The strange week between Christmas and New Year, plus a ramble about whatever takes my fancy tonight

I've always found the week between Christmas and New Year to be a pretty strange and awkward one - either nothing at all to do or, as is the case this week, far too much to do. Most years I've found myself with not a lot to do (other than revision for January exams every Christmas since year 10), because I dread going to the shops because they're always crammed with people and rude, pushy-shovey sales shoppers drive me mental, and there seems no point doing much else when I could just laze around in front of the TV (actually that sounds like the story of my entire life, hah). I also feel like I'm just waiting for New Year to be over and done with so I can get back into the swing of normal life. I don't even make a big deal out of New Year so I don't really know why I feel like that haha. But it feels like once the clock strikes midnight the craziness of the Christmas season dies down and I can get out of the not-quite-normal and slightly stressful feeling that is Christmas in my house back into my normal life comfort zone.

This year is slightly different, because (as I might have mentioned before but I can't remember for certain) a couple of days after New Year I'm off to South Africa for 2 weeks with uni. It's made this week between Christmas and New Year even stranger than usual, because I'm filling time before I go because I don't want to plan to do anything big, and I'm trying to make sure I've got everything and that I'm organised, but because it's the strange week between Christmas and New Year I feel like my head's all muddled and organisation is an impossible task at the moment. Hopefully I'm speaking some sort of sense and someone else can understand what I'm talking about!

I think I'm mostly sorted for South Africa - I've got my camera and loads of memory cards because I'm hoping to take loads of pictures and videos, I've got my mammal and bird field guides to identify some of the animals we see, I've got my binoculars to spot the animals, and I've got my walking medicine cabinet. I've got more than is on the kit list but no doubt I'll still forget something and have to buy it in the airport for about 4 times the price it should be!

I'm really quite nervous about going... we're there for 2 whole weeks, and even though I've "known" the people on my course for 2 and a half years now I still don't really know anyone very well as I don't have any good friends on my course, so I'll be spending all that time with relative strangers :\. I'm hoping I like the food, as 2 weeks with dodgy food will be awful (in Cyprus we ate the same food - some kind of meat (probably pork or beef), chips and salad - every day, and we were only there for a week but by the last couple of days we were crying out for some variation in our diet so much that the person who owned the site where we were staying had to go out and get us some rice before we all started feeling really ill). And I'm hoping that "cabin fever" doesn't set in and everyone starts arguing - it happened in Honduras which was the same length of time, and it happened in Cyprus slightly too (but that I think was due to one person who likes to cause an argument because she's a nasty little piece of work. So glad I'm not sharing a tent with her, I would genuinely want to kill myself if I was, that's how angry she makes me). I've gone off on a tangent now haha. I'm really hoping the trip is better than I'm expecting it to be - I'm sure the trip and what we're doing will be really cool, it's just the people I'm worried about I think. Only 4 days to go...


To get myself out of the downer mood I've been in this evening I decided to watch some videos on youtube. Steve and I were talking about pyjamas and it reminded me of a song from Singing Kettle (if you've never seen it, it's an awesome Scottish kids TV show where they sing songs and do crazy actions) called something like No Pyjamas On - the one bit of the chorus I remember goes something like "No pyjamas on, no pyajamas on. How can he sleep at night with no pyjamas on?". So I wanted to watch this, but youtube has failed me and it's not on there :(. So instead I watched a couple of episodes from the Singing Kettle videos I used to have and watched to death as a child.

 

 

I had these 2 episodes on my videos, so watching them has taken me right back to the beginning of the 90's when I was a wee lass :P. And I'm surprised that I can still remember a lot of the words!


As a little end note, I've been looking for some new blogs to read and all I seem to be able to come across is "mommy blogs" or fashion and make up blogs, none of which are the kind of thing I want to read - I've got a few of each that I already read, but the content is pretty much the same on most of them so I don't want to be following loads of them, plus they're not exactly geared to my interests as I'm not a mum, I'm not into fashion as such and the only makeup I really ever wear is mascara. Sooooo I'm looking for recommendations of blogs - general life blogs, possibly ones with a slight craft orientation, but I'm not looking for blogs entirely made up of craft tutorials either... If anyone actually reads this and has any suggestions, whether it be your own blog or someone elses, then please leave a comment, I don't bite and would love to have some new blogs to read :)