Avoiding thinking

*Generic lack-of-blog apology*

So you may be asking what on earth I've been up to recently, as I've not blogged for well over a month. However I think it's more likely that no one's noticed due to the marvellous diversion of the Olympics (hurrah for Team Yorkshire by the way! Especially Jess Ennis - whoever said she was fat had better be eating his words rather hurriedly. If I were her I'd send him a gold chocolate medal, hahahaha). 

In the past few months I've finished my clear-out (resulting in a disturbingly mess-free room), visited my grandparents as I've not seen them since January, and started a new job volunteering at the tourist info in York. It's good experience, as I speak a lot of French and Spanish to the visitors, but it is exhausting! And some of the questions I get asked are, frankly, things that no one knows, but I'm learning things all the time. We also had a nice visit from my sister and family, which resulted in rather too many early mornings thanks to my nephew, but it was jolly good fun. Mum and I had to make him a space rocket out of a kitchen roll tube and some tin foil :D I also visited the wonderful Emily and family for a few days, and had a weekend in Lancaster for a friend's wedding. 

Since getting back from my YA, I've been thinking. Or at least, that's what you're expecting me to say. In actual fact, I've spent a lot of time NOT thinking. I have a feeling that if I actually stop and think about everything - the good times and the bad - it could be rather overwhelming. I'm trying not to fall into the massive cohort of YA students that off-handedly declare that the whole year was utterly marvellous and they never had any problems ever. Instead I tell people that it was a positive experience, but there were hard times too, which I think is fair enough. There's always a place for honesty. 

I've been looking through my photos and selecting some to go have printed so I can start making my scrapbook. There's going to be rather a lot to do, but it's been an interesting trip down memory lane. I look at my ones of Bilbao and I'm certain it was a dream up until about Christmas. It's like there's a veil between me and the experience, and I daren't move it just yet. Maybe soon. Maybe never.

It reminds me of when I was sent off on a school trip for a week when I was 10. This experience still remains one of the most traumatic of my life (freezing cold, first time away from Mum and Dad and before the age of mobile phones, horrendous physical activities led by over-enthusiastic plonkers, knee-deep in a river somewhere near Whitby not having a clue about the activity we were doing, diabolical food), but what I remember vividly is getting home again, curling up on Dad's knee and crying. Was it relief? I don't think so, more a 'I never want to go through that ever ever again!!!' The up side to this story is that leaving home has never been such a horrible wrench since, because I've done it before. Of course every time I leave, it is hard (and it has been most especially this year), but there's always the knowledge that I've done it before and can do it again. I've never cried on returning quite like that since. 

A similar thing can be said for the YA. There is a huge part of me that never wants those first couple of months to ever happen to me again, but the beauty of the experience is that I know it won't. I'm older, I've been through it once before, I don't need to go through it again. Like I say, it doesn't mean that there won't be hard times, and the worst is probably still to come, but at least I'll be able to draw some level of strength from knowing I've done it already. 

Anyhow, enough of the serious stuff. Right now I'm in touch with a few people who are heading to Bilbao to start their YA's - one has already posted on Facebook that she's got there but was locked out as her landlady wasn't there yet. Can't help thinking how similar it is to my own experience - I'm glad my presence hasn't irreparably damaged or altered Spain!
Laters Blogueros :) xx