Growing Wings: February 2015

Saturday, 14 February 2015

Four Valentine's Day Reads

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I was thinking of a post ot relate to the occasion and I thought what better way than to share with you guys, some of my favourite romantic books. So,. are my top four Valentine's Day Reads.

Anna and the French Kiss By Stephanie Perkins This is a perfect book to read on Valentine's Day as you follow Anna and Etienne's journey on the streets of Paris. The perfect contemporary-romance book that you can just lose yourself into. I fell in love with this book and can still not get over it.

Wither by Lauren DeStefano Although this book is a dystopian novel, romance a theme that heavily runs throughout the book. The kind of book that you would want to read if you were looking for romance but wanted it to come along with a something else.

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green The movie is out, the book has been published for a while now. This is a contemporary book that is based very heavily on romance but it has a lot of moments that can be upsetting. This is the type of book that you would read if you wanted a book that would make you cry and feel so many feels along the way.

Twlight by Stephanie Meyer What a lot of people would call the ultimate supernatural love story. I put this one on the list because I do love reading it. Edward and Bella's story was one that I did enjoy following and I wouldn't really mind rereading the book. It's the perfect book to curl up with and fall in love with characters again and again.

Sunday, 8 February 2015

Dropping Off At: New York City (Part One)

I don't know how long my sister and I have been talking about going to New York for. It's been at least five years and in January 2014 we finally booked our flights and hotel to New York and even then it didn't really hit me that we were going.
Finally at three in the morning on the 28th of December my mam woke both me and my sister us telling us to get changed and ready because we were leaving in half an hour. So, half asleep I managed to make it into the car and get to the airport.
The flight was about seven hours and 45 minutes long but it felt like it lasted an age. Even between the food that we were served and the movies that I ended up watching, I couldn't wait to just land in America, get our luggage and into the hotel. Not much happened that first day we were there. We didn't get to the hotel until quite late in the afternoon and after an early morning start, the travelling and the time difference change we didn't have a lot of energy left it us. So, we rested up to get ready for the second day.
Now the second day held a little bit more for the both of us. The first thing that we needed to do was to pick up out city passes which gave us entry to a lot of the sights in New York and fast track some of the lines and our Broadway tickets to watch 'Les Mis' so we didn't have to worry about that. To do those, we had to walk through Times Square. This is one place that I can genuinely say looks like all of the photos that you see. It was amazing and it didn't exactly hit me that we were walking through Times Square until a little later on.
After that we headed down to Bryant Park which was holding the most beautiful Christmas market that I've ever seen. There were some amazing stalls there that held the most gorgeous pieces of jewellery and Christmas ornaments, amongst other things. It could've spent ages walking around the market place and seeing everything. There was so much going on it was hard to tear your eyes away from everything. We spent a lot of time in there and it was starting to become dark when we knew that we had to get going out of there. After that we got some food and decided to head back to the hotel and get some rest since the next day meant that it was going to be an early start.

An early start was for the fact that we had already booked tickets to go to the Crown of the Statue of Liberty. Since it was a fair bit of a trek from where our hotel was we tried to get out on time. However, that never goes to plan and we were almost late especially since the subway decided that that would be the day that the line we needed to take wouldn't work. There was absolutely no need to panic though since we made it there in more than enough time.

After waiting in line for a little and then going through security, we got on a ferry that took us to Liberty Island. It was freezing on that boat and I regretted not taking a few more layers. Once we finally got to the island though it wasn't as bad and we wasted no time getting into the statue. We showed our tickets and then put our bags in a locker since we weren't allowed to take any backpacks with us and went through security again and then made in into the actual statue.
We went around the museum first which was more interesting than I initially thought that it would be. It gave me the chance to take photos next to a life sized replica of the face of Lady Liberty and learn a lot more about the history of the statue and how it came to be. Having a huge interest, I was so excited to see how the people managed to get the whole statue from France to New York and it was some of the most interesting things I've ever read.

Our trip the the Crown then started. The steps didn't take as long as I thought it would at first. Well, not to the pedestal anyway. I was in pretty high spirits at that point and it was nice to know that we conquered one part of the statue. However, we then had to go up a narrower flight of stairs to get to the Crown and it was only then I realised how far away it was from the pedestal. As well as the stairs being a lot narrower they also were in a spiral, with another spiral set winding in it for people who were going back down. I've never been too good with stairs so I was extremely shaky when we were going up them. It was worth it when we got to the top though even though it felt like the statue was swaying a lot of the time. The trip on the way down wasn't any smoother as much as I would've liked it to be but it was a great experience and I was really glad I got the chance to go there.

After that we headed back to the hotel to get ready for another day.

Wednesday, 4 February 2015

My Month on Instagram: January 2015

Instagram has been pretty busy for me in January.

Chocolate coconut cupcake at half ten from Gerorgetown Cupcakes!

Madame Tussauds, shopping and Mama Mia were all done today. Absolutely shattered now but settling for some revision.

I can't get the whole dinosaur... #smallpeopleproblems#nyc2014

#nyc2014

Not complicated at all #nyc2014

Stegosaurus #nyc2014

Grand Central Terminal yesterday. #nyc2014

Currently reading: Pride and Predjudice.

Writing time.

We're getting somewhere

Currently reading: Wither by Lauren DeStefano

Ready for another revision session.

Sunday, 1 February 2015

Looking Back At: January 2015

The first month of 2015 as gone by in a blink of an eye It's crazy and I can't believe it. Though I'll be honest, it's been a month that has been packed full of different things. Both enjoyable and stressful.

What's Been Going On?

The beginning of this year was spent in New York City which was an amazing adventure and such a great way to kick start the year. I've posted about the trip on here for anyone who wants to know what I got up to while I was out there.
After landing back in the UK I had that day to rest before going back into school the next day. And that day, which was a Tuesday, was spent doing revision for my January exams that were going to kick off on the Wednesday of that week. I had six exams that would start on that Wednesday and would finish on the following Thursday. I ended up sitting:

Biology - Additional Science
English Literature
English Language Unit 1 (resit)
ICT Unit 1
English Language Unit 2 (resit)
Physics - Additional Science

And they were sat in that order. I don't think there was a day that we were in school during that week of exams that we didn't have some kind of revision going on. The exams that I was most worried about were ICT and physics but I got through them. Results come on on March 5th and I'm happily going to be pushing that date out of my mind.

The weekend I finished exams, I was out on a Duke of Edinburgh walk on the Sunday.It was freezing cold and we almost got lost quite a few times but yet again, I am always in awe of the beauty that Wales holds and this was yet again one of those things. A mountain centre may not sound like the most beautiful of places to some people but I loved it there even though I did end up slipping on a log. My one accomplishment that day was the fact I was able to cross a river on a few stones with no help and I didn't even slip. I'm probably never going to be able to do that again though...

I had some extremely good news this month that ended up being the highlight of my month.

Source

Towards the beginning of the month I knew that there was a new Saltrock opening up where I live and I was pretty interested in it. One of my friends ended up applying and sent me the email for a job there. So, that evening I sent them my CV and a cover note and I didn't really expect to hear anything back. Instead, I got a phone call from the store manager asking for an interview with them. So, five days later, I went to 'Costa' to have my interview with the area manager and store manager and they told me I would either find out that evening or tomorrow if I had a job there or not since the store was opening that Saturday. Whilst watching 'Hollyoaks' with my sister and mam I had a phone call which I was pretty nervous to pick up and as the manager spoke to me I heard the words "I just rang to tell you that you've got the job." I think he heard how excited I was down the phone since he asked me if I was happy.

I was in that Wednesday and Thursday to help set the shop up and I got along with the whole team really quickly and really well. Everyone is so nice there and laid back. Saturday was then opening day and it was absolutely hectic in there! I wasn't entirely sure what to do for the first fifteen minutes since I was just on the shop floor for general customer service but after that I found my feet and I got into the swing of things. So, I now have my very first job and it's in such a great place!

Books?

I decided to put my reading goal a little lower this year to 35 books since I know I'm in for a lot of exams and revision in the spring and summer term and hopefully I'll be starting my A-Levels in September.

I was pretty surprised at the amount of books that I managed to finish in January but I'm really happy with it. I've pretty much enjoyed all of the books that I've read. I've finished: