A Summer Summary

Helloooo all you wonderful hoomans! 

I seem to be doing a bit of a meerkat thing with the blog at the moment, popping my head up every now and again, almost looking like I’m going to pop out of hiding but then I disappear again for an indeterminable amount of time. 

I want to thank everyone who, even after this habit, have still taken the time out of their day to read my blog. I’m not going to make any grand proclamations like I’m going to be blogging x amount a week, or any of that, but I am just hoping to blog more.

As I’ve already mentioned, my plan for the blog is to make a more dedicated move towards university-style advice posts for my last year at uni, and hopefully be able to turn these posts into a sort of guide book retrospectively. 

Now though, my focus is not on university, but rather trying to prolong and enjoy the summer holiday which has been very busy, but super fun so I thought to get the metaphorical blogging ball rolling again, I would do a little summary of my summer (to keep me from thinking that my final year of uni is starting in two weeks aaaahhhhhhh!!) 

Working girl – summer camp residentials 

To state what the subtitle very obviously gave away, I spent part of my summer working on summer camp residentials at my university. 

Not the summer camps you’re probably imagining where it’s loads of outdoor activities in a pine forest next to a lake. This was more of an academic summer camp, with fun social activities in the afternoons and evenings to give the students a chance to see what it’s like at university. 

I’m not going to lie, these two weeks were really intense – they were long hours of high energy and focus, but they were also so much fun. I got to work with the most incredible collection of people who had such amazing energy (much love to my purple family), chat about my university experience (which I love), and also earn some money which was pretty great! 

In a way I’m sad it was only two weeks because it was such fun, and I would definitely do it again next year, but to be fair I did need all the sleep afterwards hehe. 

Back home to SA (plus a friend) 

I literally got straight on a plane after the summer residentials ended and headed back home to South Africa, except unlike normal I had a friend in tow. 

One of my close friends from uni (the same one I spent Christmas with last year) came back to SA with me for a little holiday – you know, to see where I grew up, what SA is like and find out if all the stories I tell are true. Let’s just say it was an incredibly busy two weeks!! 

We went to Cape Town, because it’s basically the tourist capital of South Africa, and apart from doing the most essential thing ever (go up Table Mountain – sadly we couldn’t because of the weather), we ticked most of the boxes. We visited the Waterfront area, visited the aquarium, drove the wine routes, and of course, went to see the super adorable Penguins at Boulders Beach. We also completed three escape rooms and broke a few time records but that was just because the weather was really rubbish one day. 

Next we came back to my home town for a while to catch up on sleep and so I could show her a few things around there, but that was just for a few days because we had a very busy schedule. We drove up to one of the many game parks for a few days because I’m sorry you can’t visit South Africa and not go to the bush. That would just be ridiculous. We saw some lovely things – most of the big five, apart from the leopard, wild dog, some cool birds, and an aardvark running as fast as it could away from us so sadly we didn’t get any pictures of him, but all in all it was a truly lovely two weeks showing my friend around, and getting the chance to go back home, see my family and of course my cat and all the other animals. 

Eating our way around Italy 

The holiday most certainly did not stop there. We then went on an amazing family holiday to Italy that was super busy, but filled with incredible experiences. We visited the opera in the renown arena in Verona, strolled along the canals in Venice, visited all the churches in Milan, and of course took loads of pictures in front of the dozens of historical wonders in Rome. 

We also spent a week in Tuscany, as the more relaxing part of the holiday, in a lovely little millhouse. There we experimented with home made pizzas in an authentic pizza oven, went on long walks through the countryside (sadly we did not see any wild animals but we did pick figs), and drove to the neighbouring towns and cities to see their museums and cultural artefacts. 

And, of course, we ate. SOOOO MUCH FOOOODDD!!! 

I kid you not when I say we ate our way around Italy because I genuinely think I ate my  body weight in pasta. And pizza. And gelato. It is honestly not okay that the food tastes that good but it does, so I indulged a little on all the absolute deliciousness of Italian cuisine. I now need to go on a very strict diet because my jeans are feeling quite tight, but it was absolutely worth it! 

Back to Durham, back to reality (a more relaxed version for now)

Finally, the holidaying sort of came to an end when I came back to Durham. My boyfriend stayed with me for a week before going back home, which was great as we basically spent the week binge watching netflix and absorbing as much of the peace and quiet as possible (apart from when we went to go do more escape rooms but that was really fun and again, we made it onto the board of Top 10 team times so whoop whoop!). Now, it’s back to reality a little because I’m starting to get back into both my uni work and ambassador work (my undergrad dissertation is shouting for attention aaahhhh) but I’m still trying to make sure I soak up as much of the summer relaxation as possible by pacing myself and not overworking too soon because I know that my third year is probably going to be my busiest one yet. Eek. 

Anywho, that so ends the tale of my summer summary. I hope you had fun reading about some of my adventures but now the adventures are coming to an end as I must get my mind focused back on work. I’ll hopefully be able to start my university advice series next week, so keep your eyes peeled for that, and otherwise, I hope you all have an amazing rest of your weekend (I’m off to work!). 

Until next time, stay sparkly! 

Lots of Love

Blondey on a Mission xxx