Boooo!!!!

Hope I didn't scare you! :-P
I went to Birmingham today for the much awaited gymnastics competition! I managed to find a driver in the end. He was really sweet, and drove s all the way there and back. I thought that he would wander off into Birmingham for the day but, no he stayed and watched the competition! The advanced men and ladies categories were very impressive mind.

So anyway, I did everything I was meant to do as the organiser of the trip, I remembered the leotards, the scrunchies, the directions and even the bum glue! (don't ask! Its used to stick leotards down so that you don't get a wedgie half way through a routine, a very annoying occurrence I must add)

We were in the cool new Mercedes 9 seater thing, which although it is a car is absolutely massive and is nearly the size of a minibus! It is very nice and comfy though :-) , good for a 2h30 trip each way! Our driver got us there in one piece, well done him! And got us back to obviously.

Once there, we spent the first couple of hours watching the advanced competitors competing. As I said earlier they were all very good, although I think that some of my team should have been in advanced rather than novice... umm ohh well... next year we will know!
Then it was our go. After a general warm up and a specific warm up we each took to the floor, strutting our stuff in time to the music! Hehe. I was good fun, and I managed to remember my routine! Go me! We moved onto vault next, and competed two vaults each. It was on vaulting table, which is always scary especially as I haven't used one in years. But it was all fine.

So yeah that was it. We came 2nd overall as a team, which I think is rather good, and Nicola came first in our category. (She is the one I think should have been in the one above! Ooops!) So we all have shiny medals now. Yey, I like competitions, not so much the competing part but more the team spirit before and after the comp. Its funny because neither gymnastics or trampolining is considered a team sport, but that is by far the best bit of the day, the mucking around as a group.

Ooh and we all looked really flashy and cool in our brand new, collected today, white gymnastic club hoodies!

PS. I seem to have used an incredible number of exclamation marks in my post. But then I suppose that isn't unusual, I always seem to :-)

Life and stuff

Why does organizing things always seem to be so difficult? I have been landed in a position of responsibility and I can't even find a driver to get me to Birmingham and back for a competition. Ridiculous. The sooner the end of the year comes and a new committee takes over, the better.
On a lighter note, I have had a nice half week so far. Sunday was lovely, I went to Surrey university to compete in trampolining BUSA's (British university sports association) and came 9th out of 100, which means that I qualified for the finals. I'm not sure whether I actually want to go to the finals in lancaster though because I know that I have not a chance of getting a podium position and I qualified through luck more than anything else. Well, by luck I mean that my routines went well for the first time ever. I'll end up going because the university likes people going to BUSA's and getting into finals. It increases their points in the league. They need all the points they can get if they ever want to compete with Loughborough.
Yesterday my mum, sister and Millie (dog) came to visit me here in Bath. It was nice to see them. We went for a lovely walk along the skyline, which has the prettiest views of the city imaginable. Millie was a pain though and decided to roll in some poo, silly dog! So we had to go to the RSPCA shop and buy some dog shampoo and give her a wash when we got back.
Tried to go to the theatre but was sold out. Not surprising really, as is Dawn French and a famous singer but can't remember her name, playing in it.
The times gave me a free newspaper today, and the film Rebecca, which I must read and watch at some point. I never seem to have any time at the moment. Am preparing a presentation for Monday on the Falklands. It really was a stupid war that, and issues over the islands still haven't been resolved.
Ohh and we are having our windows fitted with double glazing! Just in time for the summer! hehe! But it will be nice to cut some of the noise from the road out, and will make the house warmer. Unfortunately the putty he is using to seal the windows with stinks to high heaven and the whole house smells!

Sweden

The week before last, was our intersemester break, which was a great opportunity to relax a little and recover from the 2 weeks of exams that preceded it. The university are going to get rid of it next year! Nooooo! Claire and I used the opportunity of a week off to travel to the lovely country that is Sweden. Why Sweden? Well ryan air had some cheap flights going and I've always fancied going there, especially since I made some lovely Swedish friends in Valencia a couple of summers ago.

We went to Stockholm and stayed in a youth hostel on a boat!


Isn't it pretty! We had a nice cabin on it which we had to ourselves most of the time, except the one night a Finnish lady joined us. She was a little boring, she didn't want to talk at all, this may be because she was tired. She slept solidly from 5pm to 8am the next morning. Strange lady!


On the first day we went to visit the Vasa museum, which was all about a big ship called the Vasa which sunk 20 minutes into its maiden voyage. The ship was a little top heavy you see! They forgot about the Vasa until recently (350 years after it sank), when they managed to bring the whole thing up off the sea bed and built a museum for it.















We visited lots and lots of things. We visited some of the many islands comprised in the archipelago (the 22000 islands that surround Stockholm) , I don't really want to bore you with the details, but they really were lovely. The water all around them was frozen and they were all covered in snow. It really was nice. I also met up with my friend sofie, which was lovely as I haven't seen her in nearly 2 years! She invited us to dinner, and we reminisced about the old times! How old do I feel!