Jessie McKinnon

I began my holidaying for the year in London. I thought it was a pretty apt place to start my travelling. So for half term (15th – 19th of Feb) I headed down four hours south and went to the capital city of England. I like the London Underground so much better than Metro, way easier to navigate and trains every two minutes – pretty swish. So expensive though, so I think I’ll stick to my Vline tickets and Metcards in the future. For my first two nights I stayed in a youth hostel across the road from St Paul’s Cathedral, and right around the corner from Millenium Bridge, the bridge that gets wrecked by Death Eaters in HP6 ;) On my first night I went out to dinner in Camden at The Lock Tavern. Defo recommend it. It was really dimly lit, had a really retro feel with communal tables and when I ordered a ‘vegie burger,’   I got two slabs of roast butternut pumpkin with a whole bunch of green stuff and ricotta. Absolutely going back. Day two I walked from St Paul...

As of this week, I've officially been away from Australia for more than a month. I reckon I've done pretty well considering that up until now, the longest I'd been away from home was a week. I had a pretty low key week - which is always lovely. The best thing I did was the Friday night boarding activity! We took thirteen of the boarders out to the movies in a place called Didsbury, and saw Tangled! We saw it in 3D, so we got some dodgy rip-off Ray Ban inspired glasses to wear in too. In about a week I'm heading to London for five days and I am SO excited! So hopefully I'll have heaps of interesting pics to put up next time :)

I've been in England for almost four weeks now, they've absolutely flown. The first week was a massive blur - the jet lag took that long to wear off - and by the time it had, I was working. I'm here with three other people my age, one girl and two boys, and we're the 'gappies' for our school. I'm working at a school about an hour south of Manchester, and it is lovely. I think the building is a couple of hundred years old. It's four storeys high and has cellars. I've jumped into work as a 'gap assistant.' I laminate heaps, do heaps of yard duty, a little bit of office work and help in a couple of classes. I help with Grade 6 French and two Design Technology (DT) classes. The facilities here are incredible, especially considering this is a prep school - which is basically a fancy name for Primary school with 3 and 4 year old Kinder, and Years 7 and 8 also. They have science labs, a music room with smaller practice/lesson rooms, a fantastic...