A moment back down in Exeter

In a rush to attempt to see a couple of my closest friends before moving out of the country, I managed to steal a couple of days back in Exeter. The plan was to see Lloyd on day one and Nené on day two. I also planned to drop some stroopwafles off at Aimee's as she loves them and I forgot to take any last time. However, on the way down, I received another text from Aimee asking if I was sure I really couldn't stay (again) so I took the hint and stayed there for the night.

Meeting with Lloyd is always fun. He's a highly intelligent and really lovely person. We have some of the most amusing debates on every subject, usually while drinking tea and or eating good food. Naturally, this meeting was no exception. He introduced me to a little restaurant, Mashawi, in Exeter, which serves Middle Eastern food. Although my diet is severely limited at the moment, the food that I could eat was lovely while there was so much I would have liked on the menu. Well done, once again, Lloyd. As always, it was great to see him!

I did bring my camera but only took the one photo!

Then it was a half an hour walk to Aimee's in the rain. I guess it was worth it but y'know... ;-)

Seeing The Best Friend again was a real unexpected bonus and we messed around, played silly games on the computer, talked about stupid things. The morning was brilliant too as Nené was running very late and Aimee, her sister Caroline, and I spent the additional time singing through Disney songs. We're certainly responsible adults, okay?

It was also lovely to get to see Nené again. She was her normal bouncy self and I am so pleased I got to see her before I went. Aimee came with me and those two got on exceptionally well, as I always said they would! Our time was cut unexpectedly short but, to be honest, her gentleman friend who accompanied her seemed so bored that I am slightly pleased to have relieved him of the burden of my presence!

Leaving Aimee once again was really rather strange. Although our previous meeting had seen us saying our goodbyes, doing so once again was really rather painful. My leaving, exciting as it may be, feels so much realer now and to say goodbye within that realisation... it's not comfortable. Now she just has to come out and see me in the Netherlands soon!

Rain, friends, and cakes

What a couple of days!

I managed to go down to Devon for a few days to meet up with Nené and give her the present I’d made for her 18^th birthday and also to get my Extended Project dissertation off Haydon.

It was so, so good to be back, if rather strange. My mother and I actually stayed in the hotel that we lived in most of the time when we were going through our nomadic stage. I cannot tell you how strange that was. The staff were really happy to see us, which was lovely. The new manager (well, technically she was away on maternity when we were there and has since returned so she’s not really new!) seemed to know a lot about us so guessing we’re pretty notorious hehe

I might not have been able to photograph
Nené but I did photograph cakes!

Meeting Nené on the Monday was quite wonderful. I didn’t manage to take any photos because it was bucketing down with rain (incidentally, I found out that my boots leak) but I don’t really care because it’s been so long since I last saw her! We mooched a lot, chatted a lot. It was lovely. It was also nice to be with someone who appreciates my musical theatre obsession interest. Hopefully it won't be long until I get to see her again.

It was also great to see Haydon again, having not seen him since I finished college. Of course, he insisted on buying me drinks (one day I will manage to buy him a drink!) It seems like he's getting on pretty well even if his university are causing havoc. He also brought me down my dissertation which he kindly picked up for me and put up with me reading all the marker's comments while we were supposed to be socialising. What a lovely chap!

They're heavier than they look!

As Haydon and I were wrapping up I got a bit of a surprise as he said he was going to go and get a tattoo done... rather him than me! Anyway, I faced my fears and actually walked into a tattoo studio just to see Tegan, another college friend, for a brief moment as she is now doing a  tattoo apprenticeship (and did his tattoo in the end but there was no way I was hanging around for that!)

The drive home was pretty hectic. It was sad to see how weather bashed my old area of the country has been and, naturally, the weather made the drive a bit tricksy. Nature couldn't help but send a reminder that, while she might be a bit harsh at times, she's an amazing, beautiful thing.

Onwards and upwards!

It seems that, after a couple of months of rather painful stagnation, life is moving forwards at an amazing pace.

This morning was my singing lesson, as normal, and it went exceptionally well. Okay, I actually had my singing teacher jumping up and down clapping her hands because she was so pleased with the progress I was making. She also ran out to the car and told my mother. You have no idea how amazed this made me. It's been under six months and I have gone from someone who was afraid to sing in front of someone, unable to get more than a few sounds out in a lesson, to the position I'm in now. I still can't say that I feel that my voice is 'good' or even 'okay' but there are moments when I actually like what I hear. There are moments when I feel more confident. Physically and mentally I can see so much progress and you have no idea how much that means to me. It's nothing short of a miracle!

I also received an email regarding my university interview and 'meet-and-greet'. It's going to be a challenging day, I'd wager. There are group activities, mock classes, discussions and question and answer sessions (as well as some optional social activities which I think it might be best to hang around for). I'm  really excited but a little daunted too. Mind you, I guess that's a healthy state of mind because a little adrenaline helps us to do our best, right? I've been given a choice of dates but, as long as I can arrange the flights, I'm probably going to go in about four weeks time. Goodness, this is way too real for my liking!!

This evening has been an evening of writing to people about meeting up. I'm going to have to rearrange meeting with Aimee because of the interview. I'm meeting the amazing Nené (i.e. one of the best friends a girl could have) a week today and I am so so excited. It's been way too long! Haydon and I have also managed to arrange our meeting up, at last, and it's going to be great to see him too. Considering I used to see him almost every day at college, it's been strange to not see him for ages. And then we have the impending visit from Annelies which is really exciting as I will get to meet my penpal :-D

Gosh, it's going to be a wonderfully busy month or two! I will also return to taking photos as I will take my little DSLR round with me. My compact has rather given up the ghost hence the boring text only posts.

Art, music, life

The title pretty much sums up what's going on pretty now. By day I'm being a noisy pest playing various instruments and by night I'm attacking things with paint.

Art

Art wise, I'm mainly working on scrapbooks in various forms right now. I've actually not finished my Castlefest book yet. In my defence it does take a while to design/paint 100 pages of stuff. I have, however, started a new book for general life and that is actually pretty much up to date. I know. A miracle! I'm thinking about posting photos of my scrapbook pages onto tumblr as well as on facebook from now on. We'll see what happens. I know a few people want to see certain pages and it's hard to work out where to share them.

I'm getting a real itch to paint a portrait again. You may well know that the last ill fated attempt didn't work out so well. I guess painting a picture of a couple is always going to be risky and the pair I was painting happened to get a divorce in the short time between the sketch and first bit of paint being put down and the rest of it going on! Whoops. Although I was painting for my own enjoyment I hadn't the heart to go on and finish such a lovey-dovey painting. I'm not sure exactly who or what I want to paint though, and I'm not practised in portrait work either, so it might not happen. We'll see how I feel!

Music

As for music, did I tell you how much I am in love with my new whistle? He quickly gained a gender, which is as far as I tend to go with musical instruments, but Nené seems pretty sure he should have a name too. She suggested Felix and then Máté (the latter having a rude explanation) but I don't think either of those are quite right. Okay, the latter is just wrong! 

Lack of name aside I've been enjoying playing so much. I feel that I'm progressing in my playing very quickly, much quicker than I expected, and after just two weeks I'm a bit overwhelmed by the progress that's been made. I'm not great, not at all, and speed is something I need to work on greatly but things are going so well. 

Of course, the other major musical adventure for me is my singing. I had a lesson yesterday, the first in two weeks due to illness, and it was probably the best lesson I've ever had. I managed to sing a song through in a relaxed way and, do you know what, after doing that I managed to tell my teacher, honestly, that I thought it sounded good. I'm far from being a confident singer but that's such an improvement. In three months I have sung in front of someone for the first time in years, sung in front of an audience (albeit unintentionally), and finally I have managed to have a moment where I can admit that I enjoyed my own voice. I'm far from being a good singer, and far from getting over my phobia, but, step by step, I'm going in the right direction.

'Cello is still being played but we have some issues with tuning pegs going on. I think she may well need to have a quick trip to a luthier because we have some major slipping that I can't seem to fix. She also needs some new strings as I can actually see the A and D strings fraying. I think I've been neglecting her a bit recently, especially when one considers the abuse she suffered at the hands of my father. She got her own back on me by stabbing my foot. After this many years you think I'd remember to wear shoes when playing, wouldn't you?

Life

Things aren't really going to plan and this is not how I saw my gap-year panning out, for various reasons that I don't want to share randomly on the internet. However, I am actually really happy. I'm doing the things I love and I will be continuing to do these things next year, and more. I can't wait for next year's European adventure, even though it looks like I'm going to have to travel alone which wasn't my plan either, and I can't wait to see what happens next.

Youtube news!

About four years ago I first started to subtitle Elisabeth. It was about a week before my birthday and, having discovered the magic of this musical I decided I wanted to share it with my friends who were coming round to celebrate my birthday (although, of course, it wasn't finished in time). Thus I decided to use a dictionary to translate my favourite musical. 

As you may well know, I had never intended to upload 'Elisabeth' onto youtube but in early 2010 my computer got a virus and, so that I didn't loose my work completely with the death of the computer, I uploaded them onto youtube. The response was instant and more positive than I could have believed. I decided to continue to upload the videos, as I made them.

Suddenly the project of a fourteen year old became something bigger and had more influence on my life than I could ever have imagined.

In the end, my friends never watched 'Elisabeth' with me, but people from all around the globe have shared it with me. I have had some amazing conversations with people because of Elisabeth, met some amazing people and, most importantly, I met three of my closest friends (Helena, Aleks, and Natascha) as a direct result of the show. 

Not only this, but I realised something... languages weren't that inaccessible to me. Sure, I struggled with French like mad but German, well I was learning that by accident. Because of the translating I became more confident and continued my French studies, picked up Japanese, and will be studying German and Hungarian at university next year.

But why am I writing this now?

Today, almost exactly four years after I subtitled my first video, my youtube channel hit 1000 subscribers.

So this is a thank you blog, really. If you are reading this then it's probably because you've been looking at my subtitles in some form, at some point over the years. Your messages, your views, everything, has encouraged me in so many ways. Yes, every creative member of 'Elisabeth', 'Rebecca', and 'Marie Antoinette' has had an influence too but it's been you, the people who have supported me, who have changed my life and for that I thank you.

Introducing Nené

I've not written about this one in the blog so far because we've not seen each other in far too long. That doesn't mean that she doesn't deserve her own post, or that she's not a special munchkin so here we go.

Meet Helena, or, as I like to call her Nené.

It looks sweet but I think I was attacking her at the time!

Nené and I met though the wondrous musical that is Elisabeth. I believe she started my (rather undeserved!) fanclub after emailing me on DeviantArt asking if I was that Havanah. We met in person a short while after when her mother employed me as a birthday present. I think that was a special day for the two of us.

Helena was one of the first people who I met because we had things in common and we became fast friends because of those similarities as opposed to becoming friends because we had no other choice. This was exceptionally special for me. I don't know how long it is since we met, although I'm sure she'll remind me when she reads this, but our friendship has gone from strength to strength. She also has introduced me to a group of people Aleks, 'Tascha and Nicky, who are also good friends of mine, but that's a completely different story!

She is one of the few people I can rant at for as long as I want about the things that interest me and, more often than not, she shares these interests. Even if not, she has time to listen and she cares what I have to say. Not only this, but she cares about everyone around her. I have never known anyone be so kind and give so much of her time to her friends. She is a good person. She puts everyone ahead of herself and, while this causes me no end of worry on her behalf, this selflessness makes her stand out as special.

She doesn't just listen to me ramble on but actively
encourages it by leaving screenshots like this on my facebook!

Did I mention that she's also a little bit bonkers? She wrote a poem, to be performed to the tune of a song from Cats, detailing all my nicknames and I'm determined to get it recorded on video one of these days. Actually, she's also responsible for most of my nicknames... and that list seems to be growing by the day! Seriously, Alpha, Mutti, Hamster-Queen, they are all names for me courtesy of Nené! The worrying thing is that I answer to them all!

Every time that we have met chaos has ensued. From her attempting to stalk me at a showing of Spamalot, only to find out that I had been at the matinee, to getting caught up in the gay pride parade, I know that every meeting I have with this girl will be fun, crazy, and worth it. 

Helena is most certainly one of the most special friends I have. She is someone who I can contact for a laugh or for a serious chat. She's there for you whenever you need her yet is able to have immense fun too. She's the definition of a good friend by her very nature and an exceptionally special girl.

Connor, me, and Nené standing on a tall bit of ruin, trying not to fall off!