hey guys, just thought i'd let you all know how i'm doing since i've been kind of absent in the whole journal front the past while.

basically, i'm safe here in weymouth, living on Portland with my amazing adopted family. its really good to be here, i love the place to bits and my family are amazing, but i'm finding it kind of hard to make friends around portland. because my sister is so much younger than me (shes sixteen) all her friends are younger than me too, and i havent really met anyone my own age. they also seem so different to what i'm used to in people. all so plastic. i'm used to living in a world where hardly anyone bothers with makeup and if they wear it its not that much, but here no-one seems to do anything without like layers of face on. it makes me feel underdressed even when i do a full face.

i'm getting really homesick the past few days, its been really really hard this week to manage without my friends. i miss Aisling more than life, i didnt really realise how hard it would be, and i've been in tears most nights over not being with her, not being there with my best mate only a wall away if that at all times. i know the move was for the best, but its still difficult to survive so far away from all i knew and loved. i might have hated cork, but the truth was it was my home, it made me who i am. i think a part of me will always belong to those streets of cork, those simple little things that make me feel so comfortable. i miss being able to walk around the streets and always see someone who i know, always have at least one person say hi to me in passing and have to stop and chat. i'm so used to being surrounded by people that living without it makes me feel so lonely its almost unbareable.

i had a great time last weekend, went up to exeter to see ~WALLWAGER and had time of my life. i'd love the chance to go up there again soon, since i have the money and it would be good to spend more time with him. the people up there were the only people in this country so far i really felt like i connected to and could get along with, actually have a laugh. i guess that just comes from that they're my age, and they're into a lot of the same things i am. its weird to think that i could actually get along with people like that, but it sucks that they're that far from me. wish i could be there more often really, but then who knows maybe some day in the future. its definatly best that i stay living in weymouth though, because it means i'm not out on my own.

my family have made me feel so welcome and it looks like i'll stay living here for the forseeable future. i went into weymouth college yesterday to try to apply and it turns out i'm over educated.  so instead of going to college, which was always my plan, i'm hafting to go to uni instead.

i'm only taking a part time course, it will be one afternoon per week starting in september. i'll be taking it in weymouth college for the first year and then into plymouth one day a week next year to do it there. i have to fill in the forms for it tonight but i just havent gotten around to it yet. i'll get them done then hand them into the college tomorrow, i wanted to go into town anyway and i might possibly be passing through on my way to exeter... hopefully anyway i'm waiting on a message from luke to tell me if he wants to come up.

things here are okay i guess, i just miss home a lot. i'm sure i'll settle into it soon enough but its just still hard to realise that i actually live here, that i'm not an irish resident any more, that i'm no longer stoner sam from cork.

it will take me a while to settle in here and find my own place in this strange new world, and until then i guess i'll just have to settle to being a nomad, a nobody, while i find my new place in the world.

changes are hard to get my head around.