I was totally going to do a blog post about my weekend!

maybe I still will, but instead, for the past two hours I have been working on my blog post for my photography class. I had such a hard time for the first time ever coming up with the writing part. I just wanted to take pictures of windows, not write anything about it. Also, if you looked at my assignment last week, where I didn't write a complete sentence, and wrote the same thing over and over again, I got a hundred percent on the writing part. Gooooood...anyway. Couldn't think of a way to specifically leave out text, so it gets a bit cheesy. Hope it's just more "sensory" than corny though.

I got this idea from my mom, who took TONS of pictures of windows on our last trip to France, Poland, Switzerland, Slovenia, Germany, etc. and then put some of them into one of those frames that is like a frame for about a dozen pictures. Anyway, I liked it, and I decided to do something similar...Here it is:

I like when people use windows as metaphors.

You know the metaphors I'm talking about. They include wonderful things like windows to people's hearts and souls;
windows of opportunity, and hope;
to goodness
and love
and friendship.

I wonder what the people inside of the windows would say
as they look out into the streets of Southern France,
scowling or laughing,
speaking or smoking or drinking coffee.

I wonder as my fingers itch to throw open their shudders
and find hope or love or beauty.
Maybe I would find a small room,
perhaps decorated similar to my hotel room I've already seen,
with a wooden table and chair,
and a vase full of fake sunflowers.

So, what do you think? I took most, if not all of those pictures in Arles. It took forEVer to line all of them up. More pictures to come...

Cuties

outside of a french school over by St. Germain des Près

Sometimes I get REALLY jealous of the perks of being a male:

This was at the Louvre. I was probably 15 minutes late for class.

I wonder:

why they don't give the men's bathroom like two stalls and the extras to the women's side?

Things that should be red flags:

(this was all in the same day.)

-eating two whole bars of kinder buenos (that means 4 sticks), unpeeling each wrapper right after one another and popping them into my mouth without thinking.

-buying an almond croissant after class. Said class included chocolate tasting.

-sneaking bread from the kitchen after dinner.

-Not having gone on a run for about a week and a half.

Something's happening and it's not good...I did so well the first month and a bit!

time to remember self-control.

one other favorite thing in Ireland:

jane got stuck inside my computer.

also, last week, i got a good grade on my photo essay basically because i didn't really write anything. the week before, i got way marked down because i wrote way too much. i didn't want some people to interpret my photos their own way. i wanted them to know the specific reasons i took the pictures. but, my professor likes ambiguity, and letting the viewer make connections, and everything. anyway, since not writing worked so well, i tried it again. don't think it will work, but we'll see. let me know if you could make some sense of it. my professor's hard to do homework for. he loved my project last week that i really didn't like at all, and didn't like the one before, which was my favorite. so, we'll see.

Favorite Things about our trip to Ireland:

almost missing our flight because line one was down. Especially bad because no one else in the group knew where we were going, staying, how to get there, what to do, etc. Realizing only as I was walking out to the plane from the gate that we had indeed made the flight.

realizing we couldn't make our connection to Dingle because there was no bus going there that night. Non-summer hours are a lot more limited than in July. Woops!



listening to "Elephant" by Damien Rice until my ears wanted to fall out. I never realized before how satisfying that one part in the bridge is. Please listen.

Listening to Damien Rice in general while we spent long hours on the bus.



Eating a lot of bourbon creams and corners yogurt...

coming into Dingle, renting bikes, and taking five other girls on a 30 mile bike ride that they thought was going to be about eight miles. I never insinuated this. Someone talked to someone on the plane who said they did an eight mile loop. So, no one had any idea what they were getting into. Except for me, but I had forgotten how long it was except for a last grueling hill. Woops! They were all grateful later that they really had no idea what that bike ride entailed. Except for Kirsten would still have done it even if she knew. She would have done it twice.

Taking this picture SOLELY for the purpose of trying to make Whitney jealous (compare here):

a few photo shoots:

Rachel, senior pictures anyone? and...yeah.

I legitimately thought that Cami was going to kill me right here. She was a bit angry that I led her to believe differently than she felt...we were about 25 miles into the ride. She was considering turning around at mile number four.

Cute animals. Especially because they aren't all dirty and gross
like the pigeons and dogs here in Paris.

With ridiculous luck, it was a beautiful day on Saturday, and the man at the hostel tried to convince Cami and I to ride our bikes to the base of Mt. Brandon and then hike the mountain. Cami had vowed the day before that she would never again ride a bike. When we proceeded to go out the door to visit shops, he offered to drive us up in his car and then we could walk back to Dingle and enjoy the beautiful, clear view. He had room for four people in his car. We had six. Kirsten and I sat in the trunk. We all went. There was a hill higher than where the hostel guy (I really wish I knew his name) took us, so Kirsten and I climbed it. Obviously.

it was that hill. And then we walked from the top along the ridge back to Dingle.

Then we completely soaked our chacos and feet into basically the bog of the peak of the mountain, and made our way down through sheep poop and over about ten fences and did some unintentional sheep-worrying. It was ABsoLUtely BRILliant.

marshy summit and ancient ruin of really old shelter...called a beehive or something?

Rachel being groped (on accident) by the B&B lady whose place we stayed at last night. I stood awkwardly in the corner while Cami and Rachel talked her down from 25 to 20 euros.

Never Having to use my rain jacket.

Getting to know these girls better:

Kirsten, Caitlin, Cami, Me, Camille, Rachel.

Yay!

Dingle, Ireland

I'm going to Ireland tomorrow. Back to the same place I went to just last July. It is one of my favorite places in the whole world, and I get to show five more people how much beauty is in this wonderful place. We found tickets for about 30 euros. not bad

I know, the weather will probably not allow us to sit and read in the middle of fall.



Whitney, you probably hate Kirsten and I right now. As a preemptive strike, I hate you for going hiking and playing frisbee and hanging out with Sydney and other people, but mostly there are pictures of Sydney. But just know, that when I am riding my bike looking at someone in front of me on a bike, all I will be able to think about is your red raincoat. I will be the one with the computer this time, being asked by people to check their emails, and having to get my computer out at security while they wait. And maybe I'll be the one pulling ticks out of people's forearms. And when we go to the grocery store, I will think of you meticulously preparing a meal, and your muesli, and your little squeal when you were really happy and excited when we would see beautiful things. And when you would say, "I'm so heappy," like someone from Wisconsin, and then I would do it on accident. And I will feel like I should be reading The Book Thief while I am riding the bus. But the man at the desk in the nook by the stairs at our hostel will probably still be there, along with that math teacher girl, and maybe even that musical group in the pub. This time I will only have my study abroad backpack, and I won't have to wheel around a suitcase that is missing a wheel and hate my life while I am trying to wheel that suitcase that was 45 pounds in Edinburgh, and 15 kilos to Ireland. After I had bought a lot of things. And I won't be wearing the clothes I had been wearing for a month, that I got sick of when we were in Italy because reading and breathing and seeing and commuting became much more important than showering and wearing flattering clothing. (hence the skirt/raincoat/chaco combination in the picture. what?) But Bentley will not be trying to convince us to dance on the tables, and you will not be there with me to walk on the pier of Dingle bay on that clear, beautiful, chilly night and to look at the reflections of the fishing boats, and at the graying sky, and the beautiful, dark green hills and the ocean laid out in front of us, and think to ourselves, this is where we should be.