So on New Year's Day here comes some more photographs that remind me of all the fantastic moments that 2013 has graced me with, and hopefully some ones that have not been featured on this blog yet! We start in July, which was perhaps the busiest month of 2013 as Summer was in full swing..
JULY
July was a fantastic month. The first two pictures are from a day where I tripped up to London to see my sister for lunch while she was on work experience, and instead of heading back home, just wandered around the area. This was two days before I knew that I would be moving to London this year and it was around a 15 minute walk from where she was to my new home, so this stroll proved to be very useful. The most exciting thing, however, was stumbling across the Museum of London which has the most fascinating exhibition where you walk through the whole of the history of London. The first image was taken from a section of quaint mock-ups of shops selling toys, pawnbrokers and barbers, and was probably the only section where I could get away with snapping a photograph because it wasn't guarded. Next we have Disneyland, which is pretty self-explanatory. It really was quite magical and it was my first holiday with a friend, too. I spent far too much money on food - there are no cheap options if you want to avoid chips everyday! My favourite part of the trip was most definitely the light show. I filmed the whole thing on my phone and to be honest, the quality of my HTC pictures are better than my Nikon D3000. I do, however, love the grainy photo I took on my Nikon of my phone recording with all the audience and the light out of focus. I have to say, we got a great position because everybody in front of us sat down and our 'row' stood up, and we were bang in the centre. It was an unforgettable moment. A week after I returned from Disneyland Paris, I went on a three-week long and thoroughly exhausting Beach Mission, where Christians from up and down the country go to beach resorts and primarily run a kid's club with songs, Bible stories, games and quizzes. I've done it two years in a row and not only do you meet fantastic people, but you get to share the most important thing in your life with total strangers. From my first year I started writing to a young boy and saw him again this year, which was such a beautiful moment. I worked on two beaches in Wales: for one week I was in Benllech, Anglesey, with my friend Lucy (pictured looking ravishing) and the second two were in Llandudno. Wales in these photographs looks surprisingly sunny! Unfortunately the pictures that really show what it was all about are off limits here because I wouldn't want to upset anyone on my team by uploading them without permission. The photograph that makes me laugh from that collection is the newspaper article, where you can see all the team in red at the end of the beach hopelessly waving around a parachute trying to get people to come and play. I don't remember the seaweed smelling more than the fact that it was just everywhere! Our team actually did the council's job for them and cleaned it up. What I loved about Beach Mission was my early morning Bible studies on my own by the beach, watching the sunrise (when the last photo was taken). Tranquil moments like that are rare in London, now!
Tweets of the month: One day all the facebook mums who post pictures of their babies with cringe-inducing captions will face the wrath of their teenager.
In a room full of royalists watching Will and Kate present their sprog to the world. No Simba moment yet... we live in hope.
AUGUST
August was lovely in so many ways. The bottom photograph shows the leftovers of my Beach Mission when we went on our weekly afternoon out and we sat on top of a hill and watched the pier. I also attended another wedding at my church of one of my youth leaders. Not only was it Hobbit/Lord of the Rings themed (she ripped out pages of the books and used them to make origami flowers), but there was such a beautiful story of patience, frustration, let-downs, doubt, but ultimately love behind her story before her husband came into her life. I love this picture of my sister, mum and I: it is very rare that we actually get pictures as a three even though we spend a lot of time together. Shortly after that -with A-Level results sandwiched in between- I went to a Christian festival called Soul Survivor to gain signatures for the Open Doors Save Syria petition. Working on a charity stand is hard, and extremely hot. This was also the week that I started to drink tea (I am pretty much a fail of a British Citizen), which proved to be very useful when working at the Cafe. We were on a really small team of four among thousands of people so it would have been pretty alienating and lonely had I not had friends from my school CU with their youth group, and I spent some chilled afternoons with them and got to know them so much better, which brings me nicely to our school CU meet up. I don't think many of these people actually went to the CU but this was pretty much a gathering of Christians before we went to Uni. We ate food, played games involving throwing cups of water at one another, and prayed for each other before everyone departed for University. And lastly, it was my friend Kat's 19th Birthday, where we ate my homemade Double Chocolate Pavlova and larked about with my camera, hence my ridiculous face in the top picture.
Tweet of the month: Mulan is such a babe
SEPTEMBER
Ah, September, you were a little crazy. Obviously, I have put most of that into my one month review but there were some little gems I hadn't written about, the first being my little send off before I left. Every year, at some point during the summer, my Dad's side of the family meet together for a Garden Party held at my grandparents' house. I have ten cousins on that side, plus spouses so it is a lot of fun to see them again until Christmas. Most of us are pictures in the bottom photograph playing a game we have played every single year where you have a bottle filled with water to the top and two soft balls. Standing in lines, you roll the ball to the person opposite you and try to knock over the bottle so that they lose water. It is basically an elimination game and has a lot of cheating each year. I have never won, and my aim gets worse every year. This occasion was a perfect family send off, complete with tea in posh teacups. The photograph of the blurred family picture was taken at my first Garden Party when I was 1. Every time I go over to their house I laugh at the 90s hairstyles (pudding bowl was a favourite in our family) and garish outfits. After I moved, all my friends went off to Uni, but two of my friends weren't leaving until October and they came up to London one day and we went to my Cafe and then travelled by bus to the other side of London to have cupcakes and pink lemonade. At a time when I was feeling pretty lonesome and a little lost, it was nice to catch up with familiar faces and obviously, eat food.
OCTOBER
October kicked off with my Birthday, where the highlight was Google congratulating me for turning 19. It was a bit of a sombre occasion because I was missing my friends and actually, many of them were so busy with University that they quite forgot about it (I don't publish my birthday on Facebook to remind them). I went home for the weekend only to find that I spent it taking advantage of the good WiFi ie sitting in my bed on my laptop. I did have a lovely meal with family, but there was definitely a shadow cast over it until I returned to London and was greeted with a cake and Lindt chocolates by my housemates. October also signalled my first trip to Spitalfields and the general Shoreditch area, courtesy of someone who I have the pleasure of working with who lives in that area and gave me a tour. She is one of the most lovely, genuine people I have met and it's a jolly shame I don't see her more often. I particularly enjoyed the Rough Trade store because of the text on the wall and the random street art dotted around that area. The other picture is just of my window because October was lacking in photographs that I hadn't already used in my two month review
Tweet of the month: Procrastinating in Asda. Dodging women with buggies.
NOVEMBER
November was the month I decided that my room needed a bit of sprucing up and put all the letters and papers that I had on a wall next to my bed as a little documentation of my year. It was also the month I revisited the Museum of London and stood in a box which had a map of London covering the entire thing. I told you I enjoyed that exhibition! I walked back from the Museum of London and took a shot across the river on the way home. I also got the tube at some point, hence the bottom photograph, and also saw the Houses of Parliament and took a photograph when it was raining. Yep, once again November was pretty well covered in my three month review.
Actually, that pretty much covered December as well, and we didn't take any photographs over Christmas apart from a few grainy Instagrams:
Yep. Very grainy. I'll save the other photographs for another post (strange laugher commences here).
I have quite enjoyed this 2013 round up, and although it is New Year's Day today and many people stop looking back and start looking forward, I don't think I've had my time yet. I am quite a reflective person and so I really like to relish this time of the year when it becomes a lot more acceptable to evaluate your past and become ultra-nostalgic. Of course, there is a time to look forward, and New Year is typically a day to do that, but I am a firm believer that if you want to change something about your life or work to a goal, it doesn't need to be set when the seasons do or when the times change, merely when you decide. New Year isn't all that important to me: it creates unnecessary pressure to dramatically change your life or improve yourself. As a Christian the idea of 'improving myself' is completely counter to what I believe, yet New Year and the media surrounding it saturates all these images and ideas that actually make me feel rather down in January. So, throughout January I shall still be looking back in thanks to God for my year, reminiscing good memories and rejoicing that the bad times taught me something valuable that I can take with me in many years to come.
Future posts include '13 songs of 2013' and '13 videos of 2013,' and I am so excited to write them!
-Antonia
P.S. Happy New Year, I guess.
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