Dusting off the cobwebs

Well, it’s official, my work on my blog has quite simply been non-existence for a while now. I must confess there’s a variety of reasons for this. Lack of travel, the busyness of uni work and life, and I suppose a degree of laziness as well. In truth, after spending my days reading and writing for my course, writing an article on here is one of the last things on my mind.

But here is my attempt to change that!

At the moment I’m beginning to get excited for my next adventure abroad – Italy!!! I’m currently counting down the days until I get to spend just over two weeks in this amazing county. In what may sound like a rather spoilt confession, I worked out that between my time in America last summer and Italy this Easter it will have been the longest I’ve gone without being abroad in years!

But that’s not the only thing that I’ve got to look forward to at the moment. I’ve also applied and been accepted to work in China this summer teaching English. I don’t know exactly where yet, or how long for, but I won’t lie… I am incredibly excited. But that’s for another post.

For now, I suppose this is just the start of a resolution to try and write here a little bit more often, to make it more of a habit rather than just an occasional occurrence! I won’t promise anything of course, but let’s see how it goes!

“Travel while you’re young and able. Don’t worry about the money, just make it work. Experience is far more valuable than money will ever be.” – Unknown

Advertisement

Bring back the owls

12212552_10207906129436194_1742051800_nFor anyone who was in Birmingham between July and September, you may have spotted some strange new additions to the streets. If unfortunately you don’t know what I’m referring to, then you must have missed the ‘Big Hoot’, the city’s biggest public art event!

Over the summer, Birmingham was home to 89 owl statues and 122 owlets, all decorated in different designs by a number of artists. The statues were incredibly diverse, ranging from a Tutankhamen owl, to an ‘owl and the pussy cat’ tribute, to a Doctor Who owl! The statues were spread over the city’s 10 districts, and could be found in a range of different locations – even in the middle of my university campus! Sadly I never had the chance to take part in the trail to see as many owls as I could, as on the 15th of October the owls went under the hammer for charity. However, I can’t feel too sad about that as they did manage to raise an amazing £508,035!12233144_10207906125876105_1610943136_nIf you want to see for yourself what all the fuss is about, check out their homepage – there are some amazing pictures of all the different owls that could be found around the city.

http://thebighoot.co.uk

I absolutely love events like this, and I truly am sad that the owls are no longer around. I always find that art events like this make the city somehow feel more alive, or maybe that’s simply because people are out looking at the new attractions. Whatever the reasoning behind it, the owls were a beautiful and colourful (if not a little crazy) addition to the city and I can’t help but feel like something is missing now. I can’t help but hope that Birmingham city will decide to do another art display soon!

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” – Terry Pratchett

A different type of adventure!

I’m not sure if I’ve previously said this, but for most of the year I’m a full-time student. I’m currently in my second year studying Ancient History at the University of Birmingham. For those who aren’t certain what this means exactly, Ancient History looks at the Romans, the Ancient Greeks, the Ancient Egyptians and the civilisations of Western Asia – although this year I’m beginning to specialise more on the topic of the Romans.

Now on the one hand, I could simply limit my blogging to when I go abroad (in my case this would mean outside of the UK). However, I don’t want to do this. I personally believe that you can explore your own country just the same as you would a foreign one. Every single time I visit somewhere new in this amazing country, that is me exploring another small corner of the world. And besides, some people who read my blog don’t even live in England, so for them it truly is still ‘foreign’. On top of that, I don’t like the idea of going months on end without writing anything here – which sadly could potentially happen if I only wrote about my adventures outside of England (one of the disadvantages of being a poor student). So I hope you enjoy my writings about England. I’m sure there will be quite a few posts about Birmingham, but hopefully i’ll be able to do some travelling and see some other places as well!

“Travel. As much as you can. As far as you can. As long as you can. Life’s not meant to be lived in one place.” – Unknown

Home again

Well, this post officially marks the end of my American adventures of the summer 2015. As i’m writing this i’ve now been home for about a month, and I still can’t quite believe it’s been that long since I was on the other side Atlantic! My time spent in America was truly amazing. I won’t lie, I had some low times as well as the highs, both those memories mean just as much to me. There were times at Camp when I just wanted to quit and go home, and even times whilst travelling when part of me wished that I could just be curled up at home on the sofa watching tv with my family.

IMG_7137_2

But that’s one of the things that I love about travelling. It shows you what’s important, what you miss when you don’t have it. It shows you how incredible the world can be, and yet also points out the things that you love about home that maybe you never noticed before, or don’t appreciate enough. But perhaps most importantly, this summer opened up my eyes once again to how beautiful the world is. To how big and full of adventure it is, and it reminded me that there is a whole world just waiting to be explored.

IMG_7138

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” Miriam Adeney