So, last week my dad and I went out to dinner with our future team mates – Sheikh Mohammed Al Thani, Raed Zidan and Masoud Kalafchi. Moe (Mohammed) being Qatari and UAE royal family. We were treated to dinner at the golf and shooting club that he owns, and were waited on incredibly. But the best was yet to come: We went shooting with them, and I was able to use handguns, rifles, and Moe’s own personalised 9mm handgun! With such a lovely night and a great group of people that we’ll know on our Vinson team I didn’t stop grinning the whole way home.

Then I flew to the UK for a quick visit to have two interviews at Cambridge university. But instead of the expected 100% focus on that, I was called from Dubai at 6:30am on the day of the interview for a live radio interview on Dubai Eye! I actually really enjoyed it! I then went off to my interviews at a really beautiful castle-like college called Girton… On the drive back from Cambridge we then had to pull off into a side street for ANOTHER live radio interview with the late night show also on Dubai Eye! Again, a really enjoyable experience and hopefully we will be back on the show sometime after Vinson with the rest of the family (these ones were with my dad).

To top it all off, having arrived back from the UK yesterday, found out I’ve got an interview with another university today, and I fly out to Australia tomorrow night, and will have visited each of the seven continents by the end of the month. That kinda seems like a life goal, it seems so momentous, and I get to tick it off! Wow. Privileged much.

Anyway, off to read the BMC Summit magazine to get some tips and inspirational stories before we head off tomorrow. I’ll also be starting to upload these to facebook and to blog daily for the climbing trip – it’ll be audio I think from Vinson, so I hope it’s clear enough I don’t think signal will be quite top notch from down there, just a feeling.

Ttfn.

Another huge thank you to say: Huawei are now a presenting sponsor (one of the big ones) for our Vinson and Everest climbs! It’s such brilliant news to get a respected brand such as Huawei sponsoring us like this, and I can’t thank them enough, again, it wouldn’t be possible without this.

On a slightly different note, we’ve got all of our stuff sorted for Vinson and Kosciuszko – all out and picking up the last little bits and pieces we’re missing, hand sanitiser and those sorts of things. Now, after putting up the Christmas decorations tonight, I’m off in the morning for a flying four day visit to the UK for a quick interview, really looking forward to seeing everyone back there again, even if the reason for the trip is slightly more nerve racking! I’ll keep you posted and will be starting the serious blogging when we begin our climbing trip next week. Ttfn!

We did a video interview with My Dubai, My City website this weekend – such a new experience! My dad and I were taken outside and filmed answering various questions about climbing and some background info in different places… I’ve no idea how it’ll come across and I know I managed to fit in some really cheesy lines along the way that I’ll really cringe at later, but it was a great experience – I think I could get used to people wanting to film me!! Although standing in the Dubai heat repeating some facts to get shots focusing on different points became a sticky process.

I’ll post the link to it on my website under media when it comes out, ta ta for now.