Exams

Yeay, it is that time of the year. As you may or may not know, I haven’t had any exams until May. There were Mock Exams in January but they were more or less just “preparation” and “dry runs”, they didn’t have an impact onto my grades.

Consequently, everybody’s exams were cramped into May and June and over the period of a month I wrote all of my exams, covering everything that I learned in 4 subjects over the course of 9 months.

To complicate matters, there was a week of holidays right in the middle, followed by a week of “study leave” where you only had to come into school for exams. The number of exams you have to write varies with the subjects you take, it was 9 for me. And whereas the last two are spaced out nicely, I wrote the first seven within 10 days. It was stressful, to say the least.

What Stela and I thought is that as a method to cope with the stress better we could get stress balls. Our Hostmother liked the idea, said that she had made them herself before out of balloons and flour and that we could all make our own ones together. And that is what we did.

I wasn’t sure if I would be allowed to take the ball into the exam room but that turned out not to be a problem. So pretty early into my first exam (Geography) I squeezed the stress ball in my lap and…it popped. It just exploded in a floury mess on my legs.  In the middle of an exam! Needless to say that it didn’t fulfil its purpose that well in that moment. It didn’t help that from then on my brain spent a lot of time producing thoughts such as “What if someone in here has got a flour allergy? Some people have got that. What if they breath it in and then they die or something because my frickin’ balloon exploded???”

Not mine, out of obvious reasons -.-

It went off to a bad start, but afterwards nothing traumatizing happened anymore apart from the moment in my second Geography exam when one of the women who observed us to make sure that we can’t cheat walked up to me to ask me if I had brought another stress ball. I must have left a lasting memory.

Walk The Wight

“Walk The Wight” is an annual charity event that takes place on our island where – guess what – people walk the Wight. The money raised goes to a hospice on the island, if you register you pay 20£ but you can participate just for fun too. This year there have been more than 10,000 people registered and that are people from everywhere, not just the island or England.

This year it happened to be the 25^th anniversary and me and my whole Hostfamily took part. There are different walks that vary in length, there are 4, 8, 12, 14 and 26 miles tracks. We did the 8 miles one (13km!) and it was really nice, the weather was perfect and the track was nice too (okay, I challenge you to find a way that is ugly, everything on this island is scenic),

we even got a medal at the end.

Us waiting for the bus to take us back to the car (trying to pose for a picture with the medals).

#spon ;)

There are even footsteps on the back.

Holidays/London

One week after I arrived at my new family we got two weeks of Easter holidays and because I kinda came on short notice they parked me at Kathy’s (my contact person).

I was a bit alone so I went to the revision sessions that my school offered (smug!) for the first week until I got picked up again.

Stela was gone for most of the time but we decided that we would make a trip to London on the Friday before we would have to go to school again. It could only be one day because the rules of my organisation don’t allow us to stay somewhere overnight unless we have got someone with us that is at least 25 years old which is a shame but we went for it anyway.

We found a deal online which would allow us to take the train to London and back and use all busses and subway in London itself for less than 30£ which is extremely cheap and gives you quite a lot of freedom.

The next morning we woke up at 6:45 (earlier than for school) took the bus to the Hovertravel and then took that to the mainland. There it turned out that the train station wasn’t as close by as we thought it would be and asking the woman in the Hover station made us discover that we just missed the shuttle bus to take us there. But there would be another one in a few minutes. There was but when it came there were only a few minutes left until our train was going to leave too. When we arrived we only had like 4 minutes left and still had to print of our tickets, find out our platform number and get there in time. Frankly we ran to the station and got a bit stressed when the man at the ticket machine in front of us had technical issues. When we finally had our tickets we broke into a run again, thankfully found our platform immediately, hopped onto the first waggon and had just about enough time to catch our breath before the train left the station.

When we arrived in London I was positively surprised how uncomplicated the Subway system is and by how often the Subways come! (Both on the island and at home in Germany I live very rural, don’t judge me.) We made our way to Madame Tussauds but there were too many people already so they told us a time when we should come back. We decided to use the waiting time and made our way to the Hyde Park where we had lunch. Afterwards we took the bus to the Buckingham Palace, we couldn’t see the changing of the guards, we came too late for that, but there were two guards standing in front of the palace and then three others came and…had a chat with them separately? Don’t ask me.

Sherlock Holmes Statue

Hyde Park

Buckingham Palace

Victorial Memorial in front of the Palace

Two guards having a private conversation so the company of the
one guy had to stay out of earshot? I don't know what is going on.

You can't say they didn't warn you.

Afterwards we went back to Madame Tussauds and it was amazing. The figurines looked so real! The lighting in there was not ideal so the pictures are not as good as the real life experience.

Me and my new best friend Tom Cruise (yes, I am one of those peasants)

They had set up an area where the staff would take a picture of you with (the old) One Direction.

Katnis, with the four note whistle playing on repeat.

A part of the royal family.

Careful, this one is actually alive!!!

There was a little behind the scenes area as well.

When we left the building again we still had some time so we took the Subway to the London Bridge but it wasn’t until we had left the station that I realized that what I was looking for was the Tower Bridge and that they were two completely different bridges. So we went straight back down and tried again. This time we took the right exit and found the right bridge. We then walked over the Tower Bridge and crossed the Themes before it was time to get back to the train station to go back home after a great day in London.

The Fortress of London. This is where the Crown Jewels are kept.

Tower Bridge

Stela and me