Partaaaa

I didn't think I could party anymore. Without Husband. He makes everything cool. But he went to see Ian Brown tonight, so just maybe I could get it together and party. I was invited to cool Brica's party. Love Brica. Desperate to go. N who I live with was definately going to give me a ride. But, the area, whilst not sketchy, is not wholesome either, and his car broke, the diver's window will not go so he could not lift me and and Calvin, another boy from the course to the party. However, he told me about a party in Val Verde to go too, that his friends would be at. He gave me half a packet of fags he's had in his car since summer and told me to put it in my dress strap, a half drunk bottle of vodka, to be held throughout the night and a bracelet that his friend Golly had left in his car for 3 months. She could perhaps identify a friend of N's by it. Despite this being dubbed as 'one of the parties of the year' N was too shattered to come along, so all this paraphenalia was to help me meet people. However, the party was raided and broken up by the police. Boooo. It hadnt even gone on that long. However, it was cool, I danced and drank vodka and cranberry. It felt very odd to party without Husband, almost not possible. I like to drink and let my hair down with him around, then I have someone to snog, too. It just feels weird to deal with a party atomosphere without him. But, just so you know, I still have it, I can party. The party was a bit rubbish though, a bit undergrad. Anyhoo, managed to get home, few vodkas later and I'm typing this. Goodnight! Bed now!

Accents

Lovely 'suite mate' Dana, is an actor, singer and lots of fun. She is trying to perfect her English accents and so often repeats what I have said when I say it. This is usually fine with me, but occaisionally it winds me up. My other suite mates have told me how much they like my accent too. But it can be problematic, I know its hard for a lot of people to understand me, and I do have to repeat myself to be understood a lot of the time. I've found myself saying 'Hi', 'Yeah' and 'Thanks' in an American accent, particularly with people I do not know, just passing by, to avoid confusion. Last night I practiced my American accent with my suite mates and I spoke for a while with it. They were all telling me to shut up and stop it, and I thought it was because it was so crumby, but it was because they did not want to hear me not using my normal English accent, although my American was thoroughly plausible! Ha ha! Today one of Dana's associates (she would not call him a friend!) started to mimic what I was saying, which, when you do not know someone is very annoying. In protest I started speaking in my American accent and said I would continue to use it if he continued to mimic me! That shut him up! Ha ha!

Calartian

Ok, so, I've been collecting random thoughts and I better just get them down. Mainly observations.

In most of my classes there are one or two dogs, dogs are allowed everywhere on campus except the canteen. They often bark and run around the class room.

I went and asked the dance department if I could take ballet technique class and I had to get permission from their Dean, and so it took ages to find out, but I can't, the classes are full, that makes me sad. I can go along to this contemporary dance class but not been yet. Been doing yoga with the dance department though. I love watching the dancers float around between classes in their crazy concept leotards and sloppy layers. It makes me feel like I am in some kind of 'Fame' academy. I am thinking of the film not TV programme.

I'm a Calartian! Thats what we're called. Like Martians!





My studio has an olive tree in front of it. That totally sold me when I picked it. Unfortunately I did not notice the totally awful bobbly cruddy walls. Some people's studios are good to go now, they moved straight in without having to re-paint or anything - jealous! My walls needed lots of polyfiller and hopefully I will be able to check out a belt sander to smooth them down and paint them soon (this weekend hopefully) then I can move in properly and put my work up and get a desk and a sofa and have that as my make art and chill out place. For the moment it just has a swivel chair, step ladder and my new printer in a box. The printer came free with my brand new shiny white Macbook. I've had it two weeks. I love it. It also came with a free Ipod Nano. I tripped on my ethernet cable on Tuesday, it crashed to the floor and it smashed the screen. TWO WEEKS! It will now cost me $500 to fix it. Ouch!



I had a class with Allan Sekula today, you know what, I thought I would totally love him, but I don't. Can't tell you why at this point, it was just the first class. But I'll let you know. Still totally love Freud class, the tutor for it too and I love Kaucyila Brooke. Archive class is very relevant and fun, and hey, if, reader, you have time, Google the Collyer Brothers. Their life story is just so hilarious.

Things are good today as I went out for a meal with a girl on my course, Maria, and two of her good friends. I'm going to a party on Saturday night, Brica's party and Sunday I am going to a hip hop night in Hollywood with a really cool girl called Alexis. I will tell you how all that goes and I am really excited. I have not managed to get out enough. The start of the week I felt really weird, a little disconnected and confused. I tell you, the society and learning atmosphere are so radically different there is no way you could do this without some serious hard hitting culture shock. I think I had some culture shock and alienation and remembering lots of weird stuff from my past too at the start of the week. Things are much better now though I hope it continues that way. For now though, good night!

Rain

Ok, so noone told me it would rain. Well, they did, but they said that over the year it rains in total for about a week. And that was in winter. It seemed to shock everyone then, when it rained yesterday. It was proper bouncing off the ground. Stair-rods. And today. That's 2 days of that week.

I hope that there isn't going to be too much rain. I've had a lot rain this summer. Britain didn't seem to have a summer this year.

The other day I went to an artist's lecture, which was really interesting. I liked the artist's work. She was called Lisa Anne Auerbach. At the end of it, during the Q & A, one student (MFA Art) asked a series of questions that were really expressing how he didn't like many aspects of the artists work. There was no chair or moderator to intervene, so he just kept going. This seemed to be in very poor taste, although the artist took it well. Surely he could have conveyed points in an objective way, and once he made his point he could have shut up. I was totally taken aback by this behaviour. I was really pleased when I talked about it later than everyone else felt the same way. Everyone I spoke to that is. The Art MFA are generally a bit more in your face though.

I still really like my class mates. We saw half the people on our course's work in the last Crit class. I'm showing my work in the next class - its just an introduction thing - 20 minutes. Its on Tuesday - I'll blog how it goes.

On Crits, the normal Grad MFA Photography Crit is 3 hours long and that will be for 2 people. It is recommended that the legendary class 'Post Studio' be taken in your second year, when you can handle it. They look at 2 peoples work in that class too. It starts at 10am and carries on as long as it takes. Last week that was 9 hours! Can you imagine that. They were let out for a lunch break.

Why am I not asleep

Hi, I am totally wide awake which is weird, I'm heading to my normal body clock. Which means that this is becoming home. The weather has turned. Its jumper weather. No rain or wind, just less sun and heat. Nothing to my Northern stock though. Its been an odd few days, my emotions (strictly internal, no major drama moments) have oscilated from being really happy to be here and a bit lost. I'm trying not to pay to much attention to those feelings. The people I'm around are really cool still, no-one annoying me at all. There's a really informal feel here. Eating meals wherever you want, even in class. That type of thing.

Someone explained to me what House music was. Seriously. I think he thought I was from some quaint English village. I've been accused of being from London many a-time too. But in general, I'm not going to complain about the Americans. I met another English girl today who is here, who complained no-stop about Americans and the way they speak. She even referred to Britain as the motherland. It did make me think though, that if she felt that way, maybe she shouldn't have got onto the plane to get here. If she can only handle Brits, its dumb moving to California. Obviously we are in the minority. She is only here for the semester though. Exchange student.

I had Freud class today. Love it! Totally love it. The teacher applied lipstick mid-sentence. Which I just think is so cool. Somehow, only a lecturer on Freud would do that.

Anyway, I'm going to bed now, and I promise to blog sooner. Its been a weird week for me and I didn't want to write a negative blog. Weird not in the sense that anything bad happened, like I say, just an internal thing.

I got here!

It's been a while since my last blog I know. Thats because things were moving so fast in August to get here. It took so long to prepare the boring things to do with moving, etc and also wrapping up my life and my freelance jobs in Sheffield. I had a leaving do which was great, but I really had a hard night the following night at my studio landlord's 40th birthday party. Great people. I hate goodbye. I had a bit of a cry.

But, moving on swiftly, I had a new fab haircut before I came away. If that counts for anything.

I came out with Dad and he stayed a week. He helped me to get things for my little prison cell here, like reading lamps, bedding, cutlery, crockery, ringbinders, toilet roll, iron & board, Levi 501s and a MacBook. After all that, I feel like I have everything to fit in. It was lovely to spend time with Dad and we had some great conversations. He got his head around why I was here and what I have come here to do, so mission accomplished. When we said goodbye, I had to dash off for my first two classes, so it felt very difficult. Saying goodbye to Dad is the hardest thing I have had to do. Really hard. But he's proud of me.



The other big goodbye was to the Husband. That was hard, in a different way, and the missing him comes in waves. Its just a feeling of wishing I could talk to him at the end of the day and get an at least weekly hug. I've spent some time talking to him on Skype, but it took a while to set up and I wasn't in contact for a bit. That was a bit bad.

Anyhoo... I bet start to talk about what its like here. I've just got back from a reception evening held by the MFA2 Art Program people and had a few beers, so I'm feeling verbose.



My room is a prison cell, but I mentioned that. I have 5 suite mates, there's 3 girls and 3 boys here. I've recently found out that 3 of them are pot-heads, and that is so not my thing. One girl is really friendly, an actor, she's an extrovert, very outgoing and bubbly. Thats not usually my bag, but she is fun and she does seem to have an on/off switch which is useful. When I pass her in the corridor she usually says something funny to me, and I answer her, then I hear her explain, as I waltz off, 'She's from England and she's my suite-mate'. Which makes me laugh.

On being English, yep, its a big hit. Its odd to be so exotic. But not unique. I have a dancer friend here for a term on the Dance MFA. And I heard a boy today, who is from Manchester, he is doing a film or something like that, but undergrad. He was a puppy. Immature shall we say. Legend has it of 2 other English people. Me and dancer-girl were considering setting up an English people's Tea Drinking Society.

On dancing: unfortunately, I was not able to get on the class for non-Dance students, 'Institute Dance' as it clashes with other things, so I got offered yoga, which I am taking with the sylph-like Dance students. Kinda odd. I seriously want to just do some ballet, even just bar work, and there are 3 different levels doing class 3 times a week each, you'd think someone would let me, but yet to find Faculty to discuss.



The classes I'm taking, I better tell you about them. The requirement is 15 credits, I'm doing 19. Yep, that means alotta reading. You can pick up classes from all over, which I sort of have. They are:
- After Archive with David Bunn, looking at how and why artists employ archiving techniques in their practice;
- Image & Text with Kaucila Brooke, which is a bit of a myth busting discussion class, on putting text into your work;
- Grad Crit class with Kaucila Brooke, where 2 people present their work per week, but then the following week they start the session off by disscussing how the crit went for them;
- Yoga;
- Freud & Lacan with Lesley Dick, a very cool woman who was educated in Britain and lived there for a long time, although and American, so that gives me a bit of heart;
- Arts Pedagogy with Betty Lee, which gives some discussion and context on teaching, particularly in the community;
- Globalisation with Allan Sekula, this class will be looking at Documenta and Istanbul. The 2nd years have gone on a trip there now so the class has not started yet, so not much to say at this point.

I also have 2 independent study contracts too, which I had to write a proposal for.

My class are composed of 8 girls and 2 boys, but everyone is really nice (first impressions) (but my first impressions are usually pretty accurate).

Phew! I think thats enough to report at this stage!