First of all. The photo accompanying this post is not from today. Today it is grey, rainy, miserable, but hot and humid! AKA. Gross. 

It’s Friday. F-R-I-D-A-Y. Fri-YAY! It’s a Personal Development day in work today for all teaching staff. So. As I’m a desk jockey. I get to miss out on all the meetings and talks etc. but I still have to be here. At my desk. With reallyyy not that much to do today. I’ve just sat and cried laughing at a Buzzfeed post of autocorrect fails. My god they made my Friday. If you want a good (and sometimes inappropriate) laugh I urge you to read this post you will not regret it!

Anyway. Back to my productive life (lol). Mum’s shipping gets picked up tomorrow. That’s kind of crazy and scary all at the same time. 8 boxes and one folder. All packed up, padded out and taped to the high heavens ready to be sent across the globe back to 36…. [I’ve added a few more dots here, as it was brought to my attention from Dad & Nat that it could be misread as 36.4 years… so…]. 4 years of life bundled up. Once the shipping has gone. Then it’s time to really start looking at my own stuff. I was semi productive last night, in the way that I sat on the sofa watching Dexter while sorting out and rearranging my DVD’s and series into different plastic wallets. I also became internally/irrationally stressed and upset about just how far behind I am on my scrapbook/photo albums. I have 3 pages to fill from way back before Christmas when I went to visit Shelb. (Unfortunately and shamefully the one and only time I have taken the bus up to Changshu to see her.) And once I do those pages, my 1^st one will be officially complete and done! But, I have a bag FULL and I mean fuuulllllllll of photos, ticket stubs, random bits of memorabilia (which could probably have been very easily thrown away), and FujiInstax photos all ready to stick in and write about.

What do I have left to put in to make my scrapbooks up to-date I hear you cry? Well. Allow me to tell you!

[Side-note: I’ve watched Russell Howards’ stand-up comedy DVD way too many times that I now hear his voice whenever I say “Well allow me to tell you…”, I also see him doing a little jig on stage. Not that I’m complaining… ❤ ]

• New Year’s Eve
• Shanghai to meet Shelby’s mum [mom]
• Beijing
• Cambodia
• Sam, Dean, Hannah & Soph over
• Shanghai
• Huangshan – Yellow Mountains
• Bank holiday
• Shanghai
• Xi’an
• Plus all random bits of life in-between!!

So yes. That’s just up until now! If I were, by some miracle and feat of will, able to do all that and get it up to date, I still have everything to come over the couple of weeks to put in too! [Shanghai this weekend, Dragon Boat, Thailand, possibly Guangzhou, and then 3 weeks of travel!] I love doing the books and having them to look back over. I really do love them. And all I want for a future home (as well as a coloured front door) is to have a shelf full of all my scrapbook/photo-albums sat there all full to the brim and ready to burst. Ready to be taken down and thumbed through to relive and look back at all the adventures and experiences I have been so fortunate to have. Unfortunately, they have really taken a backseat over the past few months, as you can tell by how behind I am. And now, obviously, packing takes priority. It’s like reading. I feel guilty for sitting down with my Kobo and reading Doctor Sleep, yet another Stephen King book I’m really enjoying at the moment. I feel guilty getting out my little lunchbox type tin from Shelby and her mum where I keep my scrapbook stuff, setting it all out on the sofa and coffee table, and immersing myself in the photos and memories as I stick them in with coloured tape. I feel I should be doing something else, something more time productive. But, to me. They’re important. They’re probably the most personally productive thing I do! Shelby and Leah have kept blogs of their time here, Shelby has kept a notebook filled with tickets and bits collected from her trips too, which she makes look so pretty, but that’s only ever like 2 pages per trip! My way? God I can’t even count. I think my NZ trip took up half a book… God knows how long it will take me to get caught up on these big trips I’ve not stuck in yet!

Tonight is a CasaZoe’s night in a sort of farewell celebration for mum. Roughly 9 or 11 of us I think. And before that, we have to fill out all the shipping forms detailing all that is in the boxes and their value. So, tonight I have no time. This weekend, I’m spending in Shanghai. 3^rd weekend in a row I’ll be Hostelling it up! So. Next week. Next week I need to spread my time evenly after school between packing, and making an effort to make a dent in the bag of photos etc. I need to put in my scrapbook! I’d be able to get a fair way if I were able to just sit in the art room or staff lounge and smash it out while at work. But. I guess that’s not what they pay interns for ‘ey. (Not that they ever realllyy “pay” us….)

But yes, it is finally Friday. And I am VERY happy about this fact! Happy Friday y’all, may it be a stress-free and merry one!