The beginning of the end...

I know I haven't written in a while...my bad. Things have been crazy and I haven't really had time to look sideways. I'm sorry you fell of my radar but you're back on :)

Since my last post so much has happened - I turned 18! WOOHOO!! So I am now legal. How legit? I couldn't celebrate my birthday in typical fashion because I was writing prelims and I wrote English on my birthday, Maths the next day and then History the day after that. History was on a Saturday. We were not happy chappies. It was a bad week.

However, we still went out. Not as bigscale as you would expect. We just went to Banana Jam and had a really rad time with like our family members and friends which worked out to 21 people. So, still pretty epic. The next day (when I was writing my maths paper) our grade head came to me and said "you really shouldn't be going out during exams". You can imagine my surprise. She then proceeded to say that if it was somebody's birthday celebration it was okay. "It was MY birthday!". Then she was chilled. It was really awkward for a while.

To celebrate properly we are having a party on Friday with all my homies. It's circus themed so we are busy making the house a circus. Not much of a stretch ;)

Prelims were a MAJOR thing that took over every second of my life for those three weeks and weeks before. Every time I was doing something to relax, I was thinking that I should have been studying and the amount of work I had to do.

Prelims are over now. Thank heavens. They were really average. But, you know, I'm looking at prelims as a trial run for finals. I messed up some things in prelims and I can learn from those things and not do them in finals and do much better.

That's my theory, anyway.

I'm on holiday now. Well, sort of. I don't have to go to school but I'm doing work at home. Preparing for finals. Fun times.

Some cool things that have happened recently are that I, along with our Lavender Hill Ambassadors, addressed the City of Cape Town Council meeting. It was really interesting to see how things work in those kinds of meetings. The best thing was that I couldn't get to the podium so I had to sit up at the top. I was given the seat where the Deputy Mayor of Cape Town sits. How cool is that? My topic was peace and inclusion and our four ambassadors spoke about their project on gangsterism. It was an amazing experience and when we were finished we got a standing ovation from the councillors.

The next big thing that's happening in my life is that I have been asked to be a keynote speaker at the UNESCO Conference in Paris in October. I'm so excited! I'm going with my sister. It's going to be EPIC! It's the first time I am travelling without my mom. It's an interesting time in our lives and it's the start of my claiming more of my independence.

We are leaving on the 13th of October and getting back on the 21st. It's going to be a crazy and amazing week that we will no doubt remember for the rest of our lives. Now we're just waiting for our visas and then we're all set.

Just because we live the crazy life that we do, four days after we get back from Paris I write my first final paper. It's enough time. I work best when I'm under pressure, anyway. I would have had my awesome experience before finals and then I can knuckle down and achieve what I want to in the end.

:)

Back to reality

I had an amazing time in Chicago with all the incredible people I met there. I told you about them...

But now, we have been back in SA for 2 weeks. It took us nearly a week to recover from our 30 hour travelling stint. I'm telling you, never do anything like that. It's a stupid idea. Especially for a disabled person - it just gets ridiculous.

I'm back at school. And it's as hectic as it ever was. Probably more. We are now a week away from our first matric exams. So, as you can imagine, everybody is pretty stressed out. The situation is pretty much like this:

We get more work, we complain about doing it, procrastinate doing it, then we sometimes end up NOT doing it (some of us do this as a form of protest, at least it links in with the history syllabus). We don't really have a lot of time to study for the exams...

I'll be the first to admit that my most used study method is CRAMMING! It seems to work for me most times...just because it has to. This year I'm trying to be a little more prepared for exams than I usually am, so I am cramming earlier and then going over it slowly, closer to exam days.

Today marks 9 days before we write our first paper.

Wish us luck.
:)

Almost time for the big people world

So, today I applied to UCT (University of Cape Town). It's a lot simpler than I thought it would be. I applied online...so much easier than doing the whole hand-written thing.

I applied for a Bachelor of Social Sciences majoring in Politics - don't you think it's going to suit me?

They ask you to give your second choice as well, which for me was difficult because I know what I want to study. I went with psychology. I think that would suit me too, but less.

Now all we have to do is wait and see. They say that is simple to do. I disagree. I am probably going to obsess over it until I get the all important letter saying that I made it into politics.

We'll just wait together.
:)