World Thinking Day 2012

Each year on the 22nd of February, Girl Guides and Girl Scouts throughout the world take the time to time to think about all of the other Girl Guides and Girl Scouts around the world (that's over 10 million in 145 countries, in case you were wondering), on the birthday of the founders of the movement Lord Robert and Lady Olave Baden-Powell. It is also a brilliant opportunity to raise money for the World Thinking Day Fund.

This year, our Division chose to celebrate by climbing a hill to watch the sunrise, having a cooked breakfast in a local village hall, followed by another walk after breakfast. This was also a perfect way to reflect on this year's theme for World Thinking Day: "Together we can save our planet."

Consequently, I was up at 5.30am yesterday morning, and by 6am I was driving through the fog to see the sunrise. This is a more accurate reflection of what we saw:

but it was a great idea anyway! There were great views over to the mouth of the river Axe:

(yeah, alright, you'll just have to believe me, I'm sure its amazing on a sunny day!). And we saw the hut where the man responsible for lighting the beacon used to sit:

After official sunrise time had come and gone we walked on, for I think about an hour, to our breakfast destination. Unfortunately there had been some technical hitches, but the Trefoil Guild ladies did an excellent job of managing to cook everything despite a faulty oven! In the meantime we learnt about Thinking Day, I got roped into reading a poem about Nature, and then we remade our promises. When we finally got breakfast, 3.5 hours after getting up, it tasted awesome! Two sausages, two hash browns, baked beans and bacon:

Plus OJ + tea, yum yum yum :D  Suitably refuelled, we were soon off on another walk, 1 mile for the Rainbows and some Brownies, 2 miles for the Guides and some other Brownies. Spring is in the air!

Considering we live in such a rural area, some of the kids obviously don't get out much, which is a shame. Some of them were super-excited about mud! And we had to stop so they could paddle in the stream! This is what is so great about Guiding, we give these girls opportunities to experience such simple things that they wouldn't otherwise have access to, for whatever reason. And by getting out and about and experiencing nature, hopefully they are more likely to want to look after it in the future!

On that note, the weather is fabulous here today, so I'm off out to enjoy it by taking a long walk with the dog!

Oh yeah, on a side note, we also spent some time delivering leaflets for the Guide coffee morning and jumble sale next Saturday. If you have anything you would like to donate to be sold, or if you would like to come along and buy cake and jumble, get in touch and I will give you more details!

Pancakes All Round!

Today I discovered one of the many benefits of having submitted my thesis: it allowed me to spend the whole day slowly making my way through an entire batch of pancakes!

This may come as a surprise to those of you who know how hard I've worked the past year to get to a healthy weight. But I reckon (a whole batch of) pancakes can be part of a healthy diet, just look at how much fruit I've eaten today!

I started with two banana and chocolate spread pancakes for breakfast, yum yum!

Lunch was the best. One with Double Gloucester, red onion and tomato, so good with all the melty cheese:

Then I sauteed some apples with butter, sugar and cinnamon in the microwave, and had them in a pancake for dessert with maple syrup from actual Canada. Terrible photo, quite a fail pancake, but sooooo tasty!

I had tuna pasta bake for dinner, cos, you know, proper food is good for you... But then I had the last pancake for dessert, also pretty awesome! With toffee yogurt and blueberries :)

In other news, I found out the date for my PhD viva today, eeks!

Hope you've all had a happy pancake day! What's your favourite pancake topping?

Freedom!

Hi there!

Long time no blog! I guess while I was writing my thesis the last thing I wanted to do was sit at my computer and write some more. Well, I come bearing good news: on Thursday I submitted my thesis!

There is over a month before I will have my viva, where I have to meet my examiners to defend my work. You would think I would feel completely liberated and relaxed now right? That was certainly how I expected to feel! Alas, that is not the case. In fact I felt more panicked yesterday than I have done in a long time! While I was writing I made sure to suppress all worries concerning finding a job, money, going to America, but unfortunately over the last couple of days these things have hit me with a vengeance. And of course now that I have so much time on my hands, I can easily spend a lot of time "thinking", and that is not necessarily a good thing.

So it turns out that this is a very confusing time! It has also been pointed out to me that I have been studying for the last twenty years, and I always had the next thing lined up. Straight from school to uni, uni to PhD. I have never had a career plan. Up until now this hasn't been a problem. In fact it is still not a problem. It means my options are open. I must keep reminding myself of these things.

And now I need to find some stuff to do to stop myself from spending the next month "thinking". I have made a list, which I turned into a mind-map, with colours, in the hope I would find it more inspiring! I'm a gal who knows how to have a good time, am I right?! hehe! I have some trips and projects up my sleeve. But I'm open to suggestions! Hopefully having more time should mean more blogging!

If you've taken the time to sit and read this, please please do leave a comment. What would you do if you had a month to fill? How do you think I should entertain myself over the next month?