First sunburn of the year- check :)

Me and Gaye decided to cycle to Weston and back yesterday. It was altogether around 22 miles. So. It was a hot and sunny day and I wanted to go to beach and Gaye wanted to go shopping around in the city.
We started off at around 930 am and got to Weston suburbs at 11 am. Then Gaye went to one shop and I headed to the beach. Or that was my intention. But I got lost and drove a circle around the city. So it added 2-3 miles to my yourney definetely.
When I finally got to the pier and parked my bike, the place was crowded. Of course- the Easter holidays and the children are also off from school for 2 weeks already. And the day was sunny- so why not to come out to the beach? Anyway. I found my place on the sand and stayed there for 3 hrs. Gaye came sometime during my stay in the beach and we had a picnic and then she headed off. I read my book and waited for her to come back. I didn't want to do shopping. It took Gaye a little longer in shops than I expected, so I ended up with a sunburn. But who cares? I got a tan now.
In the evening we cycled back to Weston. It took us 1hrs 20 mins altoghether. So I think it would take me about an hour to go to Weston (Gaye is not very experienced with bicycles yet, but she's already 10times better she was in the beginning). I guess I will cycle to Weston on Friday after the wedding and also my workday ends and will leave my bike to John's place and will head off to Cardiff.

11 miles seemes a lot less when driving by bike than I thought it would be. I love the bicycle trail to Weston and now I know the shortcuts. Altogether 11 miles. Lovely.

It was a nice day out and today we are finishing our brilliant weekend with some cold beer that I bought today when I went to pool :)

I've just realised how lucky I am

My project is probably the best EVS project I have ever heard of. There are loads of facts that prove it:

• I live in the place where I work - not much trouble with getting to work+no need to wake up very early
• I get three meals a day
• pocket money is bigger amongst all the volunteers I know
• I have a bicycle
• I have a guitar
• I have internet access
• I go to gym
• I go escorting to places like Royal Ascot, Glastonbury, I go to pub lunches, sailing, willow boat trips and all kinds of trips out
• When the bus service became limited my manager started thinkig about giving me the permission to use the van of the institution (I refused- driving a VAN in UK where everything is LEFT and roads are NARROW and cars drive way too FAST and the isurances are way too EXPENSIVE is not something I would dare to do, and the responsibility is also too big)
• I go to loads of trips around in UK
• I just bought myself a daily ticket to Reading festival (my dream has been to go to a big music festival in here)
• I get to make many friends all the time
• I have the mentor who helps me as much as possible
• All my co-workers are extremely helpful
• My work is something I love to do
• I live in a quiet place and there's nature around me- I sometimes smell freshly cut grass which reminds me of home
• I always have the possibility to go to some busier place on my free days
• It's very hot in here at the moment- +25 degrees
• I will go home for two weeks to attend the singing festival and see my friends
  
• etc

I think I forgot to add some of them, but well, those should already prove pretty much how lucky I actually am.

Reading festival

Well, as the Santa Claus hadn't delivered me in the post either the invitaton to the Royal wedding and Reading festival, I decided to make at least the last one true. So.... here it is! I'm going to the Reading 2011 festival on the 28th of August. The biggest line-up is going to be MUSE. Then there is going to be Panic At the Disco!, The Streets, Peter Doherty and so on. I am so going to love it!

Unfortunately I won't go to Royal Wedding......

Bradford and CS in Bristol

This weekend I made my trip to Bradford to see Vero and her friends. I started off Thursday night and went through Weston, Bristol, Manchester Picadilly, Manchester Victoria to Bradford. Vero came to the station. It was soooo great to see her after such a long time. We talked for a very long time in the evening and went to sleep pretty late.
The following morning Vero had to go to some job thing, because she got herself a job now. I'm happy for her. So she showed me around in the area a bit and then we met in her school her friend Sahr. We helped him to do some homework (or actually Vero did) and then went to Morrissons to get some food for the supper. Vero left me to her place to cook. I was finally able to cook! I made minced vegetable soup and tried to make apple-tear cake, but unfortunately I didn't have the mixer so it didn't look the best in the end. 4 of Vero's friends came over for the supper after the lecture was over. They all looked at the soup as if it was something disgusting. Well, it looked greenish and was minced. They had never seen anything like that. Kinda funny to me. But then they tasted it and liked it really much. So most of the soup was eaten. And the cake- although it didn't look like the cake and was a bit more like a dessert, they ate it and liked it, too. Nice! We had a nice chat about psychology. Marwan, one Vero's friends, made a Cube test with me and the results of the test were pretty accurate for me. It was a personality test. I've been trying to convince the guy that he should study psychology instead of the civil engineering, but I haven't been effective in it, yet. After the people went away, me and Vero had couple of hours of sleep and then got ready to go to FND-Friday Night Disco. We met Marwan there and some of his friends. There was one guy who studies psychology on the second year. He had never met another psycho student from another university. Sahr came to the party also. And there were many people. In the beginning we drank some ales and played billiard. When more people came, we danced a lot. The party ended at 4am. Sahr took me and Vero home after the party. Marwan was planning to go to Bath the following weekend so maybe I will see him soon :) I will probably go to Bath this weekend if he comes there. :)
On Saturday Vero showed me around in Bradford. I can say that it's the ugliest city I've been to in UK. Really, there is garbage everywhere. And the city itself seems to be industrial. I wouldn't want to live there for long time, but it's good for a visit. It's got a very active life going on over there. There are very many Indian, Arabic and African origin people in Bradford. It seemed like a different country. I didn't hear any English that was similar to the accents in south. The place is very multicultural, but indian culture is everywhere. It's like another country inside UK. I saw Vero's university, the main square, some gardens. But the place wasn't anything spectacular. I liked the university, though.
Oh, and Vero's apartement- she has a small room (about half of the size of the rooms we had in our boarding school's old hostal), and there were two more people living in the apartement and having rooms like this. They have a communal kitchen downstairs. It's nothing special, but I think I would even like to live in a place like this if I had proper roommates. But the area she's living in, is very dangerous. People have tried to break into the apartement of Vero already twice.
The time in Bradford went by so fast that I didn't even notice. It was so great to see Vero again. It felt as if we had seen each other every day in the past year, which we obviously didn't. As my marvellous time in Bradford came to an end, Vero sent me off to the station. I made loads of friends in Bradford and will go back there as soon as I've got enough time, money and don't plan to go anywhere else (so it means that I will not go there in the next couple of months).
My trip back was a bit different to the one I had when I went to Bradford. I went through Leeds to Bristol. But the thing was that I had to stay overnight in Bristol, because the train came in very late in the evening. So... I did couchsurfing! I stayed at one guy's, named Pat, place. We had exchanged our contacts before and he told me on Saturday morning that there was another CS also staying at his place. When my train was in Gloucester, Pat called me and asked if my journey was going well and how I was doing. When I go to Temple Meads, he and the another CS (a Chinese girl) came to greet me at the station. After that we went out to one pub near the library and the College Green where we had a beer and listened to some live music. It was lovely. When we got to Pat's place, we talked for a while. I told him about my plans to go to London in May and he and the Chinese girl (I can't remember the name- I have got a lot of difficulties with Chinese names anyway) gave me a lot of advice about travelling in London. As we were tired, we didn't stay up very late and went to sleep around 1:30am. The following morning Pat cooked us some omelette with croissant-kind-of thing which was very tasty. And after that we headed out to discover Bristol. It was really nice time. We went to the Suspension Bridge and University area and harbourside and central. We basically saw everything that a person who visits Bristol, should see. We walked altogether around 7miles. During our trip out we talked a lot about Britain, living in here, accents and all kinds of stuff. It was really great time and I enjoyed it very much. I will definetely visit Pat again. He's like a CS master or something like that. He organizes Bristol CS monthly gatherings and hosts people a lot. He seems to be very devoted to give the CS-s the best experience possible when they stay at his place. I can tell, that I absolutely love CS. It's just a brilliant thing and the person who invented is one of my idols now.
But again.... The day came to an end very fast. I had to go library and the Chinese girl had to catch a train to Cardiff. She was travelling around in the UK. She just came from London and Edinburgh and went to discover Wales. After that she is planning to go to Belgium.
After library I missed my bus to Weston and had to wait an hour to catch another one. I stayed at the waterfront and read the books that I took from library. Then, when I got to Weston, I discovered that the bus company had made changes in the bus times from today so that the buses don't go to Axbridge on Sundays after 15:52 anymore. Only to Winscombe. Gaye also planned to go with the same bus as me so we had a bit of a trouble figuring out how to get home. We called Petra, our mentor, because walking from Winscombe would have been too long distance. After I got here, I checked the bus times and really, no buses go from Weston to Axbridge after 6 in the evening any more. This is ridiculous. I mean- this limits our travels so much because we have to be back at a certain time and if we go anywhere we basically don't have time on Sunday to look around. Which is stupid. I'm gonna write a complaint letter to the bus company about it. It's stupid. And there are loads of people who suffer because of this. Especially when the summer comes and people want to go out in the evenings or for the weekends. I am really mad. This bus change will affect my life in here so badly now. I will lose a lot of travelling time because of that. As if I didn't have to think enough already about getting as cheap and appropriate tickets to different places as possible. Now I have to plan a lot more. And I hate it. Because travelling in UK is complicated if you want to do it as cheap way as possible.
But. Now I can practice on how to write a complaint letter. Good skill for life, I suppose.

I have got the best friends in the world.

They make me miss Estonia so much that it hurts! But I love them. They are just too good to be true.
I got a letter from them today and it consisted of a very gorgeous painting and a letter that just made my heart ache for my friends.
Thank you! I love you so much!

What have I done to deserve you?

When it's +20 or even more outside...

Happenings

During my stay in Britain I have discovered, as I have mentioned previously, that people tend to speak to each other no matter where they are. Which is really nice sometimes. I have had some interesting talks during my journey's from destination A to B. I want to talk about two of them.

Firstly. About a week ago when me and Gaye came home from Bristol one guy started talking to us in the bus. He had a crutch with him so we asked what had happened to him. Then he told us a long story on how he had had a motorcycle accident 4 years ago and has had around 8 operations so far. He told his accident wasn't caused by him and he's actually very lucky to have survived. The doctors had told that maybe they had to amputate his leg but then the leg was basically built up from different tissues from the guy's body. And the guy told he still had one operation to go. He showed us pictures from his iPhone about his leg after the operation. The pictures were quite disgusting and ugly. I mean- they were from a leg that had swollen up to the size of three legs and had infection in it. I'm glad we hadn't eaten much before....

Secondly. On my train trip from Leeds to Bristol a guy sat next to me in Birmingham. I was listening to my music calmly and suddenly the man tapped on my shoulder. I had a book "The reality of Dyslexia" that I was reading on the table in front of me and the man had read the title of the book. He asked if he could have a closer look at the book because he has a son who has severe dyslexia. Then the guy told that his son is finishing university master's degree in maths. And that he hasn't told his son that he has dyslexia. He also told that his son can't tell the days of the week or exact times. The man also talked about his other son who has severe autism and lives in a care home. We discussed a lot about working with disabilities, the topics were mostly about dyslexia and autism and british health care system. It was a nice talk. By the time the man went down in Bristol Parkway he had written down the name of the book and had understood that he should tell his son he's dyslexic. My day had filled it's purpose. Hopefully I helped to make someone's life better. I mean- having no idea that you have dyslexia and not knowing the reason why you struggle so much with reading and have struggled the whole life- it must be hard. And when you know that you have the disability, you can actually tell people this, and they will accept it and won't look at you as if you were some kind of a freak or stupid person. I guess on that day went well and I had a tiny part in changing someone's life towards better.

I hope I will have lots of this kind of happenings during my journeys around Britain. I like them. Meeting interesting people is fun. And educative.

Leeds

I finally had my on-arrival training. It took place in Leeds and lasted for three days altogether.
Our day started pretty early- woke up at 5:15 to get ready and take the bus to Weston from where we were supposed to change to train which went to Bristol Temple Meads. In there we changed again and took a train to Leeds. When we finally arrived to Leeds, we got lost on our way to the hotel. Although we had directions with street names.... Hmmh. As I was in charge of me and Gaye going to the hotel, (I had directions written down), it seems, that I have no sense of directions. Obviously. We arrived at the hotel just in time to get dinner. Which were sandwiches..... But... From the very first moment we had fun. In our training there were altogether 21 volunteers including us. There were people from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Austria, Germany, Denmark, France. I now know people in Leeds, Newcastle, Gloustershire, near Bristol, Brighton, London and it's surroundings. Very goood.
During our on-arrival we talked about british culture, the flags, places to visit, cheap ways of travelling, language and talking with hands (we found out that there's more than one way to say f**k you with hands), dialects, food, our projects. It was a very useful and informative training. I can say that I liked it a lot.
And in the evenings we went to pubs. I tried for the first time in here the dark ale, which I now like a lot more than lager. I absolutely love ale. It's really sad we don't have it much in Estonia.
I found out that the pubs close in most of the places in UK around 11pm. Which is funny.
But we found one jazz club which was opened until 2am. It was really good to go out and have fun. I really loved Leeds. It is a busy city with beautiful architecture. I can't say if I'd like to live there but for some weeks I would like to stay there. I loved the fact that everything was busy. Not calm and relaxed as my life has been for the past month. It's really good that I had a chance to live again the life in the way that I am used to. Now that I know some volunteers, I will do it more. Definetely.
At the moment I'm back in Axbridge and have to get used to the quiet lifestyle. Again. I mean, I don't mind it, but some action would be nice at least once a week. That's why I love cities. They are busy. Everybody are doing something and heading somewhere. People don't care what you do or where you go. Nobody asks about you and starts talking to you in the bus. Everybody are focused on themselves and moving and getting to their destination. I like this kind of business. I don't have to talk to everybody all the time which I have done a lot in here. I don't mind it, but sometimes the difference is good.
I also tasted marmite. Uhmmm. I don't like it. At all. It's like liquorice- 50% of the people love and 50% of the people hate it. I don't like it.
But I liked the Scottish coca-cola- the dandelion soft drink. Most of the people didn't like it. To me it reminded a little bit of Kali, so I loved it.
I'm really happy that this on-arrival took place.
Although I miss home, I'm already making plans on places to visit. I should probably print out a map and mark the places I want to visit. So I won't miss anything.

Big credits to Elif, who made the pictures that I'm using in this post.

Bristol

Me and Gaye went to Bristol yesterday. We started our trip pretty early because we wanted to go to very many places in Bristol and do some shopping also. To go to Bristol we had to go through Weston. The bus that goes from Weston to Bristol is a double-decker so we finally drove with one in here! And we sat upstairs in front. That was just pretty awesome :)
In Bristol we discovered that a shop named PRIMARK is very cheap and has beautiful clothes and shoes. I got myself a dress and a t-shirt for 12 pounds. Awesome! We had a nice picnic in park and after shopping went to sightseeing. Oh, it was great. We saw many churches, nice graffity, hippodrome (the theatre), waterfront. We saw Bristol Cathedral which is just so big and mighty. We registered ourselves to library. We went to a pub which is in a boat in the bay. We drank the ale, chatted with lots of people. It was such a great day out! I'm not going to talk much about it, because there isn't a lot to talk about. I think pictures are better :)

PS: First couple of pictures are from Weston.