New Year, Party and Resolutions

Hello and welcome back to 'Boy in a Big World'

Soooooooo.......as I am sure you are all aware today is the 31st of December 2014 meaning that at midnight tonight we will all, hopefully snog someone and welcome the new year in some what inebriated.
I've never been a big one for New Year, to me its always just a reminder of the fact I am growing up quicker and soon I will have to be responsible and pay bills and try not to right royally f**k my life up.

But this year been as I am 19, and in the eyes of the law; an adult, and.....with all the dramatic changes that have happened in the last year, I feel like why the hell not make some resolutions.

So here we go, there aren't many and they aren't fancy but hopefully this means that I will stick to them. (Cos you know simple minds).

• To not feel guilty if I don't go the gym.
• This one may sound weird but hear me out. I have a gym member ship and go probably around 3-4 times per week. I would like to go more but sometimes I just can't fit it in to my day and then I sit there feeling uber bad about it because I haven't done much exercise that day. My job is rather stationary and so I enjoy staying active after work. So on those days when I can't make it, instead of feeling guilty and bad for not exercising I will remember times that day I was active and why couldn't I fit the gym in and then plan to go the next day. I have 2 dogs so I could have been taking them on a long walk, or I may have had to stay late at work unexpectedly. But yeah I hope you see where I am coming from with this one.
• To organize my life a bit better.
• This kind of follows on from the above one....I have never been really good at organizing my life, I have a diary that I write important things in but sometimes I forget to write in it and sometimes I forget to check it so as you can tell. It's a no hoper. So simple as it sounds, every night before I go to bed. I want to check my diary, write in important things and check what I have (if anything) for the next day. Hopefully this way not only will I no longer have surprise meetings and events that I forgot about. It means I will be able to plan in things I like to do more easily (like the gym). See the link there, I am a genius I know.
• To be better with money.
• So a massive thing for me is money. My pay check is spent before I get it sometimes and I have to scrape by for weeks on little to no money. I plan what I am going to buy during this broke period and then its gone almost 24 hours after I get paid it. Now, up until last night I didn't really know how I was going to go about this resolution, because spread sheets and major breakdown budgeting scares me. However, I read a really interesting blog post yesterday and in the comment someone had written how when they where struggling with money, anything other than the essentials they had to pay when the money came in, they would wait till then end of the month to buy the things they want. If they had the money left. Not only will this help me loads with not having to scrounge for weeks. I will also know for definite if I want whatever it is that I was going to throw money at.

So as you can see, they aren't hard but they are important to me.

I am heading to a nightclub in town tonight to celebrate bringing the new year in with style (and lots of drinking) but mostly style.

I hope you all have amazing new year and you stick to your resolutions.

Wishes,
Jack

Christmas 2014

Welcome back to 'Boy in a Big World'

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and got everything from Santa you ever desired.
I hope that the turkey was cooked to perfection and you had all the stuffing you could stuff yourselves with. (I LOVE stuffing).

So Christmas this year for me was a bit weird. My parents separated over the summer and so for the first time ever I was doing 2 Christmas's over 2 days and at the end of it I think I must have been 3 stone heavier.
I'm a tad indifferent to Christmas normally, I like seeing family and giving and receiving gifts but I am a true believer in 'if you want to make time for people you should do it all year and not just at Christmas'. But I can see how it is convenient to see people and do the whole presents thing.

This year however, anytime anyone mentioned Christmas this year, I avoided the subject and swept it under the carpet. I wasn't really dreading the thought of Christmas itself. I was more dreading the thought organising how I was going to do Christmas.
Anyone else whose parents are separated will hopefully know what I am talking about when I say that organising Christmas while trying to please everyone is impossible and it feels like your trying to negotiate a deal with some high end stock broker and its not going your way. You agree to go to one house at such a time but that means someone else is upset and won't see your grandparents that have travelled all the way from North Wales to see just you.

In the end I sort of gave up and let fate decide what would happen. It worked out that my uncle was having a big shindig at his on Christmas day with my Mom and her side of the Family as well as all his Girlfriends family so it kind of meant that Christmas eve would be with my Dad.
Luckily I wasn't working Christmas Eve so I went to the gym and then straight onto my Dad's.

Now my Dad and I love a tipple every now and then so been as its Christmas we shoved the Turkey in the oven and as all good British men do. We went the Pub!!!!!

On Christmas Day I woke at my Dad's and did presents with him and my Sister before going to my Uncles and meeting my Mom there.
That was kind of un-eventful. I ate far to much of my Nain's (Grandma) chestnut stuffing because that stuff is like food from the God's. I did have an argument with one of my older cousins because as far as I was aware, standing there holding a tea towel and staring into space doesn't count as drying up; but she disagreed.

After eating far to much and maybe 1 to many glasses of Southern Comfort, my Sister, Mom and I went back to my Mom's to do presents. I hadn't expected much of my Mum as I know money is a tad tight for her at the moment, going from 2 wages to one. And so I hadn't really asked for much, just a basic waterproof watch, nothing fancy or expensive, just functional. The woman went out and brought me the most beautiful SEIKO watch ever, it was truly unexpected and the most wonderful gift ever.
I have now had it resized and it is now sitting comfortably on my wrist while I write this.

All in all Christmas was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, I had some beautiful times with family and friends. And while it was hard at times not having everyone together; I know that in the future it will get easier and slowly become normal.

I am going out for new years this year and so I will most probably do a post about that too.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and have amazing New Year Celebrations.

Wishes,
Jack

Summer Camp: Part 1, Why and Who?

Welcome back to 'Boy in a Big World'

So when I started this blog I said I was going to be talking about my experience applying to be a summer camp counsellor in the USA. And so that is what today's post is going to be about.

I decided that I want this to be as in depth as possible and after some consideration I have decided that the best way to do this would be to split it into sections from the start of the process to where I am today and then as and when things happen I will post about those too.

So todays post is going to be about why I wanted to be a camp counsellor and which agency I chose to go with and why?


Why I wanted to go to Camp?
So when I was around 14 one of my next door neighbours went away to be a counsellor and came back with all these amazing stories of how good it was and all the places he had seen.
From that point on I was hooked.
Sure, it slipped from my mind at times but I always came back to idea of spending a summer in America.
I have always loved working with children and have been involved in the Scouting movement from a very young age and being outdoors is also something I love. I can sail, I enjoy hiking and have often built fires and done other adventure sports.
When I looked into it further I realised I could do all this in America and get paid for it so I thought why the hell not.
I understand the idea doesn't appeal to everyone but to me, it seemed like a dream.

Which Agency?
Now there are a fair few agencies out there for people in the UK wanting to go to work at Camp, and you can find extensive comparisons out there (like this one).
I chose to go with a company called Americamp for a number of reasons.  I can't speak for all the other companies because I haven't dealt with them but from what I have read online and from talking to friends that have gone with other agencies they are all much the same. (I may ask them for guest posts later in the series).
Before I chose what agency to go with I did a lot of research into all of them, looking at things like cost, reliability and the percentage of applicants that end up with a job for the summer.
As I said earlier they all promise the same and when you add up the final cost there isn't much difference. So for me I kind of just went on the 'vibe' I got from them as companies.

So onto the reasons I chose Americamp!
I noticed these guys last year when they replied to a tweet I put about wanting to do Camp America and they seemed ultra keen for me to go with them so I looked into them further and found that they have been named the number 1 agency for the last 4 years. If that's not good then I don't know what is. They also seemed uber helpful. Every time I tweeted or emailed them asking a question they always responded within 24 hours and where so honest and in depth.
The main thing that drew me to them was their costing and salaries. When you go with Americamp you book and pay for your own flight, giving you more flexibility and that worked for me because I don't live near the big London airports, where some agencies that include your flights, make you fly from.
Because you book your own flights your agency fee's are less so it means that I can be more flexible with my larger payments like my flights. And I don't know if this directly affects it but for some reason their salaries are a lot higher as well.

The link I posted earlier has a handy little chart with all the cost break down. I found it very useful.

This post has got very lengthy and so I am going to stop now before it gets out of hand and you get bored.

The next post in this series I think will be about the application form and the interview, unless I think of a better order but that seems logical.

Hope you all had an amazing Christmas and there will be a post about mine soon.

Wishes,
Jack

Welcome

Hello and Welcome to 'Boy in a Big World'!!

Normally I hate these welcome posts but somehow, now I have actually sated writing a blog, this feels kind of necessary.
I have wanted to start a blog for a while now but I have been waiting for the right opportunity, and since rather a significant thing happened in my life yesterday (more on that later), I feel like now is the perfect opportunity.

I don't know what this blog is going to entail and what each post is going to be about; there is going to be no great theme, well actually the theme will be me I guess. But its not a craft blog, or a fashion blog, and it is definitely not a health and fitness blog. It's Just going to be about me 'Jack Riley' from Birmingham in the UK and how I muddle through life.

I left collage about 6 months ago with not a clue what I was going to do with my life and no real idea what I wanted to do either. I had studied TV and Radio and knew that it wasn't really for me but apart from that I had no idea what so ever.
I was lucky in the fact that my parents where so supportive in me not going to UNI; and although they wouldn't admit it at the time; they where worried about what I was going to do.
I got myself a job in a clothing shop full time where I discovered that I loved colour, fashion and also interior design and making a space look great. I learnt so many things in that job and even though I was only there for 5 months I made some amazing friends and learnt so many things about my likes and dislikes.

I will save what I do now for an future post and just so I have something to write about another time.



 

But back to the main reason for starting this blog, (this is the significant thing we discussed earlier). I had an interview yesterday and got offered the chance to work abroad this summer in an American Summer Camp.
I have travelled a fair bit before but this will be the longest I have spent away from home before and the first time organising such a thing on my own.
So this blog is ultimately going to document all my successes and mistakes along the way and hopefully while I am out there as well.

I will write posts in the future all about the application processes and interview stages because when I was applying I struggled to find honest in depth posts about it. And I am not the type of person who likes to go in blind, (research is my best friend).

So please check back again later or follow me and do all those things you can do because this is gonna be a long and bumpy road and my passenger seat is empty.

Wishes,
Jack