Day 170

I received this photo of my sister Olivia today...I almost cried when I saw it, she's changed so much since the last time I saw her in December. Judging by the photo, I think she's a full out teenager now (phone in hand DURING SCIENCE CLASS, hair band around her head in that way that I've never been able to pull off, the long hair). It actually seems like yesterday we were small little children running around without a care in the world....how sad.

Day 167

This weekend I went to Lincolnshire to visit my grandparents. They live in a beautiful village surrounded by rolling green hills.

Their backyard looks out to this…

We ventured out to the fields where my grandfather showed me where he keeps his beehives (he keeps bees in the summer):

and then relaxed in the summer home at the bottom of their garden. We talked for a long time about the past-I had this strong desire to ask them all the questions I could about their parents, sisters, the jobs they had, stories from when they were my age, stories of my mum when she was younger. It's funny how growing up has instilled me with this need to know about the past, to ask questions I didn't think twice about asking them before.

On Saturday we went to Stamford, a Medieval town just outside their village. They still have the gallows across the entrance to the town, once used to hang people.

It was a beautiful beautiful town filled with so much history. It is so well preserved which is why I think it felt like I was walking around in a different era. It was filled with lots of intricate and historical architecture and small alley ways.

Stamford is home to the oldest newspaper in England which was founded in 1695:

We took a visit to St. George’s Square which was where scenes from the film Pride and Prejudice were shot:

We then went into Tobi Norris, a restaurant/pub which building dates back to the 13th Century! It had the most amazing bathroom:

Sunday morning we went to a small pub near my grandparent’s house. It was so British! Everyone knew one another, there was a roaring fire going and I was served a huge cup of tea.

After that we went to see the Yew tress in Clipsham-a long path filled with these 200 year old trees that have been trimmed into shapes that represented England (there was one commemorating the Queen’s 80th birthday, another one inscripted with “BBC”). I felt like I was in a scene from Alice and Wonderland...

On our way back from the trees, we stopped at a local convenient store run by a 94 year old woman named Mrs. Bee (that name makes me so happy!) It was SUCH an original old British shop, filled with cans of baked beans and one pence candies.

We then headed off to the Nornanton Reservoir, the largest man made lake in England. The village of Normanton was flooded in the 1970s to build the lake, though St. Mathews Church was saved and is now a museum.

We ended up at the Burghley House, built for Queen Elizabeth I in 1555. The house is surrounded by acres and acres of land and there are deer wandering around the front…

The house itself is huge and the architecture is so beautiful.

We had a lovely weekend! I love British countryside so much- fields just make me happy.

(and so do beautiful trees)

Day 162

Ava went back to school after the holidays in her summer uniform. I love the knee high socks and when I declared that I wanted a pair, she told me that I could borrow hers.....


It's Earth Day today! The things that I do to reduce my environmental impact:
-I hardly ever say yes to plastic bags in stores (the other day I was walking back to Samantha's house with a bag of onions in my hand...got a few strange looks).
-I RECYCLE! I recycle everything that I can (unfortunately in London what you can/can't recycle is very different than in Toronto...this saddens me).
-I turn off the tap whenever I'm not using it (even turning it off while you're brushing your teeth makes a difference!)
-I bike ride/walk/take the subway wherever I can (not that I have a car or anything/can even fully drive yet...)
-I unplug my phone charger as soon as my phone is done charging.
-I try to avoid buying bottled water at all costs (I've been rubbish at this during my time in London but in Toronto I have a re-usable water bottle that I take with me everywhere).
-I turn off lights when they don't need to be on (my mother continuously telling me to turn off my bedroom light is the reason I switch off lights wherever I go).

There are definitely so many more things I could be doing: taking shorter showers, putting on a sweater instead of turning up the heat, bringing my own mug to Starbucks, hanging my clothes up instead of using the dryer...I'm working on it.

South Bank, Day 158

When I visited the Bankside area a few years back with my family, I fell in love with it and exclaimed that I would be living there while attending university in London after high school (my parents laughed at me, oh the big dreams I had...). I went back today and my feelings for the area haven't changed one bit! Shame that housing costs around a million pounds........

Bankside is on the edge of the River Thames filled with chic restaurants, cafes, markets and cobblestoned streets (I mean just look at this Starbucks...pretending for a moment of course that they don't serve rubbish coffee).


Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (a reconstruction of the theatre made by Shakespeare's company on the same site) is right along the river's edge. Walking along the river and watching all the boats pass is just beautiful. You can even see St. Paul's Cathedral in the distance.





Since the weather has been absolutely wonderful (I want to say it's summer here but don't want to jinx it) it felt like the whole of London was outdoors!

Day 157

All the way back in November, I became a photography volunteer for an organization- I was meant to take photos of certain events taking place in my area to be used in magazines and such. I thought this would be a good way to start getting my work out there but nothing really came of it until they asked a bunch of us to apply for a workshop. I was excited to be accepted but was a bit unclear as to what it was all about. Turns out that we are now the official photographers for the organization (too bad I'm leaving England in just over a month...) and the photos we took today are going to be displayed at a show hosted by the organization in May.

Documentary photographer Bryce Bennett led the eight of us through what it means to be a documentary photographer, what to look for and how to tell a story through our work. I have never been one to get into people's faces on the street with my camera so when we were sent out to practice what we had learned that morning, it was a bit nerve racking. But since we only had half an hour to get three photos which we then had to share with the rest of the group, I had to get over this pronto. Ah!

We walked around beautiful Covent Garden and I ended up with these:








I'm so not familiar with documentary photography so I kind of failed at the "telling of a story" aspect of it but I do feel more comfortable approaching people on the street with my camera.

We then went out again, this time over the Waterloo Bridge.

This man was quite excited to pose for me:

while this woman clearly was not:

Not sure I have my heart set out on becoming a documentary photographer any time soon, but all in all I learned a lot!

Afternoon 156

This morning I told Maude that it was time for her to get dressed.
She looked at me and said, "I'm not interested Andra".
She's two.

The Pursuit of Happyness, Day 155

A friend of mine really wanted us to watch The Pursuit of Happyness before I left for England but we only ended up watching the first little bit. I finally sat down to watch it with my aunts last week and was so moved.

I loved it so much because one of the messages that I took from it was that you can achieve anything if you work hard, even if there are (and there will be) obstacles along the way. I could relate to this message because I approach life with this same attitude.

But does the pursuit of happiness ever end? We live in a world where the subconscious definition of happiness that we are fed everyday can never really be achieved: we cannot all be famous, we cannot all be millionaires, we will never look or have bodies like the airbrushed models in magazines, our lives will never be as perfect as they are in the movies.

The Pursuit of Happyness got me thinking about what being happy means to me. If for a moment we could tare ourselves away from the materialistic, unattainable things that we are led to believe will make us happy, I think that we'd all realize it's the simple things in life that make us feel more fulfilled than the things society tell us will. The sad thing is, this is more easily said than done.

The simple things that make me happy
(sorry, it's long. I get a bit carried away with these sorts of lists):

summer days, the sound of my camera's shutter, spending hours lying on a beach doing nothing, passing a Starbucks, the smell of honeysuckle, hugs, the sound of cicadas, avocados, when a complete stranger smiles at me on the subway, the name Lola, my bed, Harriet, Olivia making me laugh until my stomach hurts, summertime thunderstorms, watching John Mayer/Adele perform live, my high school darkroom, Nylon Magazine, white sheets, the colour purple, serendipitous moments, The Notebook, packing a suitcase, Lola's Cupcakes, salad from "Lettuce", bike rides, tea, new bottles of shampoo, finding beauty somewhere I'd least expect to find it, white t-shirts, dancing in my kitchen, books that make me cry......the list goes on and on.

Camping, Day 151

We just got back from staying in a yurt on a beautiful farm (an organic farm!) in Gloucestershire. We were surrounded by rolling hills,

lots of cows, sheep and sunshine!

The yurt was in a forest in the middle of the fields. I actually got quite homesick, I think because camping has been my family's thing since I was little.

We took long walks,

relaxed,

and sat around the fire (which I got going every night thank-you-very-much Mother).

A couple weeks ago I got an email from a London organization looking for people to attend a documentary photo workshop. I sent in my portfolio and was excited to find out today that I got accepted! I'm really excited, I think it will be a great experience.

Excitement!!!!! Day 147

It's official! Plane tickets to Greece have been booked! I'm all jittery with excitement! May is going to be the best month ever!

I am leaving to go on holiday tomorrow with no computer so I will not be posting for a while!

xx

Morning 147

An excerpt from a longer piece I have been working on...

This Gives Away Nothing

Something close to hope glistened along the horizon of her mind, nagging at her with soft persistency like a small child demanding a mother’s attention. She was waiting. She was waiting for the curves of his breath to float in twisted disarray towards her and take form of beautiful ordinary words, perhaps caked with something like reasoning or even the vague sound of happiness.

She picked the small scab on her ankle, opening up a sore the size of a pea. Blood pooled in a small bubble, balancing precariously on the surface of her skin. She touched it, releasing the fresh pomegranate red and watched as it ran down her foot as if in a hurry to get somewhere. Anywhere but near her.

She often wondered if he thought she was a joke, wanting to preserve his words every time they left his mouth as if they were candy coated, sacred. As if all the O’s were rings made of gold and the L’s perfect little ninety degree angles, precise enough for her to sit in the crook where vertical met horizontal. As if his words could heal everything.

This gives away nothing, she thought. But she was still allowed to hope.

Day 145

I went to the Poetry Library yesterday (Olivia laughed at me when I told her this then covered herself by saying that I was "just cute". In my defence, all the museums, art galleries and iconic libraries I have visited have been so inspiring and are places that can't be found in Toronto). But anyways, the library is right beside the London Eye and Big Ben


and is home to 100,000 books of poetry, some dating all the way back to 1912. I wanted to go there to read the collection of Sylvia Plath. My English/Creative Writing teacher gifted me Wintering, a novel of Sylvia Plath after I won the creative writing award when I graduated last year. The book explores the weeks after Sylvia moved to London with her children, following the breakdown of her marriage with Ted Hughes. It was during this time she wrote Ariel (her last collection of poems before she committed suicide) and the author weaves the poems from this collection throughout the novel. I'm in the middle of reading it now and has made me appreciate Sylvia Plath's writing much more than I did before. I am beginning to read her poetry in a different way and I think this is because Wintering does such a good job at portraying who she was as a person, making her poetry even more personal than it was before. Although her poems have always echoed pain, this pain seems even more real to me knowing what she was going through when she wrote it.

The light this evening was so beautiful! Little Ava putting on her pyjamas:

Day 142

Today I went to St. Paul's Cathedral to take some photos. It is such a beautiful church (inside is breathtaking!). My nanny and grandad both used to go there on Sundays when they lived in England and it was neat to think they had been standing in the same place many years ago.



I also went to the Museum of London in an attempt to get out of the pouring rain and ended up staying for about 2.5 seconds; it was rather boring!

My dad gave me a really good idea for the portrait project I'm working on; getting the people who are posing to put on a simple white mask that covers their entire face. The photos will be effective if I'm able to capture some sort of a message, feeling or story delivered by the subject even though their facial features and expressions are hidden. I found a really great white mask and have taken some photos already but it's proving to be a bit of a challenge. A lot more thinking on my part needs to take place!