Edinburgh and the Lakes

The last few weeks have flown by in a bit of a blur with some busy weekends exploring both England and Scotland. I've been getting more involved with couch surfing and cannot begin to describe or explain how awesome the people I have met through this organisation are, and how many incredible situations and opportunities it has provided me! Get into it.. www.couchsurfing.com :)



On the weekend of the 13th I headed up to Scotland and Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival where I got the chance to meet up with Mary Beth - a friend from America I made last year while on a contiki tour of North Queensland. We found many things in common and have kept in touch and I thought it was more than coincidence that we were going to be in the same continent at the same time so we had to catch up. She has been travelling through Ireland and Scotland with her Mum and as it was her birthday a couple of days previously I was spoilt with an amazing dinner (celebrating her birthday) at this little Italian Restaurant in Edinburgh.



Last weekend I stayed locally within the Lakes District. On Saturday I drove down to Lake Windemere to catch up with James a guy I had met a few weeks back at the Newcastle CS event. It was his birthday and there were a bunch of his friends that came up for the weekend. On the drive down there I stopped through a few little villages including Grasmere and bought some famous Grasmere gingerbread. Was yummy! As I was driving down, James informed me (when I was half way there) that we were going to camp the night.... no prewarning so I had no sleeping bag! He was lovely enough to give up his for the night. I thought I would be pretty cold but it wasn't too bad sleeping on the floor of the tent. The main problem were that 2 of the tent's occupants (on either side of me) were snoring.... sort of limited my getting to sleep just a bit!! With that group we did a really big walk for about 3 or 4 hours through the lanscape around the lake until we got to the viewpoint.





On Sunday I did some more exploring with Sam, who I met through running club. We went down to Ravenglass and caught the rattey train which is a bit like a thomas the tank engine train (previously used to transport coal or something I think) and ended up driving over to Kendal and explored Kendal Castle and a few other places along the way.

Weather in England (and Scotland) lately has been outstanding!! There have been so many sunny days, and at the times when there hasn't been quite as much sun - well, that happens during the week (where its all cloudy) and then the sun comes out to play on the days that REALLY matter - weekends!!! :)

I've been doing plenty of training - managed another lake swim and did my first Fell (mountain) run up and down Blake Fell which took about 1.5 hours. The running club I've been involved here has been great - such a diverse bunch of people from all different ages and walks of life. Extremely tough sessions, I'm loving it! In a couple of weeks I'm going to be doing a 10km race and there's the possibility of a half marathon if I am still around.

As always, my plans have a tendency to change... I decided last week that I would defer uni for this year. It was a decision I debated about for a while and felt that in a year's time I would be more financially stable and in a better position to work, study and afford to do so. In saying that, a week after I had made this choice to defer, I received all the paperwork from uni (sent the week before) which included the uni timetable (not available online)... It was for 2 days a week at uni. The thing that threw me was I had just been offered and turned down a flexible 3day position for 3 months in London!! So I was a bit umming and ahhing for a while. But ultimately I think I have made the right decision, for multiple reasons. Also, because it is Ilana's wedding in February, I now will be able to come back to Australia for about a month where if I was at uni I would really only be able to justify a week tops.

So now I'm here in Whitehaven for at least another month it seems. The last month has definitley flown by! The department here is great. They have just recruited the new FT dietitian (who I am currently filling in for), but she won't start till probably early/mid October as she needs to give a month's notice at her current job and the paperwork for CRB (police check) won't go in for another 2 weeks and that takes about 3-6 weeks to sort out.

At the moment my 'plan' for life doesn't particularly extend much further than the end of October! I've just been accepted to teach English for a week in Spain the last week of October so will be heading over there to do that. Other than that, time will only tell....

first ever lake swim

Behold the lake i swam in last night!



Think this is the coldest water I have ever swum in! 15 degrees apparently was the temperature.. usually when teaching swimming the pool is 26-29 so yeah a bit cooler!! Awesome experience though, think we swum a mile, probably more, were swimming for about an hour in a big triangle through the lake.

a weekend in newcastle

I have a few minutes (ie 2hours of patients cancelling and not turning up to my clinic) so thought I would update and catch up on the last week.

So I finished my challenge last week and amazingly did reach my target of $400 thanks to a last-minute donation from an old housemate! Far out, it is insanely challenging to stick to $2 a day. Not because there wasn't enough food. I had leftover ingredients at the end of the week. It was hard because it was so BORING eating the same thing every day. I found I was craving flavour, taste and variety all the time. It doesn't make it any easier when you have people at work offering you food all the time as well.. However I did it and survived! I have been savouring tasty food ever since!!

On the weekend I managed to head over to Newcastle for a couch-surfing event I heard about the previous weekend. For those of you who haven't heard of couchsurfing before, it is an organisation/website where you can either stay with people or host people on a spare bed/couch/floor space. Alternatively if you can't do either at the moment you can just meet up with people for drinks, to explore, show people around. Its a great way to meet people and see places as the locals see it. On the weekend we had lots of different activities including a 5 hour "monopoly" through the city through bouts of rain/sunshine. We had to take photo's and video of our group doing particular things in particular areas. Highlights included asking a random stranger for their interview as you are their number one fan (we found a guy dressed up as a smurf and used him). Our group won a prize for the best video complaining to a cinema employee that there weren't enough Bollywood films being shown.... the guy we spoke to called the manager even though we were all laughing and saying we weren't serious - she got a bit stressed and it took a bit of proving for her to believe that it was for a scavenger hunt dare!

Newcastle itself is a pretty cool town, with some very interesting characters living there. Walking around the streets in the day and night you saw some ahh interesting outfits! There are many many MANY stag/hens nights going on so naturally there is alot of interesting-looking dressed people. I saw a group of 50 guys dressed in kilts, a guy dressed up as superman, a girl dressed up as a lion and a whole group of guys/girls dressed up as cavemen and cavewomen.

Work itself is going well and I have been making friends with Emma (new grad dietitian) and Jamie-Lee our receptionist as they are both my age. Outside of work I have started running again - there is a really cool running group in St Bees that I found out about through Emma. Last thursday we had a 1.5hr training session that involved running up the cliffs from the beach at St Bees (probably at least 1km long to get to the top) and then once at the top we were in a field full of sheep over looking the coast and the mountains doing relays and sprints with this incredible view! They have a real character as a trainer and it's a very good social group with an age range of probably 20-60years. Tonight I'm going to join them for swimming in the lakes. I haven't been swimming for a while and definitly not in the lakes -will be cold! Luckily one of them has a spare wetsuit which I am going to borrow.

heya!

I am now in Whitehaven working at West Cumberland Hospital. Everyone up here is lovely and very helpful and nice. They all greet each other by saying hiya. The accent can be quite thick - I've found that I can understand about 75% of the time what people are saying. I'm hopeless at writing down the messages from our answering machine though as I can't make out what people want!! I am working with another dietitian called Emma who just moved over from Ireland.

Last week in London was pretty busy but I had a great time, I really like the city, actually it is hard to call it a city really because it isn't that busy compared to other "real" cities!!! I managed to do some exploring, lots of walking around.



While in London I was lucky enough to score a massive bargain on a car who I named Francesca. She is a dark green ford fiesta who I purchased for 275 pounds!! Insurance on the other hand.... not quite so cheap but oh well. I needed the car for my job as I have to drive around clinics in the area seeing patients. So far, it has been going well with no dramas. Actually I was quite excited because I went up in teh world from my last car - francesca is only 17 years old, and has... wait for it... central locking and a sun roof! Luxury!! hehe.. sad isn't it when such simple things are exciting or amusing. oh well.



I try to make the most of exploring every place I go, so have been venturing out in the lakes district and within the greater area of whitehaven in the afternoons and weekend. It's cloudy during the and then without fail the sun will come out at about 8.30pm for 2 hours before it sets. I've found this is the best time to be outdoors!! I was explaining to a friend the other night that the sun had just come out (at about 8pm) and he was like "what?? the sun is setting!!" I climbed up a fell this afternoon. Apparently that is a mountain, and there is such a thing as fell-sprinting which is basically running up and down the mountains. I was told that there is some sort of event where people try and run up and down as many of these fells as possible within 24 hours - there are 47 to choose from or so I am told!!





Starting from tomorrow I'm on the $2 a day challenge. I've been surprised about how much food I have managed to accumulate for that little amount. Whoever said food was expensive in England was LYING!! Food is quite cheap here compared to Aus - especially if you cook pretty much everything from scratch like me. For example I bought 2L milk for 50p (Au$1) and you can buy a 800g big loaf of really grainy bread for 1 pound (Au$2). Its at least double that back home. Fruit and vege are also similarily cheaper in most cases than Aus. The next picture shows what I will be eating for the next 5 days.

living off $2 a day

In the last couple of days I have noticed the following things about London:

* Considering how old London is, it is so clean!! There is barely any rubbish anywhere, they have recycling bins everywhere (yay!!) and its just so clean... can't explain it any better than that!

* There are policeman everywhere!! policeman on horses, policeman in yellow jackets, policeman with those big bucket hats on, policeman on motorbikes, policeman with little caps on.... I

* You drive on the left hand side of the road, BUT you walk on the right side of the path - weird!

* Food is priced about the same as australia (in the supermarkets) and pretty good quality too.

Okay - now onto more important issues. I'm coming onto this a bit late as its only about 2 weeks away, but I have accepted the following challenge and am looking for people who will support me in this (fully tax deductable).

I am joining a 1 week fundraising event called Live below the line where I'll be living off $2 per day (as I'm in the UK, that's going to be altered to whatever that is in pounds - about 1.60 pounds i think atm) to raise money for poverty in Cambodia.

Please check out the link and if possible I'd really appreciate your contributions. I'm going to do it from the perspective of a dietitian and look at how nutritionally complete or inadequate a diet you can make from that.

http://www.everydayhero.com.au/gemma_sampson

For every additional $100 I raise, I'll do an extra day.

Welcome to London, the time is 6:10am

The last 2 days of my life have pretty much flown by. Literally. I have spent around 30 something hours in transit until arriving in London this morning. In Springwood I got up at about 6am in order to get ready before leaving and we left home at about 8. Everything felt surreal – definitely didn’t feel like I was leaving the country for a couple of years. I had managed to pack everything that I was taking up by about 8pm on Saturday night. In Sydney we dropped by Phillipa’s cafe for a yummy breakfast before getting over to the airport at 10. My flight left at 11 but as it was a domestic flight to Melbourne, I didn’t have to be there all that early.

When getting on the plane in Sydney the Qantas people didn’t want to let me take on my guitar because they had been given “strict orders no guitars” but the lady out the front let me anyway which was good! After that I didn’t have any more guitar issues and got it safely here to England. It’s getting around this guitar!

I had a 2hr layover in Melbourne, but by the time I had gone through customs and got my new boarding passes (every leg of my journey was with a different airline) there was really only about an hour. I grabbed a sandwich for lunch and called all my grandparents for a chat and then left melbourne and australia at 2.30pm heading for Bangkok on Jetstar. The plane was quite empty which was awesome because I was placed in the aisle seat on a middle row and had the entire row to myself so I could spread out on the 4 seats which was good! This was a 9hr flight which I spent watching movies. To help myself get over jetlag for when I arrived in England I didn’t let myself sleep until my flight from bangkok to try and get into the right timezone.

I got a bit lost in Bangkok airport. Because I have flown in and out of Bangkok airport before I thought it would be easy. Then as I arrived I realised that this time I was flying through the international airport rather than the domestic, so it was completely different!! There were a few things that made me smile though – the walking platform things like escalators that don’t go up and stay flat, at the end of them have these beepings and warnings that remind you that the end is coming.

I went through the security check to get to the transit lounge and got the full-degree security check. I had to take my belt off and got fully patted down front and back!! That’s never happened before to me! Then I got onto the next level, wandered around a bit and realised that I actually needed to get my boarding pass first, so went back down, got the boarding pass and had to go through the security check all again! It was 8.30pm in Bangkok when I arrived so after I had my pass I went and got some dinner as I hadn’t eaten on the plane. I had a green curry. The plane left Bangkok at almost 1am- this time with British Airways. I was starting to get pretty tired by this stage as I had been awake for almost 24 hours with about 5 hours sleep the night before. I made myself stay awake a bit longer though, watched another movie and had some dinner on the plane. Again I was lucky the seat department with a window seat just behind the wing. There was a girl on the aisle seat with an empty seat between but she ended up moving across to the middle aisle seat so she could spread out as the seat she was on was broken. Which meant that I had 3 seats to spread out on. When I did go to sleep I think I managed to get a solid 6 hours and woke up with about 2 hours left to go on the plane. Watched another movie, had breakfast and we flew into London at 6:10am. By 6:30 I was through passport control (thanks Dad for the british passport!!), by 6:40 I had all my bags (I have too much stuff, but I guess it means I dont need to buy anything here for a while) and by about 7:10 I had managed to walk the however many km it was to the underground station, buy an oyster card and figure out how to use it, and catch the first train towards where I was staying.

The train was quite empty when I got on and quickly filled up. I was watching all the people and wondering why they were all so dressed up and businessy or in school uniforms. Then I realised that it was about 7:40am and they were on their way to work/school. Duh! I didn’t realy have any issues with finding my way around or getting to the hostel

It is now 2:40pm and I’m starting to get very very sleepy... I’m at a cafe just up the road from my hostel where I’ve been waiting for the last hour untill now to check in. In the meantime since dropping off my things this morning at the hostel I have been wandering around on foot exploring London. So far I have:
• Seen Big Ben and the London Eye (but I didn’t go up)
• Fed a squirrel
• See the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace
• Walked along picadilly lane, pall mall and trafalgar square ( I didn’t realise that all the places on monopoly were real....)

There are probably more things that I have done but I’m too tired to think of them right now! London today is absolutely beautiful. The sun is shining, it has been quite hot actually. The plan now is to go check in, have a shower and then go and find a mobile phone and try open a bank account.

"it depends"

I've just had a great night hanging out with my friend Amy and amongst many many other topics of discussion, we were talking about friendships, degrees of friendships and also personality types/ personality tests and self awareness.

There are not many things that I can truly say I hate, but I honestly, really, HATE personality tests. I hate them. I can't really give a complete answer as to why that is, but I just don't like them. Perhaps I don't like getting to know myself because I don't like what I find? Or I find traits that I don't like. Which should serve as a motivator to change really.

I think that one of the main things that I dislike about these tests, is that my main answer or immediate response to pretty much every question asked is "it depends". I would describe myself as a chameleon. I think I can adapt to every situation and fit in, regardless of where I am and who I am with. I'm happy to be proven wrong with this, but that is what I believe I am like. I am quite as comfortable and happy living in the city as the country, being noisy as quiet, being instantaneous or patient... I can make some decisions spontaneously without a significant amount of thought like buying a ticket to England to move, while it may take me 3 months or more to decide whether I actually, truly like someone or not.

So, when I see a question in a personality test - my answer almost every time is "it depends"... on the situation, who i am with, my current state of self esteem (can vary greatly), where I am etc etc.

Anyway, I have been challenged to complete a particular personality test. I like challenges (I like to prove people wrong on the odd occasion..)! Amy swears by it. Once I get the address for it, I will complete it and let you know the results, my response and then whatever thoughts I have on its accuracy. Apparently it takes into account the "it depends" situations.. We shall see!!

With friendships, Amy asked me to explain my closest friends and something special about them. I came up with five main people. I have other friends too, but these 5 are the people who I probably have shared the most with, and let in the closest. I have alot of walls, and am very practiced at pushing people away. This isn't something that I'm particularly proud of, and I think I have improved in removing some of these walls and getting better at letting people really know me. I think I can get along with people very easily and will open myself to an extent, but letting them in properly - that will take a while!