Wanderings Lately :: August

August has been pretty insane, and thinking back to the beginning of the month and our staff party seems a really long time ago! This summer month has been buuuusy, but in the best way. I've seen two sets of friends get married, reunited with people I met 10 (!) years ago, and survived a weekend away with my family. Those are just the weekends, but I've been no less busy during the week, open mic, netball wins & awards and the aforementioned staff party.

Summer 2018 has been a busy one, and definitely a good one. The heat wave has me very much ready for some cooler autumn weather too.

Weddings

Two good friends of mine got married this month within a week of each other. Two very different celebrations but both equally fun days. Thankfully the weather was excellent for both of them - a bit of rain in the evenings but nothing that affected the main event!

I spent a lot of time on the motorway this month - the 7 hours it took to get to Crewe was particularly bad! 

Accomplishments

Quite chuffed with a few things this month; first (and maybe only ever) acapella song at open mic. My brother has resigned from the open mic night he ran at a pub in Borough so I went along to the last one there making the brave/insane decision to sing Your House by Alanis Morissette. We also did a couple of others with guitar backing.

I wore the dress I made to the weddings I went to this summer, and it was comfy (and got lots of complements!)

We had out Netball end of season awards - which our team didn't win anything at but looking for more success in the winter league! In preparation for our (hopefully success-filled) next season we finished off the summer league with a win of 41-4, that was definitely a boost for us all!

Lastly, I made a completely vegan chocolate cake that didn't taste dry and nasty. I followed this recipe and it really is very simple and comes out just like a normal sponge.

Spice Up Your Life

I happened to see a post from a friend of mine on facebook about the Spice Girls exhibition in Angel, just before it was about to move to Manchester and had a spare afternoon one Sunday so headed up to take a look. It was a display of the ridiculous amount of products they advertised during their (fairly short) time in the spotlight as the band. There were also loads of clothes and costumes on show, most pretty cheap looking!

There was a small section on each of the girls solo careers post-spice. A couple of things that jumped out to me were a pair of Geri's shoes which simply look far too small for any fully-grown adult, and the crazy amount of magazine covers that Victoria Beckham has been on - quite something when they are all spread out together in one place!

10 Years Ago

I can't quite believe that it was 10 years ago since I began my adventures over in Asia. In celebration I was able to get a few of us from the 2008 cohort of British Council teachers together. It was lovely to see each other again, catch up on the last 10 years and hopefully get a bit more regular at getting together in the future.

The hangover I was nursing the following day was also a reminder of those days gone by - I could have done without that!

Socially Minded

I'm part of the social committee at work, and the first big event that I've been involved with was the Staff Summer Party. All went off without too much of a hitch (apart from the caricaturist going to the wrong theatre), and I ended the evening tube-ing it home with a blow up Flamingo in tow. We're now on to planning for the Christmas do - what fun!

Out Of Office On

Had a short break this month with my family to Southwold. We encountered a bit of rain but that made spending the afternoon in reading a book completely justifiable! 

So much fun was had that I didn't take many photos. These two probably sum up most of our time, playing with my little niece!