than was probably needed (canneloni, sandwiches, penne and scrambled eggs/hash brown for us vegetarians, who got fed a good few minutes earlier than everyone else) and tried to sleep a bit, although it's pretty hard when the person in front reclines to the max and the guy behind has really long legs. Georgie, on the other hand, had no-one in front or behind and slept comfortably with her legs in the pocket in front of her.

Watched Get Him To The Greek ('I want the whole outside of my house to be like this, it'd be like a werewolf!') and Breakfast at Tiffany's on the second leg of the trip and the start of Made in Dagenham, as well as one episode each of 30 Rock, Everybody Hates Chris, Scrubs and Smallville on the last flight.

All our flights were at least a bit delayed but we managed to land early somehow. We queued for a long time to get VISAs/passports/fingerprints checked but then we picked up our luggage quickly and didn't have to do any customs or anything. Our first step outside (on the way to the toilets) was surprisingly not too cold and the lights on trees outside plusthe freaky hand dryers - which literally push your skin around - got us, or at least me, just a little excited. Hey, it was 5am. Speaking of time, our body clocks are still preeeetty messed up.

Martin #1, the groundskeeper (?), found us soon after and brought us to the school in the red Godstowe van. Georgie and I sat in the front to get the best views, mostly of freeway. Once inside, we met Martin #2 and his partner Sam, who both work at the school and live right behind it, and their gorgeous almost-1 year old Owen, who liked all the attention he got from us. We had a bit of a look around the building we're staying in for this week (Highlands house), then Martin and Sam gave us some info and advice, including about 'the Wycombe boys' (basically, we can do better).

They took us down - literally, we're at the top of a massive hill - into the town via the cemetery that the school backs onto; a bit of a creepy site seeing as it was so foggy. We had a bit of a shop in TOPSHOP, ZARA, H&M and others and then hit Boots for cosmetics. Because there are no staff or boarders at the school for another week, we don't get fed till Wed evening, so we then stocked up on pasta, cereal, fruit and vegies, baked beans, chips, etc. for the next week at the supermarket Morrisons. Our body clocks were so messed up we felt like it was about 5pm but it was actually around midday. When we got back, we realised we hadn't eaten since the plane (except for Saskia's Lindt, thanks girly) and had salad sandwiches. We took our stuff up to one of the boarding rooms and relaxed for a while, and decided to watch Zoolander as we were all getting pretty tired but were told not to sleep till about 8pm to avoid heavy jetlag. We thought a comedy would keep us awake but decided halfway through that we needed to take a cold walk around the school to really do that. At 4:20pm it was getting dark. The grounds and building are pretty huge and the soccer pitch was still icy at that stage. Came back in, cooked pasta and sat in front of the rest of the movie watching it. Georgie caved in and was asleep a bit after 6 while the rest of us almost made it to 7.


We set alarms for 8pm this morning and slowly got up, ate breakfast in front of the news/music videos show/kids shows in our PJs and then even more slowly got ready to walk back into town to get some things we realised we'd forgotten yesterday. There are sales in almost every shop but unfortunately the £9.99 boots out the front of one place only went up to about a size 3 Australian, or maybe a bit more. We went into Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe, where Georgie found Belgian diabetic chocolate, I got 'death by chocolate fudge' which wasn't fab but whatever, and Aisling got some salted caramel stuff.

We dropped in on Martin and Sam when we got back and then got taken up to the flat where the teachers will be staying. It seems pretty nice, and it makes it even harder to choose which job I want to do! M & S are verrrry biased towards boarding with Highlands, they're the littlest kids and 2 girls will work there, so it does sound tempting...

We met Nigel the bursar who was nice and then the internet came back on and as Aisling wrote acurately, we became very antisocial. As I write, it's 11.17pm and all the other girls are in bed. I couldn't think of my blog url/name so at the moment it's courtesy of a fun fact from Aurora about England but it may change, and that's one reason why I'm still up. I'm also trying to organise my phone; all the other girls here now have sims and phones but I forgot to ring 3 from Sydney to unlock my phone/set up internation roaming and I can't get through to the Aussie number... Anyway, we had a nice dinner cooked by Georgie - salad, mash and chicken/Quorn burgers.

We head into London tomorrow for New Years and the night after. Should be great but my camera is going to be annoying in the nights especially when I'll just want to have fun. I guess all the photos will be worth it in the end.


I'll add some photos in soon, and will try to update at least once a week :)

HAPPY 2011!!!