Take Your Marks...

I'm just under 48 hours from making my Olympic Rowing debut! It's not quite in the fashion I'd like it to be, but I think sitting on the bank at Dorney Lake watching all but two New Zealand crews storm past isn't a bad alternative! 

The weather gods have been kind this week and it's going to stick around until Saturday by the looks of things, so looking good for the one day I'll be at the Olympics! (Touchwood!)

I'm staying with the son of family friends in London before I go to Europe for a month on Sunday, and he managed to find another ticket to go along with his, so I'm quite stoked - and thanks Mum and Dad for paying! 

On the subject of rowing, I did actually make my international debut on Saturday! The Home International Regatta between Wales, England, Ireland and Scotland was held in Cardiff bay and I represented the Junior Men's team in the Coxed Four and Eight - coming second in both to the English crews. The Eight was by the smallest of margins - about eight or ten inches and we were all absolutely gutted!

Oh well, I'm sure I'll get my revenge when I pull on the black singlet next time!

I'm so freakin' keen for my Euro Trip! I'm away for a month and I go to Paris, Lyon, Barcelona, the French Riviera and Monaco, Venice, Rome, Florence and Pisa, Milan, Ibiza and Valencia, all topped off with La Tomatina in Bunol!

Europe. Here I come!

Love you all x

Three Weeks to Summer!

So the title is pretty self explanatory; there are three weeks of school left this term, then I'm on Summer Break until September! Gonna be so sick and I'm totally amped!
The last month has been pretty cool actually. I think that's the first time I've said that this year, so take note people - I'm not totally pessimistic!

This is what's happened in the last month in terms of rowing in the least number of words:

• I won the IM2 single at Monmouth Regatta without even racing - my opposition scratched because he got sun-stroke,
• a whole bunch of 17, 18 and 19 year olds beat a bunch of 15 and 16 year olds in an eight,
• I raced with some J16s against some burly men and got destroyed,
• The crew I coached came 5th at National Schools,
• The 1st VIII came second at Nat Schools, coming down in 6.03, just 2 seconds off first place.

Now here's the actually somewhat, almost exciting stuff. AKA the point where you need to stop reading now, Mum. Please.

I went into London for a few days to see my sister just before she left to go back home. She's been travelling since February and had been in London for a few weeks. We went to the oldest bagel shop in London for lunch, watched the Queen's Jubilee stuff in Hyde Park, at cupcakes, watched John Key be interviewed on what the Monarchy and Queen means to NZ - a lot apparently; "she's been to New Zealand four times!" Good one, Johnny.

We also went to the Camden Lock Market and looked at all the retro/indy/hipster/vintage/hippy stalls and ate Churros! Yum! I stayed with Kate at her friends' flat in London that night as I didn't really want to sponge off our family friends yet another time.. Though this was okay for some reason... IDK.

The day Kate left to go back home/to Toronto then home, I went up to Arsenal to meet the mysterious Anna R. She's been a mate for a couple of years since she was dating a mate, and for a bit of weirdness, although we've known each other for a while, we'd never actually met until now... She lived in NZ for a bit, then moved to Canada, and now lives in Oz. She's over here for a holiday, and since we were both in London at the same time, why not meet a random stranger who knows far too much about you! 

She thought I was coming at 8:30 at night, so was a bit shocked when I turned up in the morning... She was pretty happy about it though, as she thought she was going to have to find something to do by herself that day. Anyway, we went back to Camden Lock Market again because it's freakin' awesome and found this seriously awesome/terrible shop. It was like a bad 90s rave party (or how I perceive a bad 90s rave to be like). It only sold fluorescent clothing and everything was under UV lights. It looks awesome, but since the real world doesn't live under UV lights, anything outside the shop would have just looked shockingly bad.

And, keeping up with our traditions in London, we went on a pub crawl. We were such bad-asses and pre-drank in our hostel room before going down to Leicester Square. It was only 8pm and we were way too drunk... we took about 30 selfies on the tube and no doubt attracted a fair amount of disapproving looks. Oh well. Yolo. We got back at 2am after somehow managing to catch the right bus (unlike last time when Andy and I tried to get back to the same hostel and got totally lost) and ran down the street singing/screaming 'Starships' at the top of our voices. I was on a 2pm train back the next day, so spent most of that time recovering from the night before, then the rest of it feeling sorry for myself because I was hung over. I got back to Motown alright, but somewhere along the way, managaed to lose my money card - it turned up four days later in the pocket of the hoody I was wearing (after I cancelled it, of course!). 

That was half-term over, and back to work for this week just gone. Monday was just like any other day back to school after holidays - it was horribly long and boring. Tuesday was a bit different though. Anna came to Motown because there wasn't anyone in London that she knew, and she didn't fancy spending the best part of a week by herself in one of the world's biggest cities. We had another totz adorbz bro date involving far too many selfies, getting rolling drunk on a school night and nearly staying up until sunrise before we decided we should probably call it a night... at 4:30 in the morning. And yes, Starships was played numerous times again...

After Anna left to get to her Top Deck tour, I went back to work. Teaching 7-10 year olds how to play cricket, throw a vortex and play tennis. There was also the standard rowing training, and the first training with next season's novices. They're actually the best bunch of novice rowers I've seen since I've been rowing (except for my year, of course ;D) so there's a little bit of hope for them in the future. It'll be interesting to see how they go over the next few weeks, then next term.

This weekend I'm off to Dorney Lake for the last regatta held there before the Olympics - just 40 days left! I'm finally rowing here after several failed attempts at past regattas! I'm in the eight mentioned at the very beginning, with just one change - one of the guys from the 1st VIII is also in the boat, and based on how the boat was going on Wednesday afternoon, it will go very well tomorrow! I'll update this tomorrow and let you know if we did do as well as I'm hoping!

Viv also gets her in a week. But meh.

Catch'a later!

This is the closest I'll get to the Olympics...

I can't believe it's only been a month since my last post! I couldn't even remember what I wrote about so I had to re-read it!

As usual, there have been highs and lows in the past four weeks; the lows being the same old Mo-Town being shit boring except for Friday nights, but at least the highs are different! 

So what's happened since last time? I basically moped around for a week after the Monmouth School rowing camp.. the weather was atrocious and I couldn't muster any motivation to go outside to do anything except to buy £1 frozen pizzas from the super market.. Sam was on Paddywagon in Ireland with his mates from Oz and Andy was skiing in France so I was left alone.

I eventually met up with Andy in London for the final weekend of term break and despite him being in London on about six different occaisons, had never actually seen any of the place! Our first port of call was Buckingham Palace, then Big Ben, the houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and the London Eye. Yes.. all that mandatory touristy bullshit.... but you gotta do it.

Next came something a little more unusual... we walked through Green Park and were amazed at all the squirrels out! Andy happened to have a packet of gummy bears open, so, I'm sure you can picture what happened... for those of you who can't, have a look at this.

Then came something even more surprising! Everyone who has seen Fenton chasing deer through Richmond  Park would have had exactly the same reaction as me... A woman had let her dog off of it's lead in the park and it had decided to chase after one unfortunate little squirrel. The lady ran after screaming at the dog in vain hope it would stop. All I heard was a woman crying "FENTON! OH JESUS CHRIST!". Andy and I were in hysterics as this little grey furball was hurtled through the air, limbs flailing!

Oh Jesus Christ!

The very first time the three of us were in London was to go to a party at Walkabout in Sheppard's Bush. On our stumble back home that night we stopped in at a pizza shop.. we thought it was absolutely amazing and the best pizza we'd ever eaten! We weren't sure if this was just because we were a little socially lubricated or if it was actually amazing, so we headed back to the little pizza shop on Bayswater Road which we now know is called Mr Pumpernick. We ordered a large double pepperoni and true to expectations, it was bloody good! Seriously guys. It's about 5 minute's walk from Sheppard's Bush station towards Bayswater. It's worth the detour, and even better if you are in the vicinity! 

The rest of the night was filled with the usual... things Mummy doesn't really want to read about..

The next day we continued on the tourist path - we headed to 221B Baker Street to solve a couple of mysteries. Or Andy did at least; learning that Sherlock Holmes never actually existed. This was followed by a short ride on the Tube up to Abbey Road to the famed Zebra Crossing - backing up traffic as we pose, lamely trying to recreate the Beatles' album cover.

Our visit to this area of London was really for one reason - the above were actually distractions from the true mission - Lords; the Home of Cricket. Unfortunately, the weather packed in as we arrived, so we called it quits for the day and hid inside Starbucks for about two hours until the rain eased off.

The next day was considerable more successful as the Lord shone down on Middlesex as they took on Durham. It wasn't exactly a cracker of a match, but a few England test players featured - Strauss, Collingwood, Onions and Mustard (yes...)

That night we decided to be incredibly frugal and slept at the airport before we picked up boarders the following morning. WORST. DECISION. EVER. It was a horrible night; I had next to no sleep and had to keep buying food at the coffee shop so we could sit on their seats - the only couch in the whole airport.

That's London over until tomorrow for Six60, so I'll truck on with the rest of the details. It's basically been rowing and swimming, tennis and cricket lessons with the prep school. Last Sunday I was at Dorney Lake with the senior rowing squad as they competed in their first 2000 metre regatta of the season - the build up to National Schools in three weeks and Henley in 7 weeks. The 1st VIII came fifth in the final - very commendable considering the River Wye looked more like Wellington Harbour in a howling gale rather than the serene stretch it had been in March - there was no water time at all, so this was literally the second outing this crew had together.

It also happened to be my 18th on Sunday so when I got home at 11pm, Andy, Sam and Sam's mate Matt AKA "MALLEN" sprinted off to the pub for a couple of birthday brews - the first legal ones of the year! We had the Monday off since it was a public holiday so there were laughs all into the morning - only to be ended (for me anyway) when I copped one in the nether regions from Mal playing indoor cricket. With a hard ball. Lesson learnt... for the night!

No regattas on this weekend so Andy and I are headed to London again for Six60 on Saturday night. The fourth show of their world tour, and there are going to be familiar faces for both of us, so we'll all catch up afterwards! Sam isn't coming this weekend because, in true Sam style, he was too late.

"Dude. Have you got your Six60 ticket yet? They'll probably sell out"

"Nah I reckon it'll be sweet as. I'll get them in a couple of weeks."

The next day...

"Dude. Six60 just sold out. Did you get your ticket?"

"F*************************K"

Some parts of this are true.

Anyway, that's tomorrow night so we'll be hitting it up hard with the rest of the kiwis in London.

Talk soon
exohexoh

Ghent? No.. Sorry guys. It's actually Gwent.

This is a bit of a rant, sorry everyone.


It's Easter break here and it's just gone midnight on a Thursday/Friday night-morning.. (you get the idea). I'm back in Monmouth after a week in German. I had a great time in Münster with the Hey family. They were the family Andy stayed with when he was over there for his three month exchange. They made me part of the family for the time I was there and it will be an unforgettable experience! The highlight by far of my week in Germany was seeing Seb for a day. It's been about  9 months since he went home and about 6 since anyone from Coll has seen him. It was definitely a bit of a warm fuzzy seeing him, especially since he's the first person I've seen since I moved here that I actually knew.


I'm sure you lot who are reading this have seen my photos, but here's the link in case you haven't... http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.402990493044723.101307.100000013266911&type=3&l=f724991698


If you're wondering why I'm still hanging around Mo-town in the middle of my holidays there is a reason, albeit not a good one by anyone's standards.. The school is having their training camp this week and I "volunteered" my time to help out. Bullshit. I was told I had to help out.
Usually the school goes to Ghent in Belgium, but this year the teacher in charge of rowing decided to go skiing for a week instead. But don't worry... this wasn't one of the main reasons I wanted to come here.. I love having to cut my holiday short to come back to where I live for ten months of the year.


On the bright side - oh. Actually. I don't think there is one... 


Oh well. Shit happens. I know I'm still a lucky little bugger being so close to Europe and I'm only a couple of hours from London.. Speaking of which, about the only thing I do have to look forward to these holidays now is meeting up with Andy and Sam in London next weekend before term starts again. The three of us haven't been in London together yet so we're going to hit it up hard I expect. 

Sprechen Sie deutsch?... uuuuuh.... No?

I'm sitting in the living room of the family Andy knows in Germany right now. They're a really nice family and have welcomed me into their home knowing next to nothing about me which just goes to show their generosity!

Fortunately they make up for me not knowing a single word of German. I can count to four, ask if someone can speak German, say yes, no, please and thank you.. that's it...  Everyone in the family is almost totally fluent in English so I'm safe on that front!

Kolja (17) and his older brother Tim (22) are taking me into Münster today to have a look around. We're riding bikes into the city as, apparently, Münster is the bike capital of Germany. I'm told there are nearly as many bikes in Münster as there are cars. That could mean there are an awfully large number of bicycles or just not many cars... I think it's probably the former though.

As a total sidetrack, Gotye has just started playing on the radio and The Phoenix Foundation was on before. Interesting hearing NZ and Australian music on the other side of the world.

I haven't experienced any German traditions yet but I'm sure Kolja and Tim will enlighten me today. I've been told about Currywurst (Curry Sausage) and that I have to try it. I'll let you know how that gets on, but apparently Andy loved the stuff when he was here, and everyone else is quite fond of it too...

Seb is visiting on Wednesday - the first time I would have seen him in nearly a year so I'm looking forward to that. Hopefully he'll still be full of his slightly inappropriate double entendres!

Thrilling times in Mo Town

This isn't going to be a full on 'heaps of stuff is happening' update because, to be honest, there hasn't been much new - I'm just bored and this is a good way to fill in some time.

There's been some good news on the German front though - I now have a place to stay at the start of April after I unfortunately couldn't stay with our favourite German Seb! I'm staying with Andy's friends in Münster which is only about 30 minutes further north than Seb in Mülheim so I should be able to visit him for a couple of days too! I'm considering myself very lucky that first of all Andy has friends where I'm flying to and secondly that they're incredibly generous and are letting me stay with them (they also said if I have a friend over here that they can stay too if anyone's planning on being in Germany for the first week of April).

What else has happened? Oh yeah. Paint Balling. Good good fun. We played at a place set in some Welsh woodlands and it had about seven or eight different playing fields. Sam had never played before and - without wanting to sound like a dick - I definitely let him know what it felt like to be hit. I think all the games Mikey Tong played against me has made me used to being hit by paint balls too... Nothing can be worse than point blank onto bare skin I don't think...

Last Friday we FINALLY met the 6th form lads. It's the first time in about 10 weeks that they've actually been out on a Friday night and we had such a good time with them. They're all funny guys and the amount of quality banter would rival some of the best in Coll (it's actually much better but you didn't hear that form me).

You won't hear back from me until Mid April probably since I've got a weekend for Welsh trials and I'm in London for a few days rowing, then it's term break and I'll be all over the place. Turns out I do actually have a little bit to talk about. Maybe I'll have a quick update soon. Ish.

I've started using Twitter a bit more now so here's my page if you want to follow me: https://twitter.com/#!/zacnewton17

Zac out
#Banter

East and West (And Everywhere Between... Sort of)

I've been back at work this week after having a week off for half-term break and I have been all around the place! I've been to National Parks, world heritage sights, battle grounds, seen some of the most famous sights in the world and met a whole bunch of people!

Half term has so far been the best week I've had in the UK. Sam and I went all over the place during the week while Andy had set off to Portugal for a little bit of sun and surf. Basically we skirted the south coast of Wales from Newport - you don't want to go there - through to a sleepy little town called Tenby before heading back to London for a few days.

We didn't have the best start to the week.. As much as I love him, Sam's time management isn't exactly... existent... and we missed the bus we were meant to be catching to Newport to catch our train to Cardiff. Oh well - all part of the experience! I learnt my lesson... leave him behind next time!

Cardiff started off so well, but unfirtunately turned out to be a bit of a bust. We didn't plan our week very well and turned up during the most boring part of the week. We didn't know this at the time but we found out pretty quickly. Student night in Cardiff is on a Wednesday and we were there for Monday and Tuesday. We did make up for this however by having an absolute blast in London later in the week (I'll get to that).

First stop in Cardiff was Cardiff Castle. I don't know how to actually explain why it was interesting other than the fact that shitloads of people tried to siege it and failed... and IT HAS A MOTE!! There wasn't a lot else to Cardiff unfortunately. The Dr Who exhibition was closed down while it was being made bigger and better so we couldn't see that :( and there wasn't (as far as Lonely Planet AKA The Bible was concerned). Anyway, we made do, and headed off to Spoons for a few. 

Next stop was Tenby - a sleepy little seaside village on the southeast coast of Wales in Pembrokeshire. The Bible had a field day with this place. Not only was Katherine Zeta Jones born here, it also features a house on Grand Designs! It was the house that sold it for us. True story. But in all honesty, we were there to walk down part of the coastal track. It's a 190 mile long walkway extending all the way around the region and the part we walked was about 8 miles. It was a tiny little town about half the size of Monmouth but it was really nice, especially since we were staying about 50 metres away from a really nice golden sand beach!

All the pics from our walk are on Facebook. You'll be able to see that we weren't the luckiest with the weather on Thursday when we headed out, but we did have a great time. We finished up in an even smaller village called Manorbier and again had a little difficulty with the bus... It drove past 10 minutes early while we were sat in a little cafe totally drenched, trying to heat ourselves up with a nice cuppa! Fortunately the people running the cafe were extremely generous and actually gave us a ride back to Tenby! Props to the Beach Cafe in Manorbier! 

Friday came along and next stop? London - bring it on! We left quaint little Tenby for a little more of a... living... environment. There weren't many people in  Tenby and we couldn't wait to actually see London in the day time. Finally things started going our way, and what better time? We left Tenby just before the rain set in again and 5 hours of train rides later we found ourselves standing outside SUNNY Paddington Station! It was time to bust out the sunnies and head to Hyde Park for a little frolicking. We were meeting Sam's friend Hamish at King's Cross and we had a little bit of time to kill so we decided to walk... The long way. We honestly couldn't care less. It was beautifully sunny and we were in one of the most famous cities in the world!

After we eventually found ourselves at King's Cross with Hamish and and Maddie we headed to our hostel. First experience in a London taxi... I felt like a total tourist (don't worry... I know I am!). We met up with the other gaps Hamish works with for dinner then went into Piccadilly Circus. Sam was convinced it would be really lame, but I think he actually had the best time out of all of us! It was absolutely packed - even at 1 AM when left the club. We managed to talk our way into the club for free (the lengths you have to go to on a gap wage!) and we all had a great time - even the girls when they weren't stuck in a circle of sweaty men old enough to be their parents!

That was Friday night out of the way and on Saturday we did all the touristy stuff - we went to the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels and had lunch in the sun on the bank of the Thames. We walked across Tower Bridge and headed to the tube to go to Westminster, Big Ben and the London Eye. Yes... we got all those ridiculously cliched photos... plus way too many selfies :D Next on the list was Buckingham Palace. Queeny wasn't in when we were - she goes up to Windsor Castle during the weekends. When we'd finished up the sightseeing we readied ourselves for the night ahead. Mum - stop reading here because I SWEAR NOTHING ELSE HAPPENED!

Time for the partying. On Friday it was just Sam, Hamish, Maddie, Kate and I who went out because Will (finally another Kiwi) and Lauren were pretty tired but tonight everyone came out. We went on a pub crawl through Leicester Square. We went to five bars and clubs in five hours and paid £15 to get on it. We all got a T-shirt. WOOOH! And a free drink and entry plus awesome drinks deals at all the places. £2 pints anyone?? We stayed at the last club called Zoo Bar until 3 am and had the most amazing time. 

You can start reading again now Mum.

On Sunday (after checking out over an hour late when the receptionist came up to our room) we went back into London for more. Hamish had to get a bus back to Edinburgh with Kate, Will and Lauren, but Maddie was here on holiday and was flying home on Monday. The three of us walked across the Millenium Bridge for obvious reasons... and went to the Tate Modern gallery on the otherside. Art isn't really my thing but I tried and found one artist I really liked called Yves Tanguy - a French surrealist painter. I hope you're happy Emma.

We also went to the British Museum to look at all the Egyptian stuff. I loved that part so much. I find it so cool that all this stuff is thousands of years old yet so complicated - how do we call ourselves more advanced? No-one in the world now could do what they did! Being there made me want to go to Egypt to see where it all came from. Maybe not this year, but it's on the bucket list!

Andy met up with us in the museum looking nice and brown after a week in 30+ weather. Not jealous one bit. We then headed to the bus station. As the saying goes - third time's a charm - we got on the bus! I don't know how we managed that. It even turned out to be the right bus as well!

That was half-term in a nutshell, and now time for the necessary bit about rowing... this week I officially became a British rower! Even got a card to say so! I just came back from Cardiff again today, but this time it was for a regatta. The river wasn't frozen over this time, and I even got one better than just coaching - I got in a boat to race, and we actually won our division! Hopefully this was the first of many successses this season, especially with Welsh trials in three weeks today!

I'll be back in a month to fill you in on my life.

x0x0

Gossip Girl

Footy, Beer, Blisters and a Seriously Good Time

Where to start? It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted and it's been pretty hectic! I've had a cancelled regatta because the river was frozen, snow, the usual work during the week, and then to top it off, a trip to London and Cardiff this weekend!

It was meant to be the first regatta of the year two weekends ago up in Gloucester - where? yeah... it still means as much to me as it probably does to you - but the week building up had been particularly cold and the river/canal the regatta was supposed to be rowed on had frozen over! I was quite disappointed as I still haven't seen what British Schoolboy rowing is like and won't for another couple of weeks yet. Although, for a nice change I got Saturday off (almost) - I still had a class to help out with - but it was much better than being tied up with two trainings on Saturday and finishing at 3pm!

Snow! We had our first snow of the year on the Sunday of the same weekend so naturally it being a rare sight all three of us jumped up to look around a white Monmouth. There was a good inch on the ground but it still has nothing on Wellington last year surprisingly! Unfortunately it was warm overnight on the Sunday and had all nearly melted by Monday morning, but still - snow is snow!

Last weekend was by far the best of the year and will be incredibly hard to top until summer holidays (maybe April when I go to Mulheim to see Seb!) - which is something I didn't mention above so I'll do that quickly. I've got a three week break over the start of April for Easter and the first week I'm flying over to Germany for a week to hang out/party with Seb! It's nice being in the same time zone as one of your mates and I've been talking to Seb quite a lot. I think the best thing he's said to me so far - unfortunately nowhere near as close as the gold he dished out at rowing last year but still very good quality - was the day he passed his driving test *queue jokes about yet another reckless driver*....

"Zac, guess what?"
"You passed? Easy right?"
"Yeah, and no.. I almost failed.
"I had to wait for another car but it was SO SLOW so I didn't stop and nearly hit me..."

Classic Seb. And no.. This isn't 'racism'.

NOW onto last weekend (sorry for the sidetrack)! For the first time in five weeks, Sam, Andy and I got out of Monmouth! Wooh! We headed down to London to go to a party with a whole bunch of Gap students. It was a really good night with all the people we met in Bristol when we were there for the day plus so many more, including Nick Fenton and Jonny Tavita. It's such a good feeling seeing a face you've known for the past five years of your life; it was a little piece of home and a really good way to start the night running into them!

On Sunday morning the three of us headed back to Paddington Station to catch the train to Cardiff. We got hold of tickets to the Six Nations game between Wales and Scotland at the Millennium Stadium! It's like nothing I've ever seen. The place is huge! It seats 75,000 and was totally packed. It was spine tingling when the National Anthem was sung. It was so loud and so passionate. You have to experience it first hand because what you see on TV is nothing like being there in person. I have a video of the anthem so you get a rough idea of our seats and what the atmosphere was like.

We have half-term next week and I we're going back to Cardiff to take a proper look around, as well as seeing a bit more of Wales. Maybe Swansea and a bit of the North, but we haven't booked train tickets for that yet (it's something we really need to get better at). Just a warning; I'm going to start talking about my own rowing now so if you don't want to be bored to death this is the place to stop. I've been training with the senior squad since I've been here and they are so good. These guys are aiming to win Nationals so they work extremely hard. The coach, Robin (or Uncle Robin to all the other gaps) is also the selector and coach of the Welsh junior squad so he's made me register for that and says I'm going to make it in... We had 5K tests last week and it's not too long until the first 2K I don't think. I'm really keen to top my PB from last year and I think I have a good chance since I did pretty well in my 5K. But who knows... all these fried school lunches and dinners...and beer... might get to me first! Only time will tell!

Good luck to everyone just arriving around the country for Uni and I'll keep you posted (let me know the links to your blogs too if you're writing one)

Just a quick update

So I've been in Wales for just under a month now. I've had such a great time so far and the best is still to come. It's been a few weeks since I updated my blog and a lot's gone on but I'll try to keep it short....ish. So here goes:

Sam, Andy and I went down (?) to Bristol a couple of weeks ago for a conference with about 60 gaps from around this part of the UK. Everyone we met was easy to get along with and we'll be catching up throughout the year. Basically, the conference was a total bore but we were there to meet people. We headed off to the pub after it finished around 3 PM. The bunch of gaps who are at a school about 30 minutes away had to leave straight after but about 20 of us had a few drinks before we had to go home. It was awesome to meet all these people, and fortunately there are a few kiwis nearby so I'm not TOTALLY surrounded by Australians!

One of the duties I have at the school is helping out on the day trips for the boarders on Sundays. Some of the trips are kinda lame, others are pretty cool. They do things like paintball and go-karting, they visit an aquarium (one of the lame ones) and the one I went on last Sunday was to a safari park about an hour and a half away. It's a thing where you drive your own car through the park and they have basically all the African animals you can think of (some of the photos are on Facebook).

I head off to the first regatta of the year on Saturday. I'm not racing in this one, but hopefully I will be racing soon! I've been out in the boats training with the seniors a couple of times and it's been a great experience. The trainings are a bit harder than back at home but then again, these guys want to win Nationals; not just make it there like back at Coll! This regatta has all the big schools at it so it's going to be great seeing how these guys compare to the Maadi Cup back home! I'm not quite sure if I want these guys to do better than that or not...

I'm not really sure what else to write about. I think most of you get the general idea of what I'm doing by now. It's pretty much the same throughout the week and occasionally I'll do something on the weekend which is a bit different and worth writing about. I'll try a bit harder to update you a bit more but really, I make no promises. Have fun with you last month off you guys before heading to uni, and good luck to you lot who have all just started school again - make the most of this year because it is actually an awesome one and you don't want to miss out.

Week one over..

Hey everyone. So it's not actually the end of the first week yet, but it's close enough and it will be when you get around to reading it I guess.

I've had an amazing time here already. As I said last time, all the people are really friendly and will have a chat to you at meal times or in the staff room. They definitely make you feel welcome here!

It's been pretty hectic so far but I'll get used to it, I'm sure. I had my first of what will be MANY trips to Heathrow this year on Sunday night. I had to pick up some boarders from the boys' and girls' school at 6 30. Everything was all good except for one of the 6th formers on my list who hadn't turned up. When I finally got hold of him he told me he was already back at the boarding house and had found his own way there. No worries. I was only there for an extra hour -______- Thanks buddy!

I'm working at the secondary school this term. There are two parts of the school; the prep school called The Grange and the high school which is actually Monmouth School. Andy is full time at The Grange this term and Sam splits his time between the two. We'll swap over next term and I'll be doing half and half.

Basically, I'm helping out with PE lessons in the mornings. It's either regular PE lessons or a swimming lesson. I haven't had to jump in the pool with them yet, but I don't think it'll be long since they're doing their best to drown when they tread water. I was so surprised at how many can't do it, but I guess I do come from a nation of swimming pools and beaches!

In the afternoons everyone has games, so that's when they do their school sport. I'm coaching rowing to 3rd formers twice a week, the seniors twice a week, and coaching a rugby team the other day. It's not too bad but the days are 7am to 6pm every day and it's pretty tiring. That's including after school rowing training. I think twice a week from next week it's about 7am to 9 30 pm with boarding duties. YAY!

I've got some photos from the walk Sam and I went on before the airport trips so I'll chuck them on Facebook soon. It's a lot easier than me describing the place!

Welcome to Monmouth

The first couple of days in Monmouth have been and gone. I arrived at the train station at 2pm on Wednesday and it turns out Andy was actually on the same train as me. Sam however had been waiting at New Port for about three hours, jet lagged and freezing cold since he’d come straight from Sydney and 35 degrees to single digits here.

Sam and Andy are legit guys. They’re both from Sydney but two different schools. They both played for their 1^st XI cricket teams; Andy as an opener and Sam as an all-rounder. They’ve both been involved in heaps of stuff at their schools and both got 95% in their final exams… Pressure on for one week’s time!

There hasn’t been much to tell so far, but what we do know is that there are far too many names and faces to put together right now. We’ll get there eventually but right now it’s pretty difficult.

Sam, Andy and I all learnt a vital lesson last night at the pub. Andy’s was that warm beer is horrendous and he should never buy it again; Sam found out Guinness is pretty disgusting and Sam and I both made the mistake of ordering the ‘Welsh Dragon curry.’ I think the five peppers next to the name on the menu SHOULD have given it away that it was smoking hot and uneatable…

Things That Go Bang in the Night

Just a quick update for the start of the year. Max and I went to a little town in Italy called Ventimiglia on Friday. It's basically like San Remo. It has a market on Fridays and we wandered through in the morning after our cups of coffee and croissant. Unlike San Remo though it was absolutely freezing! I had a scarf with me but it was doing absolutely nothing for me so I actually ended up buying a new one in anticipation of getting some heat back into my neck! Fortunately it was 15 euro well spent!

The only other significant purchase of the day were sky rockets from a hunting and fishing store. We were just looking around the town and happened to see a few fire works in the window. We looked inside and in the cabinet with all the ammunition for guns were these little packets of sky rockets! Better yet, it was one euro a packet and each one had 12! So we set off back to St Jeannet with 60 sky rockets!

New Years eve was pretty cool really. We set off about half of the fireworks when it was dark at 6pm. Yes... It gets dark in Winter early - don't forget how lucky you are for sun and warmth at this time of year! We took about an hour to set off the first half and when people turned up we had an amazing dinner! Basically it was like a second Christmas lunch. Beautiful!

When midnight came around and time for the rest of the fireworks, Jens, who is one of the people who came around slipped a little package out of his jacket and what should it be? Yes... more mighty cannons to make craters in the ground! Pretty lucky really since, you know, we were totally starting to run out... The fireworks here are amazing. I really dislike New Zealand for banning them!

the new year started off amazingly. We fired up the wood oven and all made our own wood fired pizzas with buffalo mozzarella, prosciutto and all sorts of other goodies. It went down rather nicely with a good beer.

That's all for me. Keeping it nice and short. Next time you hear from me I'll be in Wales having just met my two new flatmates and learning the ropes to my job. I'd love to hear about what you've been up to for new years eve too!

Until then, happy new year everyone. Have a rocker for 2012!