Thoughts from a wood

My first vlog! Sorry for the rambling!

Much love

Harriet
xxx

My trip to Barcelona

So, a couple of weeks ago I went to Barcelona on a school trip. We went for a week and stayed in a host family which was a great experience. The week was full of laughs, lessons, good food and loving the Barcelona metro!

The whole trip was an experience. From finding our bearings on the first day (i.e. looking for the metro station) to exploring the city near the end, it was a blast. We visited lots of amazing things, like the Sagrada Familia, the beach, the Gothic City, Placa de Torres, the Ramblas and seeing the festival on Good Friday. It was brilliant.

 This is the famous Sagrada Familia, designed by Gaudi. If you zoom in, you can see the detail which is breath taking. The most amazing thing that it still isn't finished even after Gaudi's death in 1926!

Chocolate con churros is an amazing Catalonian delicacy. Basically, it is pastry with sugar dipped in a thick and creamy hot chocolate. Es delicosa!

The beach was beautiful, especially in the sun!

Here is a picture from a market stall! As you can see there were lots to choose from!

This was the MNAC, an art museum with amazing art, but I don't think it beat the building!

Here is the view from the top, the whole of Barcelona!

Here is a horse that was on show before the Good Friday Processions. (I love horses too much not to take picture of them)

And here is all the food I bought back (I spent all my money on food...)

As you can see from the selected pictures above, Barcelona is an awesome place! If there is one thing that you can take away is that this city should be added to your Bucket List of places to visit!

Much love!

Harriet

xxx

Failure

I came on to this topic because I failed to make brownies as I forgot to add the flour. I know, it was stupid and I have had many remarks already. However, it got me thinking. I know, this is a depressing subject but I do feel it is an important topic to discuss as a society and generation.

No one really accepts failure, meaning that it never comes into their life plan. They want to earn their millions by 25 without doing any work at all, get married and live together forever, have children who will automatically do what they say (have no opinions of their own), live in a really big house with walk in wardrobes, gym and a swimming pool. I would now, as I have come to terms with a version of this dream, call these people naive as they think the world will just do as they say.

If you just look at the news, there are wars, murders, shootings, a financial crisis, arguments in Parliament, poverty, cancer, illness and death. Do you think these people planned that part of their life?

I'm not saying that we all just fail in life, but we need to learn to deal with it, or come to terms with it. We need to learn to look on the bright side of life, and perhaps change that dream for something more achieveable and to something that still puts a smile on your face, which is still the most important thing.

This is why Oxbridge interviewers ask these sort of questions: Have you ever failed in something? The answer I will always give is that yes, there have been failures in my life but they have opened up new doors as well. Without them, I wouldn't be the girl that I am today.

So what I learnt from the brownie incident is that I can now make chocolate soil and it still tasted delicious.

Much Love
Harriet
xxx

http://bit.ly/Yx4eed

A little cheerful image for anyone feeling down.

PIZZA !!

So today, I made pizza for lunch and it was amazing. I know, I’m bias but who cares. So here is how I did it:

1) I used fresh yeast, which looks really weird and grey and smells disgusting. I mixed it with water and sugar until it looked like this:

2) Next, I put some flour, salt, warm water and olive oil into the bowl and added the fresh yeast. It looked a little gooey at first but I added more and more and then more flour until it was no longer sticky and looked like goo from Dr Who.

3) I put the dough in a warm place so the yeast could do some sciencey stuff that I’m sure was explained to me in year 9 biology something about the yeast expanding as that is it's optimum tempurature so the rate of reaction would increase, but I'm not sure, so we will call it sciencey stuff. (And yes, this is just the top oven because it warms up when the bottom oven is on)

4) This is when the fun stuff happens, the making of the pizza. I rolled it out quite flat so it could fit the circular pizza tin, added lots of tomato pizzary sauce that my sister made, mozzarella and peppers.

5) The finish masterpiece.

Recipe: A taste of Venice by Jeanette Nance Nordio.

It was so good and I will definitely be cooking this again, maybe for the next IB dinner? Oh, yes we have dinners! (another reason why you should do the IB)

I will write soon. Much love!

Harriet xxx

10 Things About Me

1) I love horses and have been riding since I was 4 years old, which is 13 years of my life. Couldn’t live without it!

2) I am learning to drive which isn’t unusual for a 17 year old but still something that is happening in my life.

3) I DON'T LIKE TEA, which is shocking I know because I am British but here I am wrecking the stereotypes

4) I don’t like Nutella because I don’t like the idea of chocolate and bread, which someone must think is a little odd, not just me

5) I love politics and like keeping up to date with the news while reading my economist every week – you can judge all you want

6) I do the IB (as you can see from my blog post last week) and I really enjoy it.

7) I eat Jaffa cakes normally, i.e. I don’t bite around the jelly and leave it until last

8) I’m not a grammar perfectionist

9) I am a dog person

10) My motto is Keep Calm and Gallop On – i.e. don’t look back at things and regret them, move on with the wonderful adventures of life.

Merci Beacoup,

Much love

Harriet xxx

Why I love the countryside

So half term has swung around again in the busy school term and as always I go and stay with my grandparents in the Cotswolds. Now people may think that as I go and stay with my grandparents every holiday and enjoy it, I may be a little weird and not a 'normal' teenager. However, I love it!

I feel (yes, feelings!) that not only the countryside offers a little break from my mundane routine of school and homework, but also a new breathe of life (cheesy, I know). You feel automatically refreshed and ready ( but not looking forward) for your life where there are traffic lights around every corner, which I don't enjoy being a learner driver.

After living in quite a busy town near London, I have found myself craving for a country life where you see horses in fields everyday. My dream is to earn a lot of money, retire to the countryside at about 30 and buy a horse. I'd love to wake up every morning and just see fields of grass with no annoying people insight. Be able to shout with out people staring at you everyday.

I also believe in the country way of living, something I feel everyone has forgotten in the last few decades as we (as a population) only see the town way of life. The country way, I feel, is much simpler and more make do and mend. And by this, I do not mean that we haven't got any Internet or mobile phones because we do and are still connected to the world like everyone else.

Finally, I believe in the work of farmers and how they provide all our food and how we should be more grateful for the work they do to keep us fed as a nation.

I hope I haven't gone off on too much of a tangent but more of these rants to come!!

Much love,
Harriet
xxx

The IB - the bain/ love of my life

Hola peeps,

I am quite enjoying this blogging melarkee (new favourite word) , so I thought I would write another blog post from my every expanding list of things I want to blabber on about, and this was at the top: the IB.

The IB is an educational programme for students to do at sixth form (ie when they are 15/16). The IB stands for the ‘International Baccalaureate’ and is equivalent to A-levels. But, instead of choosing 4 AS levels for one year and then 3 A2 levels the next year, you have to stick to 6 subjects throughout the whole 2 years. This is a bit of a workload but if you enjoy variety, it is really fun!

There are 6 categories for subjects that you have to choose, but again this offers not only variety but a structure to your education.

•          Group 1 – English
•          Group 2 – Languages
•          Group 3 – Humanities
•          Group 4 – Sciences
•          Group 5 – Maths
•          Group 6 – Arts (this is optional as you can do 2 subjects from groups 2,3 or 4)

They are also divided into 3 higher levels and 3 standard levels. So if you don’t do maths, you could choose maths studies (which is maths but FUN!) or if you love Science, you could do a higher science which would mean more detail.

Just listing them makes me realise how much work they all are, however there is more fun. If you are an IB student you also have to complete some lovely things in the Core; which are: Tok (AKA Theory of Knowledge which is just mind boggling’ meaning you come out and do ask what is life), an extended essay (4000 words of cleverness) and CAS (Creative, Active and Service). If you don’t complete them, you FAIL the IB (even if you get 7 points in everything else...which would be a real shame).

I can hear people go, why 7? Well, 7 is the maximum points you can earn in each subject and is just the number the IB picked because they wanted to be different (the answer to almost everything they do, don’t get me started on Internal Assessments!). However, this is almost impossible to get if you want to eat or sleep but just happens to be the amount that Oxford and Cambridge want in ALL YOUR HIGHERS, which is nice of them isn’t it?

No, but really, I do actually really enjoy the IB, it has become part of me (I know, cheesy, but true). I have met some great people that I hang out with most of the time (as there are only 12 people in my year that do it). We have become the IB family and is completely #internationalbadasslaureate (inside joke, sorry!). So, my advice to anyone with the dilemma of choosing something else or IB, do IB because you will have a love/hate relationship but mostly love. I promise.

Speak soon. Much love!

Harriet

xxx