New page in the book of life...

6 months, been and gone, and that's the end of the World Challenge chapter in terms of full time work. Working over the winter as a centre assistant/trainee instructor flew past so quickly and though the main work included hanging up wet tents, folding dry tents, organising stores for the training expeditions, there were the perks towards the end that got me involved in the delivery of training. It was stressful and full on but after going out on the third one, I was running it all by myself with an instructor shadowing me incase I missed out anything. I came back in from that weekend on such a high as the group were really receptive to the training, really positive and I had great feedback including a thankyou card. The teachers had been made aware that I was in training but thought I did really well :-)

So before I knew it, I was moving out of Buxton and heading South East to a village outside of Derby called Spondon where I am now based. It was originally going to be a 'rent a room' situation but turned out to be the case of a relationship blossoming. That guy is none other than my 'boyfriend', Ned, someone who has helped me a lot over the past few months with my climbing, not only someone I have worked on and off with for the past year, but someone who has been a little less than totally amazing to me.

So I have found myself moved into a new house and this is coupled with a new full time job (until October) with the company that started off all of my work within the outdoor sector, Peak Pursuits. I had been pestered for the past few months about working full time for the company as they lack female full time members of staff within the Duke of Edinburgh department and so an agreement was proposed that I take the seasonal position with a month off in the summer to go to Malawi on expedition with World Challenge. It was a big decision as I had been totally convinced with the idea of going freelance with different companies but after a few weeks mulling over the pro's and con's I went with taking the job for some security and experience with the 'behind the scenes' side of DoE. It's not like it's a permanent job as it is only until October and I can reassess the situation when I get back from Malawi.

In terms of life, I'm really not sure what I want anymore. It's not like I'm bored with the outdoors or anything, but only being a ML (in terms of qualifications) there are not a huge amount of avenues to go down at the moment. I may be just blind, and stuck in my ways of DoE but I hope to find something new for this winter or 2011. I aim to get my SPA (climbing award) sorted by the end of the year which may open some doors and hope to start paddling this year which could mean I aim for some water qualifications as well but I'm at the stage where I feel I have had a none stop life for the past 4 years and want some time out.

Yeah ok I'm only 22 years old but I want to get out travelling without a group of kids tagging along/in front of me. My brother has just made the hard decision to defer University and go out to Australia for a year to travel and maybe work. A friend of mine has done the same thing, got a camper van and is travelling throughout New Zealand. That would be awesome, but I'm a sociable person (most of the time) and don't think I fancy doing things like that on my own. I like to talk to someone and share the experiences of travel. Even if I was to go out on my own, I could potentially meet people on my travels but who knows if they are idiots or want to do the same things as me. I can be a right grump at times and I do have ties to the UK now. Job, meh, I can quit that worst case scenerio, a house, I can leave that and dump things in my parents loft, a boyfriend, a little harder to 'deal' with. That sounds very negative, which I really am not about. I haven't been this happy in a long time, not that I have been unhappy or lonely, but I so enjoy spending time with Ned. I think it's merely the fact that I have completed University, where I had a lot of time to play around with and could work when and where I wanted, had some excitement with going to Bolivia and India then going straight into a 6 month placement/job for the winter and straight into another 6 month job interspersed with work in Africa. Non stop but I do get bored just on days off.

So for the next few months it's going to be preparation for Malawi, getting through all the DoE expeditions around the UK (and abroad now with the possibility of going to Spain in August) and job hunting for my next challenge. I could easily just continue with DoE but it's not challenging anymore (depending on the group of course). And with that, I will pack for a gold practice in Scotland :-)