A New Year and New Beginnings

A New Year brings with it the anticipation of what the following twelve months will bring; however it also puts a full stop at the end of our previous chapter.

For me, 2010 has been a year of travelling, of education, of work and of food. I started the year off in style, with a trip to New York, from then on it was work, work, work to do the best I possibly could in my exams. This stress was  relieved though, by the immense excitement surrounding my two month trip to Italy because when everything seemed to be getting too much, I was able to look to July and the prospect of a summer by the med. Then of course, the time came when I left home and planted myself into a whole different family, a whole different country and a whole different life in Italy. It was tough. There’s no denying that. However, it also provided me with so many amazing memories and experiences.

Skip forward two months, and you can find me back in England, so glad to be home but also so eager to throw myself into another foreign adventure. So within two weeks I had found myself an au pairing job in Madrid and it was with high hopes of perfecting my Spanish and making new friends, that I left London in the beginning of October. Unfortunately, neither of these anticipations came true, although that’s just the reality of stepping into a new experience – you can not possibly predict what you’ll take back from it in the end. Instead, I learned the meaning of true friendship through my life-long friends in England, I also held more responsibility than I have ever had before (and I can tell you, learning the best way to get children to eat all of their dinner is a more valuable lesson that learning a bit of Spanish grammar).

Then it was Christmas: mince pies, fruit cake, turkey curry, goose and all the trimmings (well, minus the roast potatoes…not that anyone noticed). But it was not only the food that made it so special, but also my family who I’ve missed so much over the past three months. It was the realisation that however much I like to fantasise that the grass is greener in Italy or Spain, just because they make the best risotto or have seemingly endless sunshine, it simply isn’t. Happiness is where the heart is, and so is home for that matter.

So that brings us to a new year and new beginnings. For me, one of my main resolutions (well, second to eating more healthily…OBVIOUSLY!) is to give more appreciation to home. This means  finding myself a job, making the effort to meet up with friends, exploring this beautiful country and sucking every last drop of goodness out of my indefinite time in England. However, I’ll never be able to shake that travelling bug, so I also plan to fit as much travelling as possible into the remainder of my gap year – South America, here I come!

This post has acted as the full stop at the end of my year, and with a chapter behind me and a whole different one waiting to be discovered, it is time to put an end to my blog. After all, whilst I’m working some tedious job in a restaurant or shop, what on earth will I have to write about? No, this past year has been too magical to dull with a blog that trails into the tedious, so for now, and until the next adventure, ciao…