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.

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.

Flash

Using the flash with a camera can be really difficult. It's good for a lot of things - taking pictures at night, getting rid of ugly shadows in the day time, creating interesting effects...but some people (like myself) really don't like flash. Personally, i find that when used like most people use flash (like i use flash) it creates this bleached, non-even, and strange effect. I don't care for it personally. My father (hey dad!) is infinitely more skilled at using a flash than i am. Right up there with learning about lenses, flash is on my list to learn all about.

Flash tends to take away the secrets, take away the shadows from a picture (usually portraits). When you look at a person, they have all these contours, and different light hits them different ways, and that creates these really interesting and beautiful shadows. More often than not, flash takes these shadows away. really makes everything just look like what it is.

*flash*
wake up, it's pitch black in my room, but my alarm is going off. take off the covers, shiver a little, open the shutters. it's cold outside today, and it's still dark at 7:00 AM. close the window, grab my bath stuff (shampoo etc) and take a shower, turning off the water when i'm not rinsing out my hair or washing. 10 minutes later, i'm out of the "salle de bain" and getting dressed.

*flash*
i either walk or hop on the bus to school, depending on how much i have to carry. the bus usually only knocks off 15 minutes of travel, and i want to walk usually to try and loose a little weight since everyone here seems to be stick thin with no butt or chest. talk to andrew for 15 minutes on my way there.

*flash*
in class, depending on the day i either have 1, 2, or 3 to get through. I like painting, but the other classes, especially french culture, are difficult for me to get through. I don't understand what i've read, and analysis without reviewing what the reading was about doesn't help much since everything's in french. maybe i should make a study group for that class, as well as grammar.

*flash*
buy lunch. yummy sandwhich. trying to get out of the habit of buying something sweet for dessert. why does france have so many patisseries? (pastry shops)

*flash*
I take the bus or walk home. do a little HW. wait until 7 to eat, and after that do a little more HW if i have any. watch TV with marie-claire. go to bed around 10:30.

shadows...what's been taken away here? the nuances of the french language? the difficulty of wanting to say "i'm really excited about this" but not being able to because there's not really a word for "excited" in french that doesn't have a sexual connotation? spending lots and lots of money gathering supplies, looking for travel opportunities? I don't really know.

going to services again tonight...it's really strange here. there are only orthodox synagoges. everyone, regardless of intensity of religion, goes to these services. last night was shockingly non-inclusive, but the jared's (a friends) host family was really sweet. I enjoyed spending time with them. I'm one of 3 jewish kids in the program, jared and zac are the other two. tonight is more services and then dinner at jared's parents house...the only jewish host family. I'm looking forward to it. Jared has a mother, father, 2 host sisters close to my age, and a younger host sister who's adorable. His host father is really funny and a friendly guy, the host mother is just wonderfully sweet and understanding, and the sisters are really friendly.

Last night at temple was hard...i miss b'nai israel and not really knowing anyone at shul. even though all temples are supposed to be for all jews, i felt excluded from the community because i didn't know anyone there really. it was such a releif when i saw jared and zac because hey, at least i knew some one to say "shana tova" to. it's nice to reconnect, even briefly, with all the old hebrew school crowd. I guess i never realized exactly how much a congregation is like a family.

the security at this shul is RIDICULOUS almost. i had to answer questions about where i was from, who i was with, what i was doing, have my tiny purse searched, and once i entered, i couldn't leave the building. i guess in the US there hasn't really been issues with things like that...I was shocked at the level of security. happy it was there i guess, but not really sure why. i mean, i know why, but not really.

in funny news...there's a musical here. "Rabbi Jacob" my host mother tells me it's hilarious!

SHANA TOVA

...that just about says it. hope everyone back in the states has a good first evening. i miss you all.

as it turns out, my community service has been postponed this week and i'll be able to go to temple tonight. woohoo! hope i can find my way there...better leave now, just in case.

book recommendation: People of the Book

Framing

In photography, framing something is how you get a point across. By framing the same shot differently, you can actually change the meaning of the photo. For example, if you have a scene of two well dressed women ignoring a homeless man, the way you frame the shot can change the meaning of the situation. Say you include the homeless man, but not the two women. This makes a sympathy shot for the viewer, the viewer can relate to the homeless man, see his life as a downtrodden soul, things like that. If you just shoot the two women, you get a shot of two well dressed women, you look at their clothes, demeanor, etc. But if you shoot the scene as a whole, you get an idea of who the women are as people, who the man is as a person, and how society has put them together as a whole.

it's very interesting to meet the other people in my program. Since none of our french is good enough to express ourselves the way that we would normally back in the states, we each get a very small view, a "framed" view if you will, of how the other people are normally. All of us are relatively polite and friendly toward each other in french (which we're supposed to be speaking 100% of the time), but when we slip into english, it's really interesting to see how exactly things change. Peoples personalities actually change. It's very difficult to describe, and very weird. People are still nice and polite, but the way in which they express themselves changes very dramatically.

anyway.

the visit to gwen, elise's friend, could not have gone better in my opinion, except if i had had more time in durfort. I left friday afternoon, took an hour bus to marseille, about a 4 hour train to toulouse, an hour long bus to revel, and about a 10 min car ride back to "la cascade," the name of the retreat gwen has created. The house was BEAUTIFUL, and gwen's really awesome personality was the only thing that outshown it. She fed me a great dinner the night i arrived, and we talked for hours before going to bed. In the morning, i showed her my website, we went out to the farmers market (live chickens for sale, anyone?) and went to the nearby town of "i don't remember the name." It was a really great visit...I felt a lot more connected to durfort and its surroundings that i ever had in aix. i think it had something to with the ruralism of the place, but i can't be sure. At 1:00, i did the whole trip in reverse to get back home, but because of layovers i got in around 11:00PM. long two days, but totally worth it.

classes are going well, i especially like my art classes. they are super awesome, and i've forgotten how much i like drawing. Actually, last night i used some skills that i learned in my math class to draw a section of my homework. The assignment was to draw our bedroom, so i drew it in correct perspective. I was pretty fun to get back into that, and my host mother was officially VERY impressed.

that's all for now. I miss you guys terribly. (photo at the top from durfort - the stream down the center of the road was used at the begining of the town to help form the copper pots that the area is known for. photo at the middle is the view from the upstairs terrace of gwen'shouse, looking back toward the mountains.)

New Skill Sets 2

So...sorry about not writing for a while. my host mother doesn't have internet, and in order to write quickly and easily i like to use this computer, and i've forgotten my password. so i found a small bar that has free wifi, got a tea, and now i write.

Elaborating a little on skill sets...

it's important to always be learning new things about your medium in my opinion. that way, you never tire. if you think you know everything there is to know, try a completely different style, or go out of your way to find out something you never new before about it. A new technique, add on, developing process, new and intriguing artist in the medium...something like that. That's what i love about photography...constantly expanding in all directions really.

French for me is kinda like that. Also, french culture. always pretty much learning something new every day. Whether that thing be that they dub episodes of CSI and call it "Les Experts," or that I actually really like watching soccer with my host mother, marie-claire. She's absolutely fantastic by the way...I absolutely adore her.

Aix en Provence...nice, not too busy city in the south of france. very pretty. very quaint almost. people are friendly, and the kids in my program are sweet. I like it here, but i don't find it extraordinarily different from life in the states by any means. I wonder why I'm here sometimes.

My french has been improving like crazy. every day i feel more confident in my use of it, and i'm able to talk to strangers in relatively broken french now, but they understand my meaning, and that's what counts in the end I think.

so day to day activities....wake up early, small breakfast of baguette (pain grille - toast) with burre (butter) et (and) confiture (jam). actually, the jam is home made by marie claire. it's pretty excellent. between the two of us we've finished off the jar of fraise (strawberry) and have moved on to the orange (orange :-p )

i take the bus to AUCP (american university center of provence) for class every day, usually pretty early. I'm taking French Culture, Grammar, Oral and Written Expression, Painting, and Drawing. oh lalalalalala....c'est tres chere pour les dernier deux (omg, it's so expensive for the last two.)

I live in an apartment complex (lots of buildings...it has its own mini mall and bus stop) with 3 other girls (all with different host families). one of them is my best friend here, Marisa. She goes to franklin and marshall, and she's a quaker. cool kid.

My room is bigger than my one at home and school combined, with a big bed, desk, closet (WOW), and extra chair. it's pretty awesome.


this weekend i'm off to visit Elise's friend Gwen in a little town called "Durfort." She has an artists retreat there, and i'm very excited to meet her.

(the picture at the top: was walking around aix, came upon a group of kids that were dressed up in fairy costumes. AMAZING.)

New Skill Sets

so....HALLO FROM FRANCE!!!

photography is constantly expanding. from film, to different types of film, to different types of developing, to digital, to 28934982375 digital darkrooms and all million functions of those, things can get pretty exciting. there's always something to learn about.

for example, when i was at the museum i learned about a camera that changes its aperture by changing its length. weird!!

well, french for me is kinda new skill i guess. it's something that i want, and need (at this point, i am in france under contract to speak french) to learn, and to learn well. sure, i'm just begining and mistakes are expected (like over exposing an image), but at the same time i really want to be perfect. I want people to think I am making a strong effort. so the perfection issue leads me to mumble, so maybe they won't notice my mistake. which, if it isn't obvious already, only aggravates the problem.

so. france so far.
plane ride was GREAT. got three whole seats to myself, and met a girl from norwood who's staying somewhere in paris. that was cool. we kept eachother company when we weren't sleeping. i used her camera to take 'out the window' pictures.

i found annette very easily, and we took the metro back to her place, where i washed, she gave me some maps, and i went out to explore her neighborhood. lots and lots of diveristy in this part. it made me feel a little uncomfortable which was weird, but maybe just because i was jetlagged and not really sure about anything. at an internet cafe, i made a really terrible numbers mistake, and got so flustered trying to correct myself (note to self: .15euros, is not 5euros.) i tried to give him way more than was needed, and he ended up just telling me it was okay and not to worry about paying. wayyy embarressing.

today i went out and bought a watch. i realized that i had been using my cell phone to tell time, and that this would not work here. it's pretty. silver with a blue face. and it works. after that purchase, i went to notre dame to walk around. it was more familiar to me than anything else, so it was very comforting. then dinner with pierre's family (omg - vanessa and alexandra...GORGEOUS)

after that i came back here, found soem shady internets, and posted this. I found out who my host mother is (one woman only...marie claire) and called her and she seems very nice.

...I also saw a starbucks.

(no pics this entry...internets too sketchy to upload anything)