3:08 am

Despite waking up at that time last night I'm less inclined to think that it was due to jetlag, and more because I had slept 14 hours the previous night. The weirdest thing was that as I awoke I realised that all the people in my dream had been speaking American...

I'm currently listening to "Love Among the Chickens" by P.G. Wodehouse, so I listened to a couple of chapters before going back to sleep again. It's a funny book and the chapters are a good length. My only gripe is with the person reading the story and his insistance of trying to put on an Irish accent for one of the characters and it is truly awful. Also his attempts at a female voice do a great disservice to the heroines in question. But other than that it's great fun.

Time zones suck

I'm exhausted and I'm trying to count how many mosquito bites I have, but I had such a great time! Chicago has a rubbish airport: it's not signposted very well and there is a serious lack of diversions once you go through security (one trolley with some sweets and touristy items), so actually getting onto the plane was rather exciting. I'd been bumped up to World Traveller Plus (BA's next step up from what used to be called Economy Class) which did have slightly more space and funky footrests. Things have changed since I last did any intercontinental flights so these personal tv screens in the back of the chairs was a new experience.

The pre-sunrise sky from the plane was outstanding. The horizon was divided into coloured bands starting with a deep ochre next to the dark earth and going through orange, yellow, green, pale blue, and then back into the dark blue of a night sky. Far more inspiring than actually landing in Heathrow at 6am. I didn't really feel any flicker of excitment at being back until we crossed over Richmond Bridge and I saw the Thames.

Elizabeth and Matt's wedding was so beautiful! We had icecream and cookies at the reception instead of cake, and because I'd been helping out with the wedding preparations for the previous week and a half I actually knew far more people there than I thought would be likely, so that was nice too. Mary, Elizabeth's mother, had organised the making of a wedding quilt and various people had made squares that created a gorgeous quilt. It was such a nice gift!

By 6pm we were at the site of the Twinkle Glo - the after, after party! Held at a family friend's place it was fantastic. They have two ponds. A bigger one with two swans and snapping turtles for boating in, and a slightly smaller one with gigantic catfish (that are fed) for swimming in. I had visited there a few times already dropping stuff off and swimming whenever possible. One time we had just all got in the water when three minutes later there was lightning and so we all had to traipse out again.

Twinkle Glo was very relaxed and people changed into comfortable clothing and ate some more, played volleyball and other games, went boating or swimming, sat around and talked, and toasted marshmallows. We had some fireworks too, and a friend of Elizabeth's organised an impromptu sparkler race to see if a relay race could get a sparkler all the way around the pond before it went out. One team almost made it all the way around! It was fun to watch the race as it was dark enough that all you saw was a blurred glow going fast about shoulder height! All in all, a very special day and I'm so impressed how it managed to be so much fun too for everyone.

I'm trying to stay awake until it's late enough to go to bed! I've done laundry (oh, I've forgotten to take it out of the machine!!), made a pendant for a necklace, unpacked, found out when I'm back in work (not until Friday thankfully), and watered plants. It's still only 9pm...

Settlers of Catan

Has anyone heard of this board game? It's so much fun, and I'm really pleased I've managed to play it twice in the past week! I learned how to play it in Oregon and am pleased I've managed to play it again. I really should find somebody to afflict it upon in London...

The days before the wedding

Elizabeth is at work today and tomorrow, as are other people in this house, so I've had time to recover from a packed weekend. On Saturday we went to the farmers' market to pick flowers for the wedding. It's in Goshen and in a barn-like space and rather cool. It is rather different from the one I'm involved at in Twickenham and it was fun making comparisons. For one there are less Amish farmers selling their goods in Twickenham. We also took a trip to Shipshewana (a tourist trap for people interested about the Amish) to Yoder's Meat & Cheese to pick up food, and have visited lots of people and places. Organising a wedding, even a low-key one, is a lot of work! It is so special to be here and be included in everything. And this way I am meeting lots of people who I'll see again at the wedding and thus know more people on the day.

There is an urban trolley that runs between Elkhart and Goshen. It looks hilarious so I had to ride it... It's a cross between a tram cart and a bus! And again looking lost and speaking with an accent got me to where I wanted to go with remarkably little fuss:) It's nice to support the non-car options and it was cheap - $1 one way (about 50p). Today I went on a bike ride to return a film and to visit the Elkhart Environmental Education Centre again, which was still closed, and I think if I can cycle in America I should be alright in London...

On Saturday I helped move Elizabeth's sister into Goshen College so I got to be nosy and see what the dorms look like, and wander around campus. We even surreptitiously joined in the bbq for students and family members:) However, I didn't feel any immediate urge to go back to being a student and sharing rooms and showers.

Tonight I'm going for dinner with the family I lived with in Oregon so that's going to be really special. It's lovely to be able to reconnect with people from the past.

I'm here!

I'm here. I may be languishing in the heat and humidity (that I had forgotten all about), but I'm here! I've been promptly assimilated into the family and have picked lots of tomatoes. And this morning Aunt B and I canned 7 quarts of tomatoes! I have never done that before in my life so I was rather more excited about it than she was...

The flight and entry into the USA was remarkably smooth. I watched a fabulous film onboard the aircraft called The Lives of Others. It's a German film and won the Best Foreign Film Oscar, although more importantly it was a story of choices and redemption. And really, really beautiful. In Chicago I had the chance to practice my best British accent/lost foreigner look as I asked for directions. It worked a treat!

Yesterday I helped fill in holes in the woodwork in a newly built house, and today I volunteered at a place that has a food pantry and runs womens' empowerment sessions, so I'm starting to fit right in... Tonight Elizabeth and I went to this very powerful event. It's a Victim Impact Panel where people who have had drunk driving sentances from the court have to go and listen to somebody who has been impacted by drunk driving. This is run by the Centre of Community Justice that Elizabeth works for, and it was difficult to listen to the speaker tell how her daughter was hit by a driver and their life as its changed. I hope the people who attended tonight listened.

The weirdest memories are flooding back as I see things and remember stuff I didn't know I had forgotten. Like the sandwich bags, or how the yogurt is different, or the porches that houses have, and how crazy it is to actually walk anywhere... It's always the little things.

Cooked breakfasts and Gap years

This is the second consecutive Saturday that I've woken up for a cooked breakfast by my housemate and, after doing the dishes, settled down for a good few hours to read The Guardian. It started off as a joke: we weren't going to go along on a country walk organised by other friends because we were going to have a champaign breakfast. On reflection we decided that was too good an opportunity to miss so we duely had one. (I think it was also partly to cheer me up after my spectacular failure to make it out of the country.) A morning trip to Tesco's provided a reduced bottle of Cava to go with our fairly traded orange juice, organic eggs, croissants, and coffee...

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Suitably attired in my "GROLLIES" garments - Guardian Readers Of Leftist Leanings In Ethnic Skirts, as defined by some soul on 'Have I Got News For You' - I sat down after breakfast to tackle the paper, and as I have the sole occupancy of the flat this morning the bits of the paper are strewn over the living room sofas and coffee table as I moved around between sections and cups of tea.

I'm slowly coming to recognise the seasons of the news paper. We've just come through the A-levels stories and have now moved onto Gap Year advice and suggestions, and its not only in the travel section either. I've come to the sad conclusion that I was woefully unprepared when I embarked out of school and into a 11-month stint as a volunteer over in the States. Not only was I ignorant that it was an excellent opportunity to Broaden My Mind, Spice Up My CV, Gain Valuable Experience, and Grow In Confidence but I think I've also failed to see this as a once-in-a-life-time opportunity before settling into steady employment. Nor did it cure me of volunteering or shake off the vague feeling that you can't get paid for something you like doing and thus treat any offers of paid work with faint suspicion... As it was, I did come away with some names of companies and charities that take volunteers for the next time the urge for a more radical volunteering post grabs my imagination!

I've nothing against Gap years and did benefit enormously from my life-informing experiences. I would hardly be the person I am today without it! (Obviously...:) It is just intereting to see the attempt to encouch the idea in the language of marketing, the need to sell the experience without allowing the experience to enough. Does the experience need to be judged by the arbitrary value of the future? Well, for me at least it was all part of the journey rather than The Journey, my Gap year wasn't an arbitrary blip in my existence:)

"No is ok"

At 7:33 am I got a text message that said "No is ok". I do not know who it is from, or what they were trying to convey. It is intriguing though...

Is it meant to be encouraging? A gently disappointed friend? A statement of life? Divine intervention?

Oooh, there are so many questions!

Things I've learned...

The "please hold" music of the British Airways is better than the blasting music of the Finnish consulate, the American embassy employs Irish people to answer their phones, getting a visa is a lot quicker than a passport, old (but still in date!!) British passports are non-machine readable and will get me into Canada but not the USA, and if you miss your outgoing flight the airline considers it a no-show and the return flight gets cancelled too...

Quite a lot for a few days really.

I went to Heathrow on the 9th of august - last Thursday - only to be told my current British passport would not get me into the US of A. That is an absolutely devastating thing to be told at the check-in desk. BA have been absolutely wonderful to me, first they booked me a flight for the next day free of charge, and even though I missed that too I've just been on the phone and they've managed to re-book my return flight for me which had been cancelled. Thursday afternoon was spent phoning around consulates, embassys, crying down the phone to my father... A new passport was not to be had for anything, but I did eventually manage to book myself a visa appointment at the US embassy for the following day.

This meant missing my Canadian leg of the journey, which I am still wretchedly disappointed about. I missed my old housemate's wedding open house, and I haven't seen him in six years. And while I thought long and hard about it I felt too uneasy to head out to Canada and hope that I could get a visa from there.

The visit to the visa section of the US embassy was educational. There's a lot of building work going on around the building, which actually worked in my favour as it meant there were large temporary signs up "Visas This Way" that helped me find my way around to the various security points. My bag went through one of those airport type scanning machines and I went through a metal detector. Once I had handed in my offensive alarm clock I made my way past the armed (and scary) policemen and into a huge waiting hall clutching my numbered ticket. The seats were, thankfully, a lot more comfortable than in many other waiting rooms I've been in, and there were huge screens announcing the next number. However, as these did not come in a consecutive order you really did have to pay attention.

Two interviews and three hours later I walked out with my visa request granted and the return of my passport promised in the next 3-5 working days. This afternoon I got a text that the passport will be delivered tomorrow between 8am and 6pm, so that's a relief! So I've sorted out my visa and my return flight, now I just need to figure out how to get to Chicago in the first place...

Hah!

I packed last night and it came to 10kg!!!

I've got a few more things to add - like my toothbrush - but I don't think that'll make that much of a difference. What a difference it makes travelling in the summer as winter clothes are so much more bulkier and heavier. I can't quite believe it...10kg... :)

A busy few days

M is moved in now and we've cleared away most of the boxes cluttering the hallway. The spare room looks like it always had someone living in it and we have six boxes of creamed coconut and several half-full packets of food in the cupboards... Life is mostly back to normal in that respect.

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Yesterday after work finished at 3pm I headed off to the Tate Modern to see an exhibition called Global Cities. I had one of those "aah, this is why I live in London" moments travelling to the museum. When I got to the exhibition I forgot to think about anything and was completely immersed in the fascinating images and films. Two that particularly stand out for me was a piece about edible estates, which explored pulling up "useless" lawns in cities and creating vegetable beds instead, and a piece about Mumbai and the lack of women's public toilets due to cultural reasons and it explored gender and space.

50% of the world's population live in cities and I do find them absolutely fascinating. It's the interactions and possibilities of urban life that we are increasingly faced with which is just going to get more important as time goes on.

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Last night I was going to do a dry run and pack my rucksack. I am aiming to travel as light as I possibly can as it will be me carrying my bag everywhere! So, I got my bag down from a high shelf and then instead decided to sew some colourful flowers onto it. Everytime I am faced with a luggage carousel my heart sinks and I imagine scenario after scenario of not recognising my own rucksack and having to wait until the very end because it won't come... I have been meaning to put some unique touches to what is a very average and typical black and green rucksack to make it more distinct, so I am glad I did that last night. Hopefully this will make my bag easy to spot from miles away:)

Less than a week to go

Next Thursday I head off to Heathrow, queue up for ages, and at some point board a plane for Toronto, Ontario. I think this has finally sunk in so I spent this Friday in a flurry rushing around doing things. I started a 'to do' list which I seemed to add to every time I passed it, and added about three things to every one I crossed off! It's a serious undertaking heading off halfway across the world for 25 days. The sudden panic happened when I remembered that this was the only time I was free in the daytime before I leave (I've subsequently got an email that I won't be working on Monday, but that gives me time to tidy up odds and ends:).

Speaking of panicked starts I almost jumped out of bed this morning at 6:50am thinking I was really late for the Farmers' Market in Twickenham and it was only when my sleepy brain caught up that I remembered that it was Friday and I didn't have to be up at stupid o'clock until tomorrow... With my heart beating violently I lay back down and dozed for a bit longer before getting up to finish "Where late the sweet bird sang" by Kate Wilhelm - which I thought was great!

Added to my leaving activities I've been cleaning the flat as M moves in tomorrow and takes up residence in what was the spare room. It'll be nice to have a third flatmate, although between L's trips to Wales, Scotland, and Morocco and mine to Wales and this upcoming one to the North American continent we've barely seen each other all this summer.

Well, I'm off to the pub now for the third day in a row and I'm beginning to feel like I live there...

Bats!

Tonight I got myself to the London Wetland Centre for a bat walk, and I'm very glad I did too. It was brilliant. First we had a presentation and then four groups set off to see and hear what we could find. I wangled my way in on the basis that I volunteer at the Centre anyway and I offered to volunteer tonight too. So I found myself shadowing a sheepdog. (This is the person who is not a team leader and rounds up any wayward stragglers...)

I've seen plenty of bats before but I've never been out with a bat detector. Bats are noisy creatures really. The funniest thing was hearing them eat an insect which happened at a good old rate. We saw/heard pipestrelles (common and soprano), noctules, and Dauberton's. Another group also heard some serotine bats. The clouds around us turned a fabulous dusky colour as the sun set but we did see some stars by the time we had turned round to go back. It was such good fun. I think I'm going to invite myself along to some more bat walks soon.

A tale of two interviews

Earlier this week I did an interview for an internship post with a big organisation. The post was to work alongside the education officer two days a week for three months and it's based close enough to Richmond to seem attractive, even without the big name... I almost managed to miss the deadline for applying for it as I hummed and hawed. I didn't get the post so it's hard to analyse it without wondering how much of it is trying to justify to myself that I didn't actually want it in the first place! :)

I went to the interview not knowing what I was going to say, and came out of it knowing I hadn't got it.

I did prepare and had talked myself into wanting the job, but a few days down the line I can't quite make myself believe I thought I was going to get it. During the interview I felt inarticulate and unable to get across what I thought. I also thought that they didn't ask the proper questions. By that I mean questions which made me excited about answering or felt I could answer, which even then made me sure I wasn't going to get the post. There was no opportunity for me to be me. And they kept asking me questions about the Wetlands Centre. Now I really value volunteering there and enjoy it a lot, but out of all the places I've volunteered or worked its the one I've been the least involved in (I show up and do as I'm told, although last Saturday I did get put in front of several young pond-dippers and told to talk...:), either in the delivery or the whole organisation. It was really strange and I feel as if I only got the interview on the basis that I volunteer at the Wetland Centre, which does actually annoy me a lot.

Today after my shift at the pub I caught a bus and showed up at the Crane Park Island Nature Reserve to talk to the woman who runs the place. They've received money and she is looking to employ someone else to help out with the educational side of things and generally get involved. We had an informal chat as she was in the bottom of the shot tower (part of an old gunpowder factory) which is open to the public once a month and then as we walked around the fantastically beautiful island. The chat was interwoven with disruptions from old neighbours and friends, people from the Art Picnic showing off their willow sculptures to us, organising the next work days, talking to the council's ecological officer, and some others in a lovely chaos that was far more informative of what happens at the nature reserve than any talk. I got a chance to talk about what I'm really passionate/excited about without feeling fake and got to hear enough about the vision for this post to make me want it properly. The post will need to be advertised so I haven't even been offered it, but what an absolute difference to the previous interview! I feel enthusiastic even just thinking about it - irrespective if I get the job or not. If I don't I'll volunteer there!

Job-seeking is a funny business.

Offensive music

Last Wednesday I did a day shift at the pub (which is fairly unusual) as there was a function going on upstairs over lunch and they wanted the bar open. What was going to be a fairly dull and predictable shift was made brighter when some of the employees brought along a busker from the high street to play some music on the balcony. The musician was a beautiful - and talented - young woman with a violin who played some really lovely classical music. It was absolutely delightful, not least because it was so unexpected. She played for about half an hour until the food was done and then went off again.

The Brit suffers from a neighbour who has inflicted severe restrictions on the pub's license by meticulously complaining to the pub and the council (the less charitable among us might point out that he is on the council himself) and did in fact complain to the licensing officer about the half an hour of beautiful music. I'm more sympathetic to his other complaints (even if it does mean sweltering in the function room with the door shut - although the fact that the air conditioning doesn't work isn't helpful) but this particular complaint is a bit hard to take. Now if he could've only complained about the awful karaoke I had to listen to that one time...

The book of the moment

On Friday we went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and then went to The Lion and the Unicorn (a local independent children's bookshop) to join the queue for a midnight opening of the shop and a copy of HP & The Deathly Hallows. It felt like a fitting way to mark the latest and last installment of this particular saga. There were adults and children in various costumes and the shop staff walked the length of the queue offering snacks and a chance to write a spell into a spell book. Once the countdown had rung down the tiny alley way there was a rush forwards and lots of eagerness and excitment in the air.

The next morning I saw various people reading the book at the bus stop or trying to walk and read at the same time. On Saturday I was volunteering at the Wetland centre all day and then I had twenty minutes before having to go to the pub so it was actually 1 am before I had a chance to open my copy of the book and start reading for an hour before falling asleep... Torture in other words!!

It is a real page-turner so I did get it read before heading off to the pub again Sunday afternoon, and the long wait to find out what actually happened in the end is over. Don't worry...I'm not about to spoil it for those who haven't read it yet!

I do mini-breaks too! (kind of...)

Last weekend I had my first Sunday off in a million years so I ran off! I took the 8:03am train to Swansea and went to see what would happen. Due to the Sunday engineering works we went to Temple Mead in Bristol and then the train changed directions, so I entered Wales backwards and just as it was starting to rain...

I had a whirlwind tour interlaced with long stretches of solitude on beaches or the Gower (most my friends have daytime jobs so I entertained myself). Of the four and a half days I was there I managed to eat only one meal by myself, even if I hadn't really planned it like that. I went to so many of my old favourite places as well as some entirely new places like Pennard Castle and the laundrette in Brynmill. I basked in all the sun walking from Mt Pleasant to Bracelet Bay and on the Gower and have returned with first an impressive red patch across my shoulders, which has turned into a nice tan. Even as I was waiting for the train back to london I came across a fabulous exhibition outside the Waterfront Museum called "Earth From the Air" which had amazing pictures, well, of the Earth.

Last time I had been away and come back (Iona) it felt like a lifetime had passed whereas this time round I hardly felt like I had been away. There is so much in the town that I respond too, recognise, have little bits of my life connected with, know the short cuts, and bump into people I know in town even after a six months absence that made me wonder if I had made the right choice to come to London after all. Having moved so much such a strong sense of identity bound up in with a place and its people is a precious thing that I cherish a lot, and so I was very relieved to rediscover it during my brief visit (that could have been so much longer visiting more people and places had I not had the pub to come back to). It all felt like a proper holiday that was adventurous, relaxing, and filled with good food and talks with friends!

Ken Livingston wants us to smile more!

This week in the Britannia I was behind the bar upstairs in the function room and had plenty of time to read the paper and do some sudoku (I'm ignoring Jaqui's dicdate of not reading "on duty" - at least when I don't work with her), and there was an article on how Ken wants London's bar and restaurant staff to start smiling more in preparation for the Olympics. He wants the legions who staff these venues to provide more smiles to the tourists who should be flocking in for 2012. Ken Livingston is proposing some accredited training so that employers know they can get employees who smile... I can't really imagine what the training would consist of.

When I shared this article with my co-workers the response invariably was: if they want us to smile more they'll need to pay us a decent amount. Apparently most countries do have accreditation programmes for bar workers, and consequently pay them more too.

Things in the pub are a little weird at the moment anyhow. We think that the pub has been bought by two men, but nobody seems to know anything for certain. If it is true, it means that our two current managers will lose their jobs, and the two of them and the chef who all live onsite will all lose their accomadation too. In theory I don't think my job is on the line at all, but with everything up in the air you can't really be certain.

On the whole though I do think Ken Livingston would approve of me as I do try to smile at all my customers - and at times I can't help it because life in the pub can be very bizarre and surreal.

A visit to Heathrow

Yesterday I stretched my arms about 5cm as I helped my brother lug his stuff to Heathrow. He was carrying a huge box that had his bike in it so I was left with the 16.5 kg suitcase that dates before the time humans had invented wheels. We were originally headed for Paddington and the Heathrow Express as the tube has restrictions on taking bikes on certain stretches of the underground, until we realised that that particular stipulation probably didn't concern us as his bike was tucked away in a box. So instead we tried to take up as little room as is possible when you are lugging around a gigantic box and took the Picadilly Line. It was a beautiful sight when we finally got to Heathrow aiport and saw a trolley!

I caught glimpses of the newest security measures as I saw police cars lined up along the road right outside the doors to terminal where the taxis and cars dropping people off used to line the pavement. And there were some police standing around or walking around with their terrifying guns. Posters asking for information about Madeline abounded on anything that was head height. But the basics were still there: uninspiring building, long queues, bored and tired people, indifferent food...

Flying wouldn't be so tedious if it wasn't for the airports.

Ursula K. Le Guin has written a great little book called "Changing Planes' about a technique that someone discovered by accident on how to go and visit other dimensions or planes, and meet other tourists (human and alien) or explore planets. The technique only works with humans when they are extremely bored and uncomfortable: ie when in airports waiting for a thrice delayed flight or when stuck in transit at an airport and with 6 hours before the connection... I think after reading that book anyone who is stuck at an airport would wish they could pass the time in as pleasant a manner as escaping to explore another place, peoples, and customs:)

Working outdoors

On the Monday and Tuesday of this week two of us from Richmond Environment Network, and two wonderful BTCV volunteers, headed off to a primary school to work with their 51 Year 6 (11-12yrs) pupils. We did all mannner of things including: creating a loggery, a path through a scrub land, created an outdoor class room, planted bits and bobs, did loads of weeding, a litter pick, and made 3 birdboxes. A fairly busy two days...

This is a project I had been working on for a few months now so it was really exciting to see it take fruition, if also slightly nerve wracking as we were, in fact, in charge. I did get referred to as an "environmental expert" which is, while inaccurate, rather nice:) REN hasn't led anything quite like this before so there was a lot of improvisation, especially on Monday as we were joined by some curious rainclouds.

I really did enjoy working with people who were (mostly) enthusiatic about what was going on and I learned that children this age seem to adore digging holes! At one point in despration, when my group of six had utterly lost interested in what I was trying to do with them, I sent them off to dig a hole. Once they had done that I told them to fill it up again... It worked and everyone was happy, except perhaps the earthworms which came under great scrutiny from the children who have not quite developed into the squeamish stage. Perhaps if we ever do a similar project we'll just dig and not bother with the rest of the activities?

The pupils had also been to visit the London Wetland Centre and gone to Crane Park Island which is a local nature reserve. One of the boys had complained that there was something in his wellies and on inspection it turned out he had managed to catch a fish in his welly! I hope the children managed to get something out of this project and at least vaguely understood why we were working on creating a wildlife area in their school... Plus I hope they had fun too. I did. Even if I was exhausted each night, I still had fun.

Is Prince Philip an island god?

Legend had it that there was a clutch of villages on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu (South Pacific nation) which - as bizarre as it may seem - worshipped Prince Philip as a god...

Nick Squires of From Our Own Correspondent (BBC) heads out to see if this is true. And lo and behold it is. There is a story of the son of a mountain spirit (with pale skin) who goes across the water to marry a powerful woman... You can't make this stuff up!!