Light painting in St. George's Cemetery.

Haiku-a-day:

Feb 22^nd

Crunch time is hard to

deal with when you are busy

meeting new people!

Haiku Rant

I swear I will

have to create

a new poem scheme

made out of just

four syllables

per line because

every time

I try to write

a haiku I

find that lines are

easier to

come up with when

they only have

four syllables.

(this “poem” not

representing

a very good

example, nor

to be confused

with a Than-Bauk

which has a rhyme).

First of all, thank you to everyone who has sent me letters!  They are much appreciated!!!  =)  I love getting mail!  

It's very odd to think about how close I am to being done with this whole semester.  Think about this with me for a minute (this thought occurred to me about a month ago).  Classes began at the very end of January.  We have class all of February and all of March.  The entire month of April is Spring Break.  When Spring Break is over, we have ONE week of regular classes in May, followed immediately by a "Reading Week" (where you write essays and study for your exams), and then you have 3 weeks of finals.  I have 4 classes, 1 final for all.  Guess what, that means that I have TONS of free time then!  To sum up my thought: I will be here for ~6 months, and out of those 6, 2 will be spent doing school!  Isn't that something?!  What a hoot!  (Michelle, I hope you liked that.  I happened to glance over at the card you sent me [that I received today!] and that inspired me to write that last line!)  

For those of you not yet aware, I had a major let down a few weeks ago.  I found out that I would not be getting a summer internship at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.  Their library internships, it turns out, are only being offered right now to graduate students in SLIS (School of Library and Information Studies) and photography majors (1 open position for this).  So, I believe I will simply extend my time in England.  There is a group of people who are putting together a trip in late June to go to the biggest art fair in the world (or so I've been told) which is held in Switzerland, so I believe I will go to that.  These plans are tentative right now of course, but I believe extending my trip will be the best option.  I paid for my flat in Leeds until July 5th (or some time around then), so I might as well get my money's worth, right?!

Today, besides doing a TON of reading (I am 126 pages into my 2nd 600 pages novel for English), I took a break to go to a Leeds student club.  My friend Sara and I have been going to the Leeds University Photography Society.  They begin by giving a lecture on various things related to photography, then have a question and answer time, then go to the Terrace for drinks.  Last week the lecture was on the rights of photographers (photographers being anyone with a camera, not just professionals!).  Tonight we learned about light painting, then took a "field trip" down the street to the cemetery attached to the campus.  They chose the cemetery because it was close and decently dark.  It was quite neat to see so many people grouped around various areas of the grounds making odd, jumping or waving movements with flashlights (or "torches" as they called them!) and cell phones to get a cool turnout on their DSLR cameras.  There were probably around 50 people, I would estimate.  The society is huge!  Sara, myself, and our new friend Kiara, made light paintings for the first time.  We began with simple shapes (squiggles, hearts, circles, etc.) then progressed throughout the night to body art: one of us would stand in front of the camera and another person would hide behind them taking a bike light and tracing the body's figure while the last person took the photo.  It turned out to be really cool.  And though it was a cold night, it was worth learning something new and meeting new people. 

Sara making an 8, me a heart.

Sara making a circle, Kiara a heart.

Kiara making squiggles, me a fish.

I wish I could make the photos bigger, but facebook is mean and has made it much harder to take photos from them (the pictures were not taken with my camera, so I don't have the original files).