Hello.
Erm, update from Meia Praia - it's hot.

Laura- we hope you have picked the frutas and vegebules. Or your Mum has. Just not the blackbirds or any rodents.
And sorry about the poo and milk.

CAITLIN HAVE A FABULOSO TIME IN AMERICA! I am vair jealous.

Nectarines here are good, our cleaner Sandra hasn't turned up (I'm not really that bothered, it's my mess and I like it) and I keep getting headaches because Dad plays his Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band CD too loud in the apartment and there are loads of little, screaming children running around shouting things like:

-"LOUIS! LOUIS! GO BACK AND GET YOUR T-SHIRT!"
-"KAYLEE? HAVE YOU GOT MY TOWEL KAYLEE?"
-"DON'T SPLASH ME. YOU ALWAYS SPLASH ME WHEN I'M DRY. I HATE YOU!"

Aaaand so on and so forth.

Adios. ♥

So here I am, in Portugal, sitting in the shade under a palm tree in the really pretty garden with the hot sun beating down, my Mother to my right and an abundance of frogs and goldfish swimming placidly in ponds dotted around the site. The wind is blowing, ever so strongly and occasionally, and I can hear a lawn mower and trains going past and people shouting around the pool.

Now, not that I'm not grateful for this holiday, because I bloody am, and it's beautiful here and a nice getaway and all the things you want in a holiday, but somehow I've managed to cripple myself on the third day here.

It started as a normal day to the beach, and I was wearing swimming shorts and a t-shirt over my bikini top, and I'd slathered sun cream on. We had a 30 minute hike downwards through scrubland and dusty hills and spiky plants until we reached the beach, where we walked and found a spot and sat down and looked forward to a day in the heat. I didn't feel much pain at first, but a gradual burning sensation began to throb through my left thigh, and standing up to join Neil at the water's edge, I realised that I could barely stand up. The pain is excruciating.

Four days later, it's barely any better. Sleeping is difficult, standing is painful and walking feels like someone is pushing blades into my leg. It stiffens when I lie down, so when I stand it hurts so much that it is difficult not to cry out.

After four days, of course, people are beginning to think that I'm milking it, because it appears to come and go. Every day it is either worse or better than the day before, but so far it has shown no signs of the beginnings of the healing process.

I don't know what it is, maybe the excercise, the heat, fabric on sensitive skin, God knows, but I just bloody hope it goes away before the end of this holiday because it is making my life a misery and I can't help but feel I'm dragging everyone else down as well.

I hope it gets better before Bath, I really hope so, because right now my chances of walking and joining in look not so good.

I'm not religious, but PLEASE God, make this get better.

Not sure when I'm going to be back on here, but Hi from Portugal, and Bye from Portugal for now.
♥

This is a super quick blog because otherwise this thing will have to go the best part of three weeks without a post.

Currently, I have done all my packing, but I'm fairly sure I've forgotten something. Probably my enthusiasm, which has been sucked out of me by everyone in this house else running around and thinking that their problems are worse than anyone else's and my God, why are members of my family so freakin' melodramatic?

We all have issues, leave them to each of us to deal with and please, please don't take it out on the rest of us.

It is not appreciated.

Right, so everything is packed, including Firefly and Serenity (bwahaha, you didn't think I could last 2 weeks did you?) and my one billion t-shirts that I have and couldn't decide between and four books: The Wasp Factory, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Time Traveler's Wife and The Rules of Attraction.

Also packed, my faithful and very dear iPod, and camera.

I haven't got anything else to say which isn't grumbling or pointless, so, GOODBYE for now.

"This is the captain speaking, we have a little problem with our entry sequence so we may experience some slight turbulence, and then...explode."

Oh Mal, I ♥ you.

Update: So I seriously think my suitcase weighs too much, and also I'm pretty confident we are going to miss the flight because Dad is leaving it to the very last minute to do anything, despite having a go at the rest of us for leaving packing to the last minute. Fair? I think not.

So on Thursday evening, Rachel and I went to see him. And I'd love to ramble on about how amazing he was and how incredibly insane it was to watch buuuuut...

...I'm not allowed.

But it was amazing.




I also got the movie 'Serenity' and the Firefly soundtrack, which leads me nicely onto my next topic:



HELLO THERE, MR CAPTAIN MAL REYNOLDS SIR, ♥

I haven't really got much else to say, except that I've left all my work until tomorrow to do, and that this time next week I'll probably be in or somewhere near or getting to Portugal. So that's a yay, I guess.

Depends on whether my family decide to put their happy/excited/whoopee-a-holiday faces on.
♥

Tomorrow, Rachel and I are going to see this man:


And we're quite excited.
I'm not sure what to expect but I'm very much looking forward to it.

I'll probably do a full write-up on Friday.

Also, my last filling equalled pain. I don't have to go back for 6 months though, so that's good.
♥

This just blew my mind. 2010 people, 2010.

♥

So I've just got out of the bath, and I'm feeling clean, refreshed, a bit hungry, quite tired and sort of prepped for next week. I've made the two presentations for English, and they're both pants but will hopefully do. No posts at all last week, I was pretty solid with work and stuff throughout so, like last week, this blog post will cover all of the major parts.

First off, Caitlin I do not hate you, and you are forgiven forever!

Monday was hot. And it was pretty hard to concentrate, so double English was spent making wordles saying things like 'Kasabian are the best band ever bar none' and 'Poo'. Tuesday was hot. And I had to go to Sandringham in the morning for a double lesson, where we looked at the effect of shock tactics in the Media and advertising. English was dull, and in Drama we had to do a physical lesson and it was crap because it was too hot and I hate physical theatre. Wednesday went pretty good, and at quarter to five I walked to Trestle (see paragraph at the bottom). Thursday I had the morning off, and then I went to Sandringham for a lesson where it turned out our teacher wasn't even there so I did nothing for an hour. On Friday we had Drama in the morning and we had to perform some of our devised pieces, which went quite well. Then I went to Media and decided that for my Year 13 coursework I'm going to look at feminism in comic books, which should be really cool.

Trestle.

I should probably say now that any resentment at having to be at TYC for rehearsals five until nine frittered away by about eight on the Wednesday. Yes, it was bloody tedious having to rehearse the same bits over and over and over again, and yes, it could have probably been organised a bit better.

But I liked that fact that I got the chance to actually get to know everyone else who was in the group before I left for good. The nice people anyway. So thanks to Carenza, Gemma, Aimee, Dave, Pascoe and Matt, and also thanks to Graham, the train man in the tunnel who gave me lolz with the light and smoke machine. Otherwise I would have probably died.

In the end, the performances weren't anything spectacular. They were okay, but, you know, it's Trestle I guess, and that's the way it is. The show sold out though, completely. Weird huh?

So I wrote this long sappy letter, to the theatre company and the youth group and everyone involved in them. It turns out I'd been doing Trestle related things for eight years, since 2001. I gave it to Anna, because I didn't know who else to give it too, and it was obvious she hadn't read it by the time we were prepping for the first performance.

After it though, when we were all having a lunch break out in the sun, she ran up to me, crying like a loon and hugged me proper tight. She'd obviously read it, and she told me she was going to send one to Laura Halliwell to read as well. The clinching moment for me?

At the end of the evening, Pascoe said to me: 'This is probably the last time I'll ever see you.'
Followed by serious hugging.

And that was that.



♥