L'année De Moi
A couple of months ago, I made the (slightly scary) choice to delete my UCAS application a week before the deadline, and to postpone my University attendance for a year. Now, while all my friends are beginning to think about accommodation and freshers week, I am staring at the next 400 days of my life as empty pages and I'm a little at a loss as to what to do with them. Or at least I was, but after a lot of consideration and planning and changing my mind a thousand times, I've come up with some kind of goal for the next year or so, after all my friends jet off.*
Travel: In my head, I've gone from visiting Africa for three months, to doing a rickshaw run across India to doing Camp America, and although all of these things sound amazing, I have finally made up my mind. Next year, I will hopefully be interrailing around Europe for a month and a half. My mum, her friend, granny boom boom (don't ask) and myself have a holiday booked to Cyprus next May, and so it seemed convenient for me to stay in Europe, instead of making a several hundred mile journey across any oceans or continents. So far the itinerary includes Milan, Paris, Amsterdam, Athens and Budapest, and it's looking pretty exciting. I've actually never been out of the UK before, let alone travelling alone, so it's also the tiniest bit terrifying. I'll of course be blogging the whole thing, so expect lots of photos of old buildings and outfits and Italian cuisine.
Learn: As well as signing up for an online British Sign Language course, I've also found a willing French tutor, and so the next year will be spent expanding my lingual horizons in the hopes that I'll at least be able to order food in one country next year. I'd also really really love to learn how to cook, and so I've set myself a challenge to cook one meal (from scratch) a week for my family in the hopes that eventually they'll begin to be edible (the meals...not my family).
Read: Okay, for some of you this isn't an exciting one, but it's actually been kind of great to be able to create my own reading list for the next year! If you want to see some of what I'll be reading next year, have a look here.
Explore: I live in a beautiful part of the world, and I'm determined to discover more of it over the next year. When I was younger my parents used to drag me and my brothers out on walks and I despised them for it at the time, much preferring to hide with a book than stomp around in the rain. However, the older I've gotten, the more I've appreciated the gorgeousness of my surroundings and I've realised that whenever I'm stressed, I automatically run to the hills. Literally. Someone I know said it was their goal to discover a new section of the world, and I'm very sorry but I'm stealing that bucket-list goal too; this year I want to find somewhere that's mine.
Grow: Not physically. (Well actually, being 5'4 is quite inconvenient). While growing up and developing as a human is a natural progression (for most of us), it's something I want to be more conscious of. As a Christian, as a daughter and as a human, I want to become better this year. Fingers crossed, hey?
So those are my (very rough) Gap Year goals, feel free to share your plans for the next year, whether that's University or a Gap Year like me!
Have a great day, much love.
(*Besides, you know, working to be able to afford this.)
