Things Wot Have Happened Since I Turned 27

Helloooooooo!!!

Well my New Year's Resolutions included communicating more and yet this is my first post of the year, and the first in 3 months! Bad.

Since last time I've been a very busy bunny. I went for my interview in early December, waited until two days before Christmas to find out I'd got it, started the induction early February, had some excellent physical intervention / restraint training, and finally had my first day working in an autism college near the end of last month. I am officially a Residential Education Worker in a college of around 25 autistic young adults, mostly male, who attend lessons and also mainly live there around the year. It's a lovely place surrounded by fields and near a beach, with a great emphasis on art, music and drama and physical activity. A good time of year to start, as it's starting to warm up now and in the summer hopefully there'll be lots of opportunities for hiking in the Welsh hills, adventure days and the usual activities they're all into now - walking, going to a movie, playing quazar and paintball, theatre trips, going to the animal farm, visiting restaurants or going to the pub... I'm putting the word out for a trip to the dry ski slope sometime! It's great to be actually on my feet for a living and using my brain. I'm awake for the first time in ages and really enjoying myself!

My trip to Kirchberg over a week ago was incredible! I'll post some photos soon, although I didn't take nearly enough! That's always what it's like when you go away on your own, you spend all your time making buddies and never recording the moment. Until the last night, that is, when I went off on one snapping every nanosecond. Great laughs though! Met some totally wicked people from around the globe and made great friends! After a week I excelled at the 4-inch-nail / sharp-end-of-the-hammer / log game in the Aussie run pub. I can't recommend that town highly enough. My fab snowboard instructor Niels had me twisting and turning and doing spirals within a day! I could only 'rutsch' when I got there. A couple of days in though, it was all over for me when I tripped backwards on a steep slope, and landed twice on my back (cuz I took off again in-between) on the compacted ice. Such paaaaaaaiiin. Poor Niels had to 'rutsch' me all the way down to the next chairlift and take me back up to the gondola. I refused mountain rescue. After a night of liberating Jaegermeisters, I tried again the next day but found I couldn't even make a single move. Took me forever to reach the chairlift, went back up for some pommes frites and a hot choccy, and asked the mountain rescue guy if the gondolas would be going back down that day. The way up had been blowing gales and they'd had to halt it for minutes at a time while we swung like monkeys around this mile-high cable. Scary. When we reached the top they told us that had been the last trip of the day. Eep! But Mr. Mountain Rescue then told us they had another trip down planned in exactly 7 minutes. I told him in pig's German that I was injured and would never make it, so he zoomed us on his skidoo all the way over to the gondolas! Best fun ever! The next day was spent bumming round town and drinking hot chocolates. I did buy Austrian chocolates to bring home as presents, but scoffed them all myself! What you don't know won't hurt you Dad, you never read this anyway!! x x

Sad news is that my beautiful little 21 year old kitten Heidi died last month. I never expected to be so overcome, but I was totally heartbroken. She was having trouble going to the loo, and we took her to the vet. He congratulated her on how amazing she looked for such an old lady, and took her overnight for a bit of a 'clearout'. But the next day my mum called me and said she actually had a tumour. It was too big and she was too old to do anything about it. We collected her and took her home for the afternoon, gave her lots of little treats and cuddles before we had to take her back. When we took her home again we put her in a leafy little spot in the garden and she now has two little pots of miniature daffodils there as well.

So that's all my news for now. Next up is e-mailing everyone I've missed in the last couple of weeks! But for now, I have to get ready to be in work at 3pm, so I'm going to go and find me shoes.

Welcome to 2007!

Vix x x