Australia Day in the UK

I've been quite busy since my last update...

Last Friday, the Gappers and I headed up to London for the day for a Gap seminar where we were to be told all about the do's and don'ts of a gap year, how we should be treated by the school and students, what our responsibilities were etc.. In theory it sounds really boring and had the potential to be, but I enjoyed myself. The people who ran the seminar were funny and interesting and it was a great way to meet other gappers in England. 

At the end of the seminar, we went out to a pub across the road with a couple of guys we met at the seminar who are from New Zealand. Their school isn't very close to ours but we're going to catch up again soon, probably in London or Brighton. We also made friends with other gappers from all over which is nice. 

We headed back to Ardingly where there was a boarding special happening - at the prep school here, there are only flexi-boarders, and no full-time boarders, so each night, there are a different bunch of kids who board. Usually they'll board one or two nights a week due to living so far away or they have an early morning club (like swimming) or a late afternoon club so they'll just stay at school for convenience. So, on boarding special nights, heaps of kids come to board and play games and watch movies and just have fun. The gappers usually help out a lot, but we had a party to go to so unfortunately we couldn't stay. 

All of the schools in the Sussex area were invited to attend a party at a school nearby so we could all meet friends who are close to us. The party was at Cottesmore Prep School, which is another huge and old English independent (private) school. Driving up to it in the dark reminded us of a haunted house but the school was quite impressive. I saw Lana there which I loved and I got to meet the people she's gapping with. It was also nice to see a familiar face. I met some other people as well (some with mutual friends from Sydney back home which was cool), and we all chatted, drank wine and beer (broadening my horizons), danced and sang great Australian classics ("Land Down Under" and "You're the Voice" to name a couple) which the Kiwi's and South African's enjoyed immensely I'm sure haha. 

Anyway, it was a lovely and eventful Friday however we were very tired when we got back to the College. 

On Saturday, I had to umpire a netball game, which the girls regrettably lost (42-8) but we had match tea afterwards so that made it better :) I'm not sure if I've told you what match tea is before, but the school who hosts the match has to put on tea for the players, coaches and parents to enjoy afterwards as a social thing. I like having home games because Ardingly puts on the best match tea - loads to choose from, but our catering staff make the best carrot cake ever. So delicious. 

Anyway, after sport, Jess and I went to Hayward's to go to Sainsbury's to get ingredients for our Australia Day baking! We made lamingtons and more Digestive decorated biscuits in the headmaster's kitchen downstairs. It was a lot of fun, although it got interrupted by a couple of fire alarms (not caused by us in case you were thinking that) although I'm not sure what caused them. The Headmaster's wife and son tried our lamingtons for the first time and really liked them! Most people here have never even heard of them, so it was nice to share something from home with them. 

Our attempt at lamingtons.... pretty good if I do say so myself :P

One of the Digestives I decorated... "Straya" with Coke bottles to symbolise our great nation's drinking habits <3

That night, we all had a quiet one - we ate our baked and decorated goods while watching a movie. 

We got up the next morning, well, Jess, Josh and I did, to get on a train to London to celebrate Australia Day at the Church. It's an old theatre that has been turned into a club, and it was absolutely packed with Aussies, although there were English, New Zealanders and South Africans there as well. It was a lot of fun, and I saw lots of people from home, including Sophie who I've missed like crazy. We danced, saw some good performances and drank. Everyone was very patriotic and dressed in green and gold. One guy wore a dingo costume and attached a baby doll to his torso - I thought that was quite funny. I wore green and yellow shorts.... probably not the smartest idea to wear shorts in the middle of winter in London, but I did it for Australia haha. Suffice to say I was very cold on the trip there and home. 

 It was a really good weekend, though. It just ended too quickly. Luckily the weeks go very quickly here but I'm really looking forward to the half-term break... Paris! AND, Michael just surprised Jess and I with tickets to see Taylor Swift in London before half-term break! And everyone knows how much I love her... haha. And the awesome thing is, Jess loves her just as much as me - it's a nice bonding thing. We're very excited. It was difficult getting work off since it's on a Tuesday night, but we begged and they're letting us go. So awesome. Thank you Michael :D :D

What else is new? Not a whole lot... just trying to acclimatise (unsuccessfully) and stay awake while working (also not very successful haha). I miss home lots and cannot wait until I meet my fam in Ireland in March. 

Thanks for reading, love you miss you 

Maddi xoxo 

Ps I didn't proof read this, so I apologise for any spelling or grammatical mistakes :)

Arundel

Hello again! 

I hope you're all well. I'm great, although I'm always tired. Long days, staying up late and getting up early don't work well for me. 

So, this is what I've been up to lately...

On Friday, the Gappers and our boss went out to a lovely dinner and drink at another pub in Ardingly called the Gardener's Arms. I had my first drink in England since arriving - a huge apple cider. The food was delicious - much nicer than the food at the Ardingly Inn. After, our boss dropped us home and the Gappers went back to our common room to have a few drinks and chill out. It was a lot of fun. 

On Saturday morning, I went to Leatherhead to umpire one of the U14s netball games, and then came home, packed and Jess and I headed off to London - the Head of Ardingly Prep kindly dropped us to the train station at Hayward's Heath where we caught the train to London Victoria Station. We eventually got to Jess' great aunt's house in Kensington where we were staying the night. Jess aunt, Fay, lives in an awesome part of London and right near loads of famous people. Some guy from Queen and Westlife live across the road, Robbie Williams is moving in soon, Robert Pattinson lives around the block, as does two of the girls from Little Mix and Cher Lloyd. She also knows where we can find David Beckham too, so one day, Jess and I are going to find some of them :P Fay was absolutely lovely and hospitable. Her late husband was also the Australian Ambassador or something so she has met the Queen quite a few times and had lunch, dinner, tea with her. She's very interesting. 

This is a very cute squirrel in Fay's backyard.

Jess and I then walked to Westfield up the road for a little shopping. After that, Fay made us a lovely dinner and we headed out into London to meet up with the boys and also some other Gappers from a school nearby. Stopping briefly for a bathroom break in MacDonald's in Leicester Square, I saw a friend from back home in the line to the toilets, Steph Jackson. Was very weird but cool. 

The night was short lived, although it was fun while it lasted. The boys didn't organise accommodation beforehand, and after trying to find a hostel with vacancies, they decided to give up and cab it back to Ardingly... $280 AUD later, they made it back to school. By then, Jess and I were already in bed. Poor things haha. 

The next morning I slept in and then Jess and I headed to King's Cross Station to check out Platform 9 and 3/4 from Harry Potter. We lined up for ten minutes to get our photo and then a lady who worked there gave us a choice of scarf - I chose Griffindor obviously.

From King's Cross, we hopped on a red double decker bus to Oxford Street to get in a bit of shopping. Then, we went to Trafalgar Square... Here is Jess and I in front of a giant lion at Trafalgar Square. 

Left - London Tube map outside a station. We had a late lunch/early dinner at a pub -our first fish and chips (wasn't great unfortunately) - and then got on a train back to Ardingly, ready for work the next day. I also did a much needed clean up of my room, so here are a few pictures of it... It's very tiny. Also, after the half term break (in 3 weeks), my room is being painted and I'm getting new furniture thank God. 

Taken from the entrance to my room. I have a lovely window sear that looks out onto the North Quad 

My bed, bedside table and radiator (would die without that ugly thing, it keeps me warm), and the second picture is taken from the far corner of my bed of the only storage I have. Hopefully those will be replaced because my stuff barely fits in it. But it;s good... despite the size, I love it because it's home (although a temporary one) and I have lots of pictures on my wall so I don't get so homesick. 

Today (Tuesday) was the first day I've worn 'smart' clothes to work. Normally, we all wear our sports kits every day because we usually have sport most days and they're really comfortable, but after swimming on a Tuesday morning, I don't have sport so I can wear the smart attire we're expected to. So many students were like "Miss Olsen, why are you dressed nice?", "Why are you wearing that?" etc. One girl told me I should wear my sports kit because I don't suit smartwear. They didn't believe me when I told them that we're actually supposed to wear that. Pretty funny. 

Anyway, this morning was very cold, 1 or 2 degrees from memory and there was crazy thick fog all over. Was a weird surprise when I looked out my window this morning. 

Yesterday was also cold, but no where near as foggy. More frost than fog. In some parts of the school, it looked like it had been lightly snowing (which is actually expected in 2 weeks!)

Oh and I almost forgot why I named the title 'Arundel'. I am now a member of the Arundel house, which is blue! I wanted to be patriotic to my old house colour (i.e. yellow), but considering I don't own a single yellow thing, I picked blue. How exciting. 

Love you all. Miss you lots, if you're ever free to chat, let me know, I'd love to hear from you. 

Lots of love, 

Maddi

Falconry

Guess what Mum, Dad and Nicole! They have falconry at Ardingly!!! 

Only kidding. Haha. 

But there is a large falcon-looking bird that they bring in every now and then to scare away the scavenger birds from the campus which is pretty cool. I saw it today and had to take a photo because I thought you would appreciate it. 

       

In other news, I think we're hitting up Brighton (above) on Sunday to check out the markets, the pier and the beach. Although it's more of a summer town, I'm still excited. I'd really like to get out of the school on most weekends because otherwise all I do is stay at work, like 24/7. 

I got a nice surprise yesterday from Michael, which makes my small, badly decorated bedroom look much more pleasant. It also smells really nice too. And, I FaceTimed Ella for a while which was lovely because I miss my friends a lot. I can't wait to catch up with everyone else as well, so let me know when you're free if you want to chat and hopefully the time difference won't be too annoying.                                                                                     

I promise the next post will have something interesting in it :P But I was bored with nothing to do, so I decided to write about falconry. Tuesdays for me are really good because I don't have many duties so I can watch TV and chill out during my breaks. 

Lots of love, Maddi x

Sainsburys

Today (Sunday), I had a glorious sleep-in; I didn't get out of bed until 10:30 which I desperately needed. However, by the time I woke up, the other gappers were ready to head to Hayward's Heath for the day, so I decided to join them a couple of hours later. 

I got on the boarder's bus which is a shuttle bus that runs continuously to Hayward's Heath until 3 and headed into town to meet the others. We had lunch at a pub and then walked to Sainsbury's (supermarket) to get some things. Sainsbury's is pretty awesome. You can pretty much buy anything you want there: clothes, grog, food, electronics, books, toys, etc.. I'm quite a fan.

Jess and I decided to make biscuits from the ingredients we got from Sainsbury's. They're like the Milk Arrowroot decorated biscuits but the Milk Arrowroots are replaced with Digestives, which are a tea biscuit here that have a really off-putting name but actually taste really good. 

Some of our creations are really beautiful (see to the right... I made a Taylor Swift and Harry Potter one hahahaha) and it was really fun. We're thinking we may do a similar thing with the boarders one night because they'd love it. 

So that was my day off. It was nice and relaxing and now we're just watching TV in our common room. And I'm about to do some washing for tomorrow - I really miss having someone to do my washing for me... 

Love you, miss you 

Maddi x 

Missing my family and friends a lot, but it's nice to chat to them on FaceTime which I got to do today

Gapper

Hi all!

Hope you're all going well. I'm doing well, despite the cold (I need someone to remind me to take gloves with me when I go outside for long periods of time... I may not have any fingers when I come home... kidding... mostly), but I'm all settled in now and while the weather is definitely not growing on me, I'm really happy to get the day off tomorrow. The normal 7:30 am - 8 pm days are quite tiring for someone not used to working such long hours. I just need some time to adjust and then I should be right. 

Today, the sun was shining beautifully - not a cloud in sight - all day. It seems that the weather here is quite bipolar; one hour it's sunny, the next, it's pouring, so I was happy that it remained bright all day. And, by 'all day', I mean from 8 am to 4 pm (sunrise is very late and sunset is very premature here). Not quite the same as Australia. It's strange for the kids to still be at school while it's dark outside. And, while I'm on the weather... apparently the man on BBC said that it is forecasted to snow next week! Whether that's correct or not, I'm not sure, but I'm excited anyway. Someone said that when it snows a lot, the school has a 'snow day' because no one can get in or out so no one but the boarders and the staff who live no campus can get to school. I believe the teachers hope for this to happen so they don't have to go to work. 

Since we have survived the first week working at Ardingly, I'll give you a run down of what our job entails: directing traffic, escorting young pedestrians across the road, office duties (photocopying, shredding, filing, answering phones), collecting coffee, collecting lunches for the music school kids, helping the nursery kids eat their lunch, supervise break times, putting stamps on envelopes, coach and umpire netball (next term is hockey), laminating, cutting out paper for the pre-prep teachers, signing in children late, attending after school clubs to help out the teachers, like rugby, fencing, Ardingly Adventurers (cub scouts), hockey, swimming and all those fun things. I also get to help out with the large prep school production of Alice in Wonderland. 

This morning, Jess and myself went for a little exploration of the school before sport fixtures. We heard there was a secret room in the school so we decided to try and find it. We worked out that to get to it, we have to go through the theatre (which they call the 'Under'), however the doors to the theatre were all locked for the weekend so... During the week we will check it out. We also figured out how to get onto a balcony we saw through a window which had incredible views of the valley and field and gardens. The balcony has a blue arrow pointing to it in the picture. The red arrow is my bedroom. 

We also scouted out coffee machines, where the kitchen keeps the biscuits and found out who we have to befriend to get up to the tower above the chapel (where the yellow arrow is pointing). Apparently if we're nice enough, the head of maintenance will take us up there; it will have the best views because it's the highest point of the school and you can apparently see all over the school's 250 acres of land and the reservoir. We'd love to go up when it's sunny and also when it's been snowing. 


Later today, we all had senior school sport duties to do. I had to travel with the Under 15's to Lancing College (about half an hours drive from Ardingly) to umpire their game. The girls won convincingly which was nice, and to top it off, the college was absolutely stunning. It looked like something right out of Harry Potter, even more so than Ardingly. To the left is an aerial of the school, it's right near the ocean which I was happy to see 'cos it reminds me of home. 

And to the right is the incredible and huge chapel they have. 

On Thursday night, Joel, Josh and I walked to the Ardingly Inn for a drink with some teachers. Jess had to stay back unfortunately, since she was on boarding duty. But it was nice to get to know some of the teachers better. 

And tomorrow, I think we may check out Hayward's Heath. I don't think it's a real 'happening' town, but it will be nice to get out of Ardingly for a little bit. We need to go to Sainsbury's - England's Coles equivalent - for some groceries (just essentials, like chocolate and such hehe) and we'll check out some of the shops there as well. 

Our boss also told us that we've settled in well and have had the best start to the year that he's seen since he's been in charge of the Gappers. That was really nice to hear. 

I'm also very excited for the half-term break (only 5 weeks away) because Michael and I are going to PARIS! And then six weeks later, Mum and Dad are coming over for their trip which I'll join for a couple of weeks until I'm needed back at school. Very, very excited. Makes my time at work much easier when there's something to look forward to. 

Missing you all HEAPS and can't wait to hear from you! Hope your summer is going well.

Love you, 
Maddi x

And now for some photos of the school... as per mum's request. I'll post photos of my room and common room later when I've tidied up a tad ;)

Panorama of the south quad 

South quad

Statue of the Ardingly Pelican. The pelican is the school's symbol and is on all of my Ardingly uniforms. The Gappers were all very confused about the significance of the pelican, so I asked a teacher... apparently the pelican is a symbol of sacrifice. Legend has it that the pelican would feed its children with her own blood, just as Christians believe that Jesus gave his blood and body to save us. 

Not my pictures, but the dining hall is on the left and the swimming pool on the right. 

The pool is one of my favourite places in the school because it is the warmest room. 

The beginning...

So I'm finally getting around to writing a blog post after having been gone a whole week. I actually did write one a few days ago but I accidentally deleted it which was incredibly frustrating. 

Anyway, Sophie, Lana and I arrived in London early on Thursday morning, flying into a cold, dark but brightly lit city. Soph had a bit of trouble getting through immigration (the person who processed her visa put the wrong dates on it) which was a scary moment for us all. We thought she might be detained or sent back to Australia; thankfully it was all good, but she'll need a new visa soon. We then managed to navigate our way through the underground to get to our hotel in Russel Square. We spent the day shopping on Oxford Street and trying to stay awake - thankfully the sun was out and the rain kept away.

On Friday, we decided to check out the touristy things in central London, hoping we'd luck out with the weather again. But, as we arrived in Westminster and stood on Westminster Bridge to get a good view of Big Ben, not only did it start to pour, but it also hailed on us so much that it almost looked like it had snowed. We got absolutely drenched and frozen. The rest of the day consisted of purchasing plastic ponchos, checking out Buckingham Palace and St. James Park and having a nice hot coffee. That night we went back to Oxford Street and had a delicious and nutritious warm waffle with strawberries, chocolate and cream for dinner.

Sophie and I on Oxford Street

Bronte and I getting drenched on Westminster Bridge

Sophie, Lana, me and Bronte in front of Buckingham Palace

Statue and Buckingham Palace - the only time the sun was out all day

Oxford Street at night:

On Saturday, Lana and I lugged all of our suitcases and bags through the underground to get to the right train station to get us to Hayward's Heath (a town near both of our schools). Jim, the deputy head of the prep school, picked me up from the train station and drove me to Ardingly and gave me a brief tour of the massive grounds. There's a large reservoir (which we actually haven't had a chance to visit yet, but hopefully we'll do that this weekend), woods, a gym, a swimming pool, a medical centre, a large chapel and so much more. The school is huge. He showed me where I'll be living for the next 11.5 months and I met the other gappers, Josh, Jess and Joel who are all really nice (pictured to the left). 


We're living on the top floor of the prep school, on the same floor as the prep girl dorms and the floor above the prep boys dorm and the Headmaster's flat (the Headmaster is living with his wife and kids in the Housemistress' flat while she is on maternity leave; he and his wife are really lovely and are the temporary Houseparents until the end of Easter Break). We live in the 'Gap Flat'; Jess and I have the small rooms and the boys have the big rooms, although I think we're supposed to swap next term. Next to our flat is a small common room with some couches, a window seat, a TV, DVD player, VCR, Nintendo 64 and a fridge. We have a kitchen down a couple of floors where we can make tea and have a biscuit or some fruit. 


That day we went for a walk into the town of Ardingly. It has two pubs, a Chinese restaurant and a Post Office. Haha. We went to the Ardingly Inn (pictured to the right) for a drink and then walked back in the rain, just to shower and then go back to the Ardingly Inn again for dinner with some of the teachers. I think Jess and I even got ourselves a dog-walking gig. 


We've now had two full working days here at Ardingly and we've just started our third (I have a break now). The past couple of days have been fun but tiring. I've been running all around the school, learning teacher's names, student's names, building names (they have weird names for everything here so we have to learn them all, like the Under, Pavillion, Over, the Bricks) and try to remember what we have to do in each of our duties. The kids are all very enthusiastic and excited to have new gappers; they're mostly all friendly and welcoming. I have to be called Miss Olsen by them, although they've figured out our first names and try to call us those instead. Or we just get called 'Gapper' which they're not allowed to call us, but many do anyway. 

Today I'm mainly with the really little kids (like ages 3-6) as well as some sport duties. It's still very cold although not as bad as I was expecting, it's apparently unseasonably warm at the moment. I was told that this time last year, they had three feet of snow, so it's quite mild. Jess was told that it's expected to snow next week which I'm hoping because it looks amazing here when it snows and I've never seen snow before. 

Missing you all a lot. Love you, 
Maddi xo

<--- The chapel at the college. 














The view from my bedroom of the college: 

ps. feel free to Facebook, Skype, FaceTime or email me, I'd love to hear from you.