(no subject)
I've been wondering how to start on what seems like it should be an incredibly utterly epic post of the last few months. The excuse-thing keeping me from posting is lack of pictures, as I feel I should have tons to show you guys. I'll have some. Eventually. But I don't have a camera (despite my birthday, and christmas, and the money I've made) and everyone else's camera batteries keep running out (because I use them desperately and sneakily in very intense concentrated bursts of time, without their owners' knowledge...).
What can I say? I'm poor, very poor, but I live in a great place so it doesn't bother me too terribly much (except when I see really cool clothes in windows and on others, or exceptional purple velvet coats in spontaneous countryside boutiques and am overcome).
Um, also excuse is adjusting to the whole school thing, and um, just being lazy. It's harder to think about writing a post to "sum up what I've been doing from May-2009" in one whole entry. o__O Instead of doing it month by month, which I should have been doing.
I started school at Massey University way back on July 14th, and was finished with the semester in October. o__O Summer Holidays! :-) It's still very strange that september and october are spring months, and that I'm in summer. Spring? September? January? End of school year? Warm? Was such a long time ago that I used to think that way, when I attended school here before... 10 or 11 years ago.
Massey has been pretty good to me, in terms of being a school which is helping me get back on track and on my feet again. It seems ridiculously more relaxed than OU, which perhaps is saying something (as wasn't OU fairly relaxed compared to others?). And in some ways, I do mean ridiculous as even the teachers come in 15 minutes late, and it seems quite informal. (yet still work is important. lol).
When bringing my artwork to show to the undergraduate professor, in an interview like meeting, I had taped two large sheets of moving-box cardboard to put it all in and I was worried about his possible reactions to this cheaply innovative presentation, but his comments were that my work was fairly disciplined. Made me quite glad that I was not a flashy american design student with my big black portfolio with dates and a time line and over-organisation (design majors reading this, you know I'm just being amusing, but really I'm just not that slick).
At the same time the department is fairly socialist in how it functions. They supply what we need (work studios and machines, not supplies), coordinate things, had a really nice way of figuring out our groups for group project work (we all shared what we liked making and what sort of themes we were interested in, and then they put us into groups based on who they thought would work well together. All the girls in my group (the "surreal group") were focused on the same sorts of things as I am, we all had very similar tastes, it was eerie). There is a kind of togetherness which is comfortable, the third years are all fairly laid back and doing their own thing and have a fun time. Though, sometimes the groupness can get to me, just a little bit, but even then I feel that if I don't care to join in that I'm not going to be cast out or burned or shunned in any sort of hunted glaring way. :-) (yes I felt that way at OU for a time being...).
A very long while ago I went to academic advising, not really sure what to expect as I hadn't been assigned anyone in particular, but I just turned up with my enrolment form and my academic print out record that I collected from the main office (yeah, my DARS I suppose, but it was in a more simple spreadsheet form), and then waited around in a seminar room with everyone else there until one of the 3 teachers was free to help me. :-) Very interesting process. Felt like a warm busy waiting room. Kind of had to jump in there if you wanted to get it out of the way though, which I fortunately managed.
The main thing that I notice has changed is my anxiety. I remain anxious now when speaking in front of others or telling my ideas to various sized groups of people or teachers, but I am now able to sit in class, can sit around people and have minimal feelings of nausea. Which is great. Sometimes it makes me wonder how at OU I could not bring myself to go to classes which were 5 minutes away, yet here I go to classes where I must take two buses and which takes at least 45 minutes total to get there (from a room in my house to my studio space). I suppose that it's because it takes 45 minutes to get back, so I can't just rush off if I feel like it and be home in 5 minutes. I'd have to spend all of that bus time feeling badly.
Plus, the classes aren't really "classes" they're more like "taking attendance mini-check up" sessions, where most people are late, so that works just fine with me. We meet, then go our very separate ways to do what we need to do, or just do what we wish.
I have gotten fairly used to being in a city now, traveling through one, and have come to feel alright and knowing that it is okay to get a bit frazzled by noise and that I must take care of myself more in that regard. I don't wear my ipod as much, but it's nice to have it handy.
The greatest invention for an art student (especially a withdrawn one such as myself) has to be the Personal Studio. I actually had one! (and will have one again this year). It was probably around 6x7 ft in dimensions, and relatively enclosed (as much as movable walls on wheels can afford enclosure) leaving a 3 ft gap to enter through. I had pinned a sheet across the gap, so it made a sort of buffered entry-way.
I've found I am a nesting sort of person (though it was probably obvious with many of my spaces I've lived in so far), and so that can be a little limiting at times, as I only feel able to work and be inspired when I feel settled in, in a good amount of privacy, and when I have a feeling of making a place my own. It was still hard to work down there sometimes, during class because everyone else was there and I have a hard time filtering them out even with the ipod. But on the weekends it was great. I got a lot done on those saturday mornings.
Would it have been too much to ask to have a personal space at OU? I've found I desperately needed one all these years but never found it. Very maddening to know that other OU art departments had them. Did printmaking? I definitely assumed not. Has it changed? But the relief it brings, knowing I can retreat to somewhere where I won't have to clean things up necessarily and where I can be alone behind a curtain if I'm feeling overwhelmed... It got so tiring having to pack and set up all the time in printmaking. Grrr.
I had two studio classes and then a sort of lecture class. One would think that sounds like I had nothing to do, but for example wednesdays I had contextual studio which was listed as being from 9-12, when in reality I had to stay until 4pm due to group project time etc. That was always a long day.
I took a painting studio, and I also had what is called Contextual Studio (on the wednesdays), which was more of a concepts class and where one may do anything, but must think more objectively and about audience and context and "what has come before" yada yada.
I did attend part of the wellington film festival which was sometime in July. I only went to two things (tickets are expensive, even for a student), but the last one I saw was The Freshman starring Harold Lloyd, which is a silent film from 1925 about a freshman starting at university and the trouble he gets mixed up in. And best of all, there was a live 8 or 9 piece orchestra down in the orchestra pit! It was something of an experience. Silent movies have a way of bringing a complete shared experience to an audience, because one can laugh without missing any lines, and you find that everyone laughs at the same scenes, just peals of it!
Watching it, I wished that you my friends could have been there, we would have imitated Harold's greeting dance for months. Harold sees this popular film about college around 6 times and the main character of it does a little dance whenever he meets someone for the first time, so Harold picks it up for his own use. It's a little jazzy charleston move of crossing legs back and forth and then extending a hand. There was one scene where he was meeting a group of 5 people and he did it for each one before shaking their hands. :-)
If you can find it at a video store, or somewhere like a library, definitely check it out.
My family finds themselves doing many more things than we ever did in 10 years of living in Ohio. Everything is so accessible, and we're invited to things, or my parents have some dinners with friends (yes they now have friends)... even walking along oriental parade is a treat, being by the harbor and water and small beachy area. I don't do too much, because I don't have any money, or friends, but also during the film festival we all went to see "be kind, rewind" and went to a really cool Thai restaurant Monsoon Poon beforehand. Ahh, amazing food and atmosphere.
I'm slowly gathering up these cool places so that when/if you come visit I'll look confidently cultured and "about town". ;-)
I've been to a few concerts and orchestral events, one of which featured Jean-Yves Thibaudet who played the piano for the soundtracks to Pride and Prejudice and Atonement (I assume that's what most might associate him with...). So that was kind of fancy.
We hardly use our car, and during winter we had to get a new battery as ours had died from un-use and cold weather. (!) So we've learned that someone has to go start the car every now and then (especially in the winter) to make sure it doesn't happen again. We do take the bus a lot, which can get tiring, but it's very easy to do. I've memorized bus times and such and it all feels now like I've been doing it for years.
It's still a bit strange to think that I am in Nz, it feels pretty normal. I know the terminologies, know how to get places etc... and most people (strangers) mistake me for a Canadian or a Kiwi, simply because I am pale. A few months ago, a yoga student advertising something stopped me on the street and started chatting with me, and she said she would have never guessed I was an american, (said in her yoga zen voice) "America is the land of goooolden skin, and you're so Paaaale!!" It's quite funny what perceptions other countries have of the u.s. ... Oh yes, and everyone here was very proud of the U.S. for having voted Obama in. :-)
During the summer when I first was here, and when I was taking the cable car, there were quite a few tourists, and of course, on those random days I would overhear that people (dressed in shorts, white tennis shoes and visors) were from "Ohio", then wanting to blurt out "Me too!" but wondering if I would startle them, or if they would have even guessed I was an American just from the way I look. So I usually smiled instead.
I can't believe, still, either, that I have been through a semester, and that now I am on summer vacation. It's just...backwards. Not even backwards, just all upside down.
Yes, after a year, I am acclimated. Like I thought I'd be.
I even have a Nz driver's license on the way, in the mail. Driving will definitely come in time (a very long time), but it will be nice to have, as then I won't have to carry my passport around in order to buy alcoholic beverages. :-)
I've been housesitting for a month, dog-walking, and before that worked at a filing job at Nz's national dance and drama school. But after tonight, I will be home and finally into the part of summer where I am not doing anything. Though, I will probably be preparing for school (which I think starts at the end of February, yes because February is autumn). heh.
I think I am making some progress, mental-health wise. I still do get nervous, but not about the same things, or with as much intensity. I've also started learning quite a lot about myself, in a truer sense and not just through seemingly endless introspection and analysis. Though I love Athens, I needed to get out of the bad situation I was in. It's hard to explain. It's a think where when you finally have something 'lifted' from you, you can start to see more clearly, or in a more objective way as all that stress isn't there to be distracting.
I'm a bit tired to write too much more, perhaps I'll add on this week.
I want to go into so much detail! But for that I'd have to write a short novel.
I just want to get this much posted. heh.
Though it is mightily jumbled. Mightily.
So
To Be Continued...