England

I arrived home and spent the weekend catching up with family and friends. Sunday morning I went to watch Becky and Lizzy run at Kelmarsh hall in the daffodil run. They both did fantastic, Bec coming 4th woman in the 10k and Hannah was fantastic in the 15 miles completing it in 2hours 20 minutes, so proud of my friends, I feel like I must get fit!
I spent most of the week rushing around getting things sorted. Spent time with Fliss for her birthday. Prepared my lesson for my interview, I got the job and will be teaching at the John Cleveland College in Hinckley from 2nd July. Had to take a photo of Long Buckby's beautiful sunset while I was doing my work. Popped into Guilsborough to say hello to everyone, was really nice to see people and some (not all) of the kids! It was a successful visit as I'm now going to be doing 2 days a week supply until I start at JCC. I planned to spend Thursday sorting myself out and getting my room into some kind of order, but I had a phone call at 7:30am and I was in Daventry doing some supply by 8:15am. No sorting for me! I then did supply on Friday at Guilsborough, so still no sorting done!
Yesterday I spent the day car shopping. It was pretty stressful as loan companies were messing me around and I couldn't decide what car I actually wanted. By 5pm I was signing on the dotted line....I bought a new Seat Ibiza. I'm now even poorer! I think I did ok though, got a good deal, I had my car geek with me....thanks Alex!
So, continued rushing around as had to get ready for the big girls night out. Nice to see everyone and catch up, although I need to see people more often as once or twice a year isn't enough. Photos are below. Think the blog really does have to come to an end now, but you never know, I might be back with more after Bec's hen do to Spain...another country to add to the blog!

Ronald In Australia

Bali

Singapore

Koh Samui

Chiang Mai

Ronald seemed to have the same pose in a lot of places which was disappointing, but I wouldn't want to over do it anyway.

There's a few things that happened while I was away that I didn't blog at the time as I didn't want people to start worrying about me. The first week was the worst of all in Rio, I was with 3 American girls walking to get a tram to Santa Teresa when a guy came up and grabbed Leah's head and whipped her bag. To cut a pretty long story short, after 4 police vans arrived and about 30 police officers with massive guns, they caught the guy and Leah ended up getting her bag back. It was pretty scary though, especially in the first week of my trip. The guy is picture below and would get 5 years for taking the bag.
I heard lots of stories in Rio in my hostel, people having bags and cameras taken. When I arrived in Copacabana about 10 days into the trip to meet my Gap tour group. The guy that was supposed to be leading the tour had been mugged and beaten into a coma. He'd been in a coma for 2 days, the ripped off all his jewellery, including earings...he looked a state. So, he didn't run our tour someone else had to be flown out to do it. When I met my group, one of the girls had had her camera taken out of her hand on the beach.
We went to iguassu and the second night I was there there was a drive by shooting outside our hotel. Luckily we weren't there, on a night out at the time, but walking by in the morning was horrible as there was still a pool of blood, thank god the body had been removed! Two of the girls in my tour group had walked by that spot about 5 minutes before the guy got shot. Lucky...although apparently it was all to do with drugs. We were staying on the border, bit of a dodgy area really.
In Chile, we arrived at a hotel and all went out for dinner as a group. While we were out two girls in my group had their room broken into and had passports and money etc taken. At this point I was thinking someone must be on my side as quite a lot had happened so close to me, but fortunately it hadn't happened directly to me. That was South America and since then I heard no bad stories and nothing bad happened.
I did a couple of silly things. I bought a purse and thought I'd seperate my cash cards out so put my natwest card in the new purse in a different part of my bag. A week or so later I had a panic and couldn't find my card. Emptied the whole of my bag (annoying), to remember that I sent a parcel of stuff home. In the parcel was the new purse that I didn't want to use until I got home!...Silly girl, I was then one cash card down. I managed to refrain from losing another until about 2 weeks before I came home. We flew from Chiang Mai to Bangkok and then I got some cash out. When we arrived at the hotel my card wasn't in my purse, I must have left it in the machine or dropped it. So, from then on the only cards I had was Ian (by transferring money to him) and my credit card. Lucky it was so late on in the trip.
I managed to lose a few items of clothing while I was away, left a jacket at the skydive centre. I was looking back at some photos the other day and thought what a nice blue vest I was wearing in Rio, didn't remember having it, or that I'd even lost it until I got home and looked at the photo!! I obviously had far too many clothes to miss it. I came back with less clothes than I took.