Late Merry Christmas and a Happy 2012! :) 

So it's currently the last few days of my Christmas break (before it's back to hell!), so I've been chilling quite a lot, not working much and may I add, not proud of it. The past few months have been, hm, a combination of hell and for the lack of a better word, fun. I suppose the "fun" part was pretty much the holidays I had in between and the most recent Christmas trip (which will be mentioned later) but for the most part, Year 13 IB has been hell. The workload - massive. The stress levels - insane (although I do try to keep them at a 5 out of 10 kind of thing and so far I have been doing quite a (Y) job). The tests - crazy. My life, if I had to rate it out of a 10 right now, I'd say things are at a 7 with the upcoming mocks and intense university applications but my stress levels right now, maybe a 3. Either I'm still completely out of it or my new stress coping techniques are really working. And if you do want to know, that stress coping technique is simply telling myself in my head, "stay calm and cool" every time I'm about to explode. Yeah I've been working on my temper and patience quite a bit, trying to stay as cool as a cucumber, regardless of what shit's coming my way or in my way.

Yep.

So anyway as I said, the recent Christmas break was totally rad. I first headed off to Vancouver before driving 2 hours out to Whistler on the same day we landed. The minute I entered Whistler village, I was just, amazed. I mean, Whistler...

Just the lights alone it was amazing. There were Christmas decorations everywhere, colourful bright lights on every tree, lamp, building, with snow everywhere. It was like a dream Christmas winter wonderland. And needless to say, the snowboarding was preeetttyy awesome. No doubt, no place I've been can be compared to Whistler. Even though the weather and snow wasn't top notch, it was still waaaay better than the other places I've been. I mean snow back in Australia when it's bad, it's, ice. Bad snow in Whistler is more of I suppose, icy/slushy kinda snow. So we spent 3 days there before heading back to Vancouver for I believe 2 days and then heading out to Seattle (for Christmas) for 4 days and then finally back to Vancouver for the last 2 days.

The entire 2 weeks was just, heavenly. I mean, combining two of my favourite things to do together, snowboarding and shopping, that's just. I bought pretty much everything I needed - a new bag, shoes, clothes, jackets, accessories. I guess if I were to be a little greedy, the only thing I didn't quite manage to get were my snowboarding gear (sad face) and my eyeliner from Bobbi Brown but other than, the stuff I've got, yeah I'm happy. Of course I always wished I bought more when I realized how "little" I had spent when I got back but you know, I'm very happy.

And now I'm back. In misery.

The back to school blues haven't hit me yet and strangely enough, I am feeling oddly excited for school. Not too sure if that's a good sign for a new year but I guess it's better than freaking out about going back to school. Although, I do have to say, I already sense the sort of huge, dark, crazy kind of storm approaching. Oh yeah, it's going to be a big one. The mocks, the IOCs, Art, the CAS.

But like I said, still trying to keep it cool like a cucumber. I'm still chilling, you know, living the last few days of the holiday before it's back to the non stop machine kinda working mode again. So I'm still, pretty calm.