RIDING that roller coaster of life again ...... sometimes I would love to go back to being a teenager and have the troubles of a typical teenager, like; - my best friend isnt talking to me because I didn't sit with her at lunch, am in love (even though I have no idea what love is) with the boy in one of my classes yet I have never even spoken to him, I hang out with a group at school who think it is cool to smoke, drink and cut class then get an hours detention in the hall, write poems about death and believe I can make connections to the spirit world, am supressed, repressed and depressed about just about everything in life ... haaha OMG what a laugh those weren't really hard times at all when I think about it ... that was just a sharp corner on the roller coaster. Moving on into my 20's and having to start taking responsibility for myself, my money, my job actually my whole life my little roller started to go up .. then down .. then up.. then down and further down ... oh it was hard to control.... thats when I started to realise that my parents well they actually did know what they were talking about so maybe I should listen to what they say .. !!! ??? They gave me the rails I needed at a young age when I didn't even know they had, they always left that end decision up to me .. for example at aged 14yrs "do you want to give up competive swimming even though you have just swum in the North Island champs and done extremely well?" ... "yes" I said, mmm one decision for years I wish had not made and continued swimming as ma and pa would have liked. But by making my own decisions, they were letting me make real life decisions and thus learn from my mistakes well not mistakes, just sharp bumps on the ride. Now in my 30's and on the other side of the world, I have learnt to stand on my own two feet and fight for what I know is right or wrong and am pretty proud of everything I have achieved whilst here. I tend to stress out over things like I did when I was younger as there is always a way of sorting things out. And my parents are always there on the end of the phone if I ever need their very very very knowledgable advice. The roller coaster goes up .. then down .. glides along for a bit ... goes up .... and very really now does down - but I have learnt to put the brakes on that!

OH my what a hard week it's been. We arrived back on Monday from Majorca and then I started my job on Tuesday so my head was struggling to swim at the end of the week, I couldn't even manage getting to the gym as came home exhausted each night. Am so pleased though that I have changed jobs as am just loving it. Claire and Vicki have given me the Northern shops to look after which is fab as knew them all before when I was ticketing so have brilliant repore with them. I was on the phones this week and next week Claire and I will be doing the 2 days intermediate training and then Jonny and I will do 2 days advanced training, I will just be shadowing them this time and then they would like me to start taking the sessions. Am a little scared about that as never done any teaching before but am told it is pretty laid out in the manual with examples to put up etc. I stayed at Marks Friday and Saturday night, hadn't seen him in far too long so had a huge catch up and he had been at Helens wedding when it was his birthday so we called it his birthday weekend. I got his this retro little sheep that made him giggle... I put them on a little shelf when you walk down the stairs and told him he had to "baa baa" every time he walked past them. We just chilled out really the whole weekend watching movies, eating loads and he had me laughing heaps too as he always does. Saturday night we went for a few drinks at The Green in Islington which is our favourite cocktail bar and then had Turkish for dinner, on Sunday morning went to his local funky cafe for breakfast - they do fantastic coffee. The weekend with Mark was just what the doctor ordered hee hee (he is a doctor) after my huge holiday. Back to work tomorrow to start my shadowing of the training sessions eeek !!!

MAJORCA ….. Was my second adventure there with Kelly and gawd I love the place. Kelly, Karen, Tristan, Kate and I all went for a wild weeks holiday and came away feeling like we needed another holiday to get over this one. I have never partied so much and so hard in 1 week was WILD and I loved every minute. We spent every day on the beach soaking up the rays, taking many dips in the the sea (or the pool) and floating around on our lilos and then at night in Pauls bar - running up a fabulous little tab - and in total Paul style he kept us all entertained (along with the rest of the bar) with his mad antics. He has acquired a water gun since we were last there and gets you when you least expect it the little “shite”!!! He’s also aquired a wide variety of mad hats, which “you” seem to end up wearing by the end of the night, but I must say though his bongo drumming has improved since March. It was Karens 28th birthday on the third night we were there and Kelly had gotten us all t-shirts made up with her nickname on the front and an we each had an arrow on the front pointing in all different directions, on the back was our nicknames and also a little promo for Paul “join the party at Snoppys Bar Santa Ponsa”. On Karens t-shirt was a picture of her as a kid and the words 21 with a few years experience, the back had a list of tasks for her to do - I think she did about 3. 2 nights later we again decided to dress up, Karen went as Rambo, Kelly a bunny and me a school girl. Again we all got a huge amount of attention - especially our sexy little bunny !!!! There seemed to be a night where one of us was terribl drunk with a revolting hangover the next day - I managed two … one of them being the final night, not something I would recommend when travelling on an early morning flight….. Mmmm silly girl. Bring on adventure number 3 ….