Tuesday, October 28, 2008

IM IN FLORENCE!!!

Im in florence now, checked into my hostel, found mary and jasmine, and i'm chillin with jas while mary's in her last class. it's raining. poo on that.

i started speaking with a strange australian-ish accent because a) my voice is weird in an after-throat-sick kinda way and b) because i havn't been speaking that much english, and when i started speaking a lot of it it was only around australians. who were, by the way, awesome. i had the best time ever in venice.

all updates will come after i get back to aix, in two very long entries...so look for them!

love to all

ps: i think venice photos are gonna be good!

Saturday, October 25, 2008

IM IN VENICE

...and none of you are on skype....

for like the 5 seconds i saw of it before getting onto the bus to go to the hostel, venice is AWESOME. i cant wait to start taking pictures!!!

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Location 2


So we've already talked a lot about location, seeing as i've kinda been all over the place, and to talk about location when one is traveling is kinda...well, ever present. well, the time has come to yet again change location.

I (now) find that changing ones physical location is key in seeing things differently. Like, I can look at a square in the states, and i can look at a square in europe, and see them very differently based on their location. or, i can just see a square.

i find that differentiating between seeing different squares and seeing the same one is very important. It's important to recognize that in this world everything affects everything else, so it may indeed be the same square i'm looking at. yay! unity!

or, they can be two different squares. yay american upbringing full of uniqueness!

in any case, next week i'll be in Italy, and i probably won't update. I'm very excited...I get to see mary and jasmine and venice and florence! yay venice! i hope my hostel is good. I'll be taking lots and lots and lots of photos.

speaking of photos (and I always seem to be) this week my photo class went really well. The girls relaxed and everyone was just having a good time being artsy-fartsy and looking at things like composition. i managed to teach! it was fun.

also, i entered a contest. my entry, as well as all the others, can be found here: http://zemotion.deviantart.com/journal/20980761/
(just scroll down a little...mine is the one from the same shoot as the photo this week...bright red shoes!) i hope i win.

miss you all, hope everyone is healthier than me at the moment (i hate colds).

ps: i cut my hair
pps: it's cute

Monday, October 13, 2008

Wanting the same old thing but delivering differently



...I really want a crepe.

but besides that.

so yom kippur sucked, and i'm not going to go into more detail then: a) was obviously starving and b) was alone.

I did a shoot yesterday of a girl in my group, hayley. She's also a photographer (but does more landscapes) and she's got this great hair. So together we headed out to the park. overall it went well, but i'm taking the same kinds of shots. it makes me sad cause i really want to start looking at things differently, getting a new angle, something more exciting than a pretty portrait. I like pretty portraits, but I've gotta start doing something different. so i tried some new, less realistic editing techniques, and i'm really liking them. I'm gonna start doing that more.
(<- except for the ones when she was hangin upsidown. those were new ideas)

tomorrow is my first day of photo class. Kinda nervous, but i think i can handle it. i think if i keep thinking about it that way, i'll do better. i hope.

i also think i'm gaining weight...my host mother wanted to go on a diet, but to her the diet was eating whatever the diet food was...plus dinner. cause if you didn't eat that, you'd be hungry! so...i'm not so sure she gets that. i try and walk everywhere and get my exercise, but she cooks with a lot of cream. and breakfast is bread and butter with jam. starting to need to eat some special k or something. maybe i'll buy some. maybe today i'll treat myself to a crepe like a "good luck with the start of your trying to loose healthy weight!" and then tomorrow really start. yea, i think i'll do that.

something that's really frustrating me about this program is that all the students are supposed to be out friday and saturday nights. but money for buying healthy food is a problem, and what ends up being eaten is fatty, cheaper food. it would be less expensive and healthier for me to buy something and cook it at home, but we're supposed to give our host families a break from us, and i don't have a kitchen somewhere else, and if i did cook at home i'd have to make enough for marie-claire also, thereby not giving her a break...etc.etc. it's really frustrating. can't i just make myself a salad with some chicken in it instead of a cream soup, meat, bread, fruit, salad...the list goes on. it's delicious, but i'm gaining weight. and i really don't want to cause i worked hard to loose the few pounds i did.

i hate delicious food. sometimes i wish marie-claire was a terrible cook so i wouldn't eat as much of it. also, she doesn't eat a lot but makes more for me so i feel obliged to finish it cause she looks at me funny when i don't. or at least i think she looks at me funny. hard to read expressions sometimes.

her granddaughter comes to live with us today. maybe she can help me finish the food.

...i ate raw meat. like hamburger meat. apparently an Armenian delicacy. never again.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Teaching Photography


I am mostly a self-taught photographer with help from my father, teaching me things about aperture and shutter speed (and most recently flash, landscape photography, and how not to lean on a tripod when taking night pictures). I've only had two official courses in photography which were last semester...one digital (documentary photography) and one darkroom (photo 1). I got good grades in both, and spent a large majority of my time either shooting, digitally editing, or darkrooming it up. my hands had a permanent smell of darkroom on them.

teaching art is difficult. no one can say something is good or bad, but more "well composed," or, "the technical aspects of this work are really sound." things like that. With other subjects, like math, something is right or wrong (or sometimes, partially right) but with photography or art things get very very difficult. can't insult the student's work, gotta build the confidence, but also have to show them how to use their tools, give them space to experiment (most good things come by accident), but also give them spaces to jump off of. I have been in a few art classes (currently in 2!) and all teachers have a different approach.

For the study abroad program I'm in, all the students have to be involved in both community service and local clubs, to help us become integrated in the community, as well as help our colloquial french continue to improve (nothing like a bit of practice, eh?). My club is going to be tribal style belly dance lessons (beginning tonight!) and my community service...well...that's the story of this entry.

A few weeks ago, we were all given a list of potential community service listings, and a few positions landed at a local catholic high school, sacred heart (lycee sacre coeur). The positions were helping in some after school clubs there, among which were theater, dance, and photo. I jumped at the opportunity to help in a photo club, and i was placed there. The first class was supposed to be next week, but the woman in charge of the clubs (and also, the teacher of the dance class) wanted to meet with me so that she could talk to me about what to expect, change the night of the club, and show me around. So she showed up at AUCP yesterday to give me the tour.

while we were talking, she kept asking me about my experience in the field, and what things were neccessary in order to run an adequate darkroom. I was a little confused about why she wasn't asking these questions to the teacher, and instead to me, so I thought maybe I was missing something in translation.

"euh, je suis desolee, mais j'ai un question." (um, i'm sorry, i have a question)
"je t'ecoute." (I'm listining :-) )
"Est-ce que je suis le prof? ou est-ce que je suis un assistant, ou quoi?" (Am I the teacher? or am i an assistant, or what?)
"Oh, tu est le prof pour ce club. Est-ce que ca ce bien?" (Oh, you're the teacher, is that okay?)
"Oh, oui, bien sur!" (oh, yes, of course!) ::inner panic hidden::

so...now i'm teaching photography to a few high schoolers for about 2 hours every tuesday before my belly dancing class. WHOA. I'm really excited, but also incredably nervous. My french isn't that good, and with photography vocabulary...it's all a little overwhelming at this point. After I found this out and the meeting was over, i raced back to AUCP (my school) to shoot off a few panicked emails to fellow photography students asking for advice, and called dad. he didn't seem to sense the panic.

I see that this is a golden opportunity, and I intend to make the best of it that I can. I'm going to prograssively take them through things, making results for a show at the end of the year. while balancing classwork, clubs, and vacation planning. oh lord.

other things are pretty good. Marie Claire has got a cold, which doesn't bode well for me, but i've been giving her zinc and assorted oils, which she says helps a lot. Classwork is getting better, and yom kippur starts tomorrow evening (i got an excused absence for thursday. HAH.)

hope everyone had a lovely week of repentance, and I wish all an easy fast. Bonne Chance! A bientot! ( good luck! see you soon!)

ps: i saw a dior ad. looked really similar to my photo. see shots below.