2015

Good Evening
The festive period is over, and 2014 is drawing to a close. With 2015 being so close, I thought I'd write a little about the year I've had.
I started this year with a group of friends who I no longer know, let alone am friendly with. That, for me, would be the biggest change throughout the year.

Despite this, my year has been full of brilliant moments which I am so thankful for. For example, I managed to see a huge amount of live music this year, including Frank Turner, Lauren Aquilina (twice), McBusted and The Kooks.

At Green Man festival in the su
mmer, I saw Daughter, First Aid Kit, The Augustines, Georgia Ruth, Anna Calvi and loads more. Live music is something that I could not imagine living without, so I enjoyed all of these gigs to no end.
I've also been lucky enough to see Wicked in the WMC in Cardiff, and Billy Elliot and Les Mis in the West End.
In March, I celebrated my 15th birthday with my family and friends, which I am so thankful.
 In May and June I sat some of my GCSEs. I didn't work as hard as I could have done, and in turn, with a couple of exceptions, received mediocre grades. This, however, has motivated me to work harder for Year 11, which I am already doing in preparation for my exams in early January.
As ever, late June brought my school's annual production, which this year was High School Musical. I always enjoy taking part in these, and I'm not happy that I only have one left!

In July, I did work experience in the nursery of my primary school. I found this incredibly difficult to begin with but soon (sort of) settled into it. It was good experience for me, although I always thought there were other things that would have been better for me.
Rachel and I visited Oxford in August, which was lovely. Pretty much all we did was spend a lot of money but hey, when has that ever not been fun? It was such a beautiful city to visit and I'd love to go again.
Also in August, my brother played a tennis tournament in Wimbledon. He had won all the necessary heats in other tournaments, so was chosen to represent South Wales boys for his age group. This meant that my family and I all traveled to Wimbledon, and got to see where the actually tournament is held. We were given a tour of the grounds and it was so interesting to see what we all see on the TV every summer.

In November, I took my Grade 6 piano exam and Grade 7 flute exam. Thankfully, I passed both of them, although the marks I got for scales were verging on embarrassing!
Throughout 2014, I am so so so grateful to have stayed incredibly close friends with Rachel, who I have been friends with for nearing 1000 days (Rachel worked it out on the back of a Christmas card while we were sitting in a cafe but we don't have to talk about that.)
As well as this, we've both got a whole lot closer to our friend Anna, who we've known for a while but never been overly friendly, but now are best friends with. The three of us stick together in school and are slowly working through our GCSE year together. I am so thankful for them.
I find it hard to comprehend just how much of my life has changed this year, from a complete friendship change, to learning how to control and overcome my anxiety, to applying for college and to passing my flute and piano exams.
2015 will bring more changes, like leaving school and starting college, but I can't wait. I hope it will be an even better year than the one just gone.

Results Day

Hello!
Again, I've left it a while between posts but I thought I'd just let the events pile up so I'd have a nice long blog post (I actually just forgot).
Today I got the results for my Year 10 exams, and while I know (and have been told countless times) that these results are not as important as the ones I'll get next year in Year 11, they were still pretty important to me.
My results were better than expected, and while I was extremely pleased with some of my results - including the fact that I actually PASSED MATHS! - there were some that I was disappointed with. They weren't catastrophic fails, but they were pretty far off of my target grades.
Overall though, I was pleased with what was written on my piece of paper, and although for weeks prior to results day you hear people saying 'your exam results don't define you' and 'they won't matter in a few years', when you're in the moment they seem like the most important thing in the world, and they matter a lot.
I was pleased this year because all my friends did well and got mainly the grades they wanted, and I'm so proud of my friends in Year 11 who all got into college.
The fact that some of my grades weren't as good as I wanted gives me even more motivation to work really hard in Year 11 and achieve all (ambitious) of my target grades.
Needless to say I will get two weeks into the school year and this plan will go entirely out of the window.
That's all,
Menna

Update

Hello
So it's been quite a while, and in the past 3 or so months, quite a lot has happened. Just after my last post, it was my 15th birthday which was fun and very nice, but nothing particularly interesting or blog-worthy happened. Two or so months after this, exam season started.
This year, I had 9 exams:

• Photography
• Geography unit 1
• English lit unit 2
• Dance theory
• Maths calculator
• Maths non-calculator 
• Biology unit 1
• Chemistry unit 1
• Physics unit 1

I know that this isn't that many exams, but considering I'm only in Year 10 it seemed like quite a few. I'm eager to get the results for these, as I feel that some of them went really well, but others - especially the sciences - didn't go too well at all.

Starting on June 9th I spent two weeks rehearsing for my school's production of High School Musical, which I really enjoyed, as I take part in the school productions every year and this year was no exception. We did the performances on the 18th, 19th and 20th of June and they all went relatively well.

         

I always really enjoy doing the school productions as it means I have the opportunity to get to know people I wouldn't usually come across in normal school life, and they're often people I get along with because they have similar interests to me. I had a relatively big part, I played Ms Darbus, and I enjoyed playing that part a lot, even if it did take me a long time to get into the character. My best friend, Rachel, played the lead and a lot of my other friends were in the cast as well so it was really fun.

Then, last week on the 25th of June, I went on a school trip to London, to see Les Miserables and Billy Elliot in two West End theatres. They run this trip every year and I love it so much. I really love musicals so it's great to see them in that setting.

I was lucky enough to see Carrie Hope Fletcher perform as Eponine, and as she's one of my favourite YouTubers it was so surreal and exciting seeing her in real life. She was brilliant - but I think that's what everyone expected anyway. 

I've been asked a couple of times whether I preferred Les Mis or Billy Elliot, and I honestly can't decide. I liked both a lot but for completely different reasons.

I also really love London as a city, and I think I might like to live there when I'm older. I'm not sure though, I'll probably change my mind before then.

These are a few photos from the trip, although I made a video with footage from the trip which you can view here. That link will take you to my YouTube channel, and I'd appreciate it if you could take a look at some of the other stuff on there?

That's all for now, I think.

Menna

♡

Frank Turner & Lauren Aquilina & GCSE Results

Good evening!
The first two months of 2014 have seemingly flown by, and what an eventful couple of months they've been! Admittedly, January was pretty boring, but February was quite the opposite. On the 6th, I went to a Frank Turner gig at Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff. I love Frank Turner, he is quite possibly my all time favourite artist, and I was determined to enjoy this gig having had some not-so-enjoyable gigs recently. The evening started out fantastically - Beans On Toast and Flogging Molly were supporting, both of whom I really enjoyed. However, towards the end of Flogging Molly's set, some particularly rowdy drunk men started to jump around very near to us. At first it was quite funny and everybody was enjoying themselves, but throughout Frank's set the number of men (who were about twice my size) increased, and their boisterousness increased. Me and my friends were getting knocked about quite a bit, and I very quickly became extremely scared. My friend Rachel led me right the way out of the crowd as I was having a panic attack (not a rarity for me), and the two of us stood at the back for the remainder of the concert, which could have been worse as it meant there was a lot of space for us to move about (and dance). Despite all of this, I really enjoyed Frank's gig, even if it was a bit frightening at times.
Then, on the 23rd of February, me and my friends took a day out in Bristol, and in the evening we saw Lauren Aquilina on the last night of her tour. We got to meet her afterwards, and she even signed our tickets! All in all it was a really nice day (even if we did get a bit lost and grumpy at times). I made a montage video of our day, which you can see here.  I really like Bristol, I'm not really sure why but I really like the way all the buildings look, it looks a lot more stripped back than Cardiff, like for example it seemed to have a lot more exposed brickwork on the buildings and I really like that.
Finally, on the 6th of March I recieved my English Literature Unit 1 GCSE Results, for which I got an A (60/70 marks). It goes without saying that I was extremely pleased with this, but it doesn't mean that I agree with the concept of GCSEs. It seems to us as if the success of our entire future is decided based purely on the results we get in exams taken at 14, 15, 16 years old, and if the amount of pressure put onto teenagers in school is enough to begin mental illnesses then I think somebody needs to take a serious look at the education system in the UK.
On a brighter note, it's my birthday in 3 days.
Menna

2014

Happy 2014
Hope you all had a good new year, I swear to god it was 2008 the other day. The early hours of a Saturday morning seems to be the appropriate time to talk about the transition from 2013 to 2014. 2013 was a mix between really really good and not so good, but I'm determined to make 2014 much much better. I started off the year with my best friends down by Roath Park lake with fireworks, and it was quite an enjoyable night.
I've got so many things to look forward to this year, I'm going to see Frank Turner and Lauren Aquilina next month, Wicked in March, McBusted (!!!!!) in May, Les Mis and Billy Elliot in June and I'm going to the Green Man festival in August, so it should be a pretty good year, despite alLlLL the exams.
At the moment I'm listening to Hudson Taylor which I love I think they're fantastic, and I've been listening to Lauren Aquilina who, along with Tom Odell, is my biggest inspiration so I'm so excited to see her live next month. I think she's so talented and such a brilliant song writer, she's one of those singers that you can hear what she's saying in the way that she says it, there's so much to the way that she sings and I think it's so admirable to be that talented at such a young age.
I've also been listening to a lot of Frank Turner recently, but then what's new.
For Christmas I received a book in which the point is to write lists under different music categories, for example 'List twenty of your favourite bands' or 'List the best concerts/festivals you have been to', and that's just the kind of thing I would like, as I like music and I like making lists (but come on who doesn't like making lists), so I may be sharing some of these lists on here.
So that's it for now, I hope you all had a fantastic start to the year and I hope to talk to you again soon!
Menna

♡

The Day of The Doctor and my TARDIS cake ( aka a Whovian rambles)

So I'm still reeling from the 50th anniversary special of Doctor Who, which was, as Christopher Eccleston would put it, fantastic.

I just thought that it was really cleverly done, and I thought that David Tennant was brilliant, and him and Matt Smith together were absolutely hilarious. The storyline with John Hurt in it, while confusing, was a great way to celebrate 50 years of such a fantastic programme.

My friends and I are complete Whovians, so we were, understandably, cOmPlEtEly OvErLy ExCiTeD for 7:50pm tonight. So much so, that my friend Rachel and I made a cake in honour of Doctor Who, shaped like a TARDIS.

While, I'm sure you'll agree, it's not the most perfectly executed decoration in the world, I would say that it clearly resembles a TARDIS.

I haven't made my mind up about Clara Oswald yet, as I think I might be too attached to Amy and Rory to let go just yet. Clara seems to be just a little too clever and confident for my liking, but I'm sure she'll grow on me.

I should probably mention that this cake was RAINBOW ON THE INSIDE, as we realised that we couldn't quite make it bigger on the inside, so rainbows would have to do. 

In other news, it is one month till Christmas eve! I am far too excited for Christmas this is probably not normal I just really like all the festivity and warm jumpers and presents and food oh the food. Food is the best part of Christmas I am salivating just thinking of alL THE FOOD.

In conclusion, I have just rambled about Doctor Who, cake and Christmas, which I'm sure you'll agree are three of the best things life has to offer.

That's it for now, keep an eye out for the next post!

Menna♡

First blog post and other interesting things

Hi, so while in the past I've made website things on Weebly and such then abandoned them after a week of half hearted posts, I decided today that I wanted to start an actual blog that I actually update.
While I'm not entirely clear on what I'm going to talk about, I know that I enjoy writing and I have quite a lot of opinions so I thought I would give this blogging malarkey a go.
Ideally, I would vlog on YouTube, but I don't really have the equipment (or skills!) needed for that, so typing it is.

It'll probably be useful for me to introduce myself so uh hi my name's Menna, I'm 14 and currently in Year 10 studying for my GCSEs.
Um I enjoy playing music (I have a YouTube channel), reading, writing, listening to music, drinking tea, walking and sleeping. I'm not too keen on school but then nobody really is. I don't like many TV programmes, but my definite favourites are Doctor Who, Waterloo Road, Skins (although it's finished), Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Gavin and Stacey (typical welshey) and I'm a Celebrity. I'm also really fussy about films but my top three are (in no particular order) The Perks of Being a Wallflower, This Is England and Submarine.

I think I'm going to mainly talk about music, books, general life-ey stuff and possibly a few other bits and pieces here and there, who knows.
Currently, I am dying of excitement for the 50th anniversary special of Doctor Who, which is on in like 19 hours I am so excited ahHhHhH.
So I think that's it for now, keep an eye out for the next post!
Menna♡