Firstly, I apologise for not writing much recently; there’s been a lot going on in dear old Mango’s life at the moment.

I got allocated my classes for fourth year, which I’m totally excited about - I got the exact ones I wanted!  It’s a strange system, but at my university you list your top 10 in order of preference, then get allocated three out of those.  There’s a whole load of strange and crazy rules for how they are allocated, e.g. they should be within the top 7, one should be from the top 2, any language module in the top 7 will be allocated, if you get your first choice your less likely to get you third, and so on.  Somehow (perhaps just by luck) I got the three I really wanted.  Paired with my refound enthusiasm for my dissertation and I am extremely psyched for next year.

I also got a bit of a shock recently.  I have an abnormal mole on my toe which I thought to get checked as it seemed to have gotten darker recently.  I got a letter from the hospital after a week saying I need to go get it removed on Tuesday.  It’s just under a local (scary!) but because the need to cut 2.5x the length of the mole to make sure all of the melanoma is removed and it’s already the length of my toenail they need to cut off a huge part of my toe!  They will send part of it for a biopsy but they don’t think it’s malignant.  I hope not.  But it really made me stop and go “I’m only 20, and that could have been cancer”.  That scared the hell out of me.

So, I’m recharged.  I’m returning to tracking with a renewed effort and the same with activity.  I’ve signed up for the MoonWalk and Race for Life 2010 and I’ll be signing up for the weight challenge again next month.  I’m excited about the two challenges.  The former raises money for breast cancer research, treatment and aid to sufferers; the latter raises money for research into all cancers in the UK.  What good causes!  So it’ll involve a lot of training between now and then.  I’m just walking both, but the MoonWalk itself has two choices of distance - 13.1 miles (a half marathon), which is the one I think I’ll go for! and 26.2 miles (a full marathon).  I’m going to ask my aunty and cousin to join me too - maybe even DP will join in, but he’ll have to wear a bra!  For more information, go to http://www.walkthewalk.org/Home.