:(

I've been very very sad the past few days because of some personal reasons, so I might be scarce here for a while. I've been trying to stay busy with school work and such. I had photography class today, and made two new prints. We also developed a new roll of film today, so I will get to make prints with them starting next week. Here are the prints from today:

They took a lot longer than some of my other ones, as I changed the filter a lot on the one of the street grate. It was too dark the first time, then it was too light, so I switched back to the original filter, but exposed it for less time. I'm not totally happy with the one of the tree. The picture I have here is only the first rendition, as I didn't have enough time to futz with it. I may try to print it again next week. We'll see. I'd rather spend a little more time on one print and be really happy with it than print out a few I'm not really pleased with. I never knew photography was so involved. I really really like it, though. It's kind of soothing. It requires a lot of concentration, but it's enjoyable to be able to control every part of it.

I'll try and get back here next week. Love from Glasgow.

London, baby!

So it was a total whirlwind of a weekend. I left my flat Thursday afternoon, took a bus to the Glasgow International Airport, took a 45-minute plane ride to the London Stansted Airport, took a train to Central London then took the Underground to the East end. By the time I got there, I was wiped out. But no rest for the wicked! As soon as I arrived, my friend Kristin told me that we needed to go to a film studio and act for her friend. Um... what? So I took my bag back to her flat, ate a quick PB&J and then went to the film studio so we could put together a recreation of the opening scene to Shaun of the Dead. It took about 2 hours, but it was pretty fun. It was just a very odd introduction to London. Her friend brought us drinks later to say thanks. So it ended up being a nice night. The next day Kristin and I went shopping at a big shopping mall further out east. Which is dangerous when they have shops like Primark and H&M which are dirt cheap. I might have bought a few things... And I found this nifty store. :)Now the rest of these are in the opposite order of when I took them... but you get the idea. We went sightseeing both Sunday and Monday. Saturday was also sightseeing and going to museums and shopping, but I forgot to take pictures. Whoops. So here I am with the Tower Bridge.
This is the famous castle right next to the Tower Bridge. I guess I'm really getting used to Scotland, because this looks nothing like a castle to me. :)

A better view of the Tower Bridge.

The London Underground map. Yikes! I'm glad I had someone with me for most trips. Much more confusing than the Chicago El.

St. Paul's Cathedral, where Princess Diana and Prince Charles were married.

The view along the Thames. You can see the London Eye in the distance, which is a HUGE ferris wheel.

Parliament, which is attached to Big Ben.We ate lunch in this courtyard (in the SUNSHINE!!).

Big Ben and parliament.

A view down a London street. It was a beautiful day. I'm used to Glasgow weather, which is rain, rain, rain and maybe some rain. It only rained once during the whole weekend in London, and most of the time it was really sunny. My body didn't know what to do with all the sun. My eyes started to hurt.

Missy and I in front of Buckingham Palace. I found out that when the flag is flying it means the Queen is in the palace. I had a mini freak out, thinking that I was thisclose to the Queen of England. It was a weird moment.

And this is the monument in from of Buckingham Palace. I think it's a tribute to Queen Victoria (I can't really remember. All the history I learned over the weekend really blended together).
So that's my sightseeing! London was a beautiful and bustling city. However... I really wouldn't want to live there. It was overwhelming. I like Glasgow SO much better. Yeah, the weather is terrible, but it's a real "people's town". You can tell people live and work and party and die here. It's gritty and down to earth and real. I'm really getting attached to it, can you tell? Anyways. I think my friends are planning to come visit me at some point, which would be amazing. I'm really excited to show off my hood.

Other than London, I haven't been doing many interesting things! School is picking up and I have essays coming out of my ears. Which is odd for me, because I don't really write essays at home! I take almost exclusively science and math courses, so the fact that 3 of the 4 classes I'm taking now have nothing to do with science is a big change for me. I kind of forgot how to read analytically... it's definitely been an interesting semester so far. And get this... only a month left of classes! It's FLOWN by so far. I can't believe I've been here almost two months already. I hope I get to do some more traveling soon. I would really like to get to mainland Europe. We'll see!

London!

Yep, I'm in London right now. I got here on Thursday evening and I'm heading back to Glasgow tonight. I'll update with all sorts of pictures in the next few days. Love from the UK!

Happy Valentine's Day

Hope everyone has a great day. Much love from Glasgow. :)

Slacker

Sorry I've been slacking on posting. I've been busy all week. Classwork, going out, prancing about town with my new hair. It takes up a lot of time. :) I managed to get a few photos of the pretty courtyard on campus. Most of it looks like Hogwarts!Absolutely gorgeous.
I am so in love with this campus. It doesn't look real sometimes. And for fun, some dry shampoo that I bought.The fragrance is called "Proud and True Brit." Which just kills me. I understand that the British have a lot of national pride... but a fragrance? If anything I would assume "Brit" scent would smell like tea and crumpets or haggis. It actually smells quite pleasant.

I had my photography class again today, and we spent the whole three hours just printing. I managed to get 5 pictures printed. It's such a labor intensive process! It can take almost half an hour just to print one picture. You have to put the negative into the enlarger, set up your easel, focus the enlargement, choose a filter, make a test strip to check the exposure time and then finally you can make the full sized print. And after all that, you might not like it, so you have to do it all over again! It sure makes you appreciate each picture a lot more. Here they are. Keep in mind, these are pictures of pictures, and they look a lot better in person. Even so, I am not by nature a photographer. They are not art by any means. But I like them.
I'm excited for future printing sessions. There are about 6 more pictures I really want to print.

New hair

So. I cut my hair this weekend. Like... really cut it. I love it though! I haven't done anything else that's interesting, so just revel in the wonder that is my new hair. :)

Better!

I took a much better picture today of my one print.Hopefully I have a few other winners in my roll!

So...

Photography is kind of awesome. We finally printed pictures today. I only had enough time to make one print (it is a veeeery time consuming process), but I really love the one I got. I had to futz around with it a lot (I made two copies before the final one) until I got it the way I liked it. We started the day making contact sheets, which are just teetiny images made directly from the negatives. You just lay the negatives on the photo paper, lay glass on top and shine light on it. So the pictures are the size of the negative. But it's really interesting because they look completely different. Pictures that look like snot in negative form are all of a sudden works of art. And unfortunately, it goes the other way, too. I was really excited about a few of them, only to find out they were over or under exposed. Which is really sad, when you happened to have caught a really cool moment. Almost all my Highland pictures were too dark. DARN IT ALL. But here is the one print I finally finished (note, this is a picture of a picture, in Photobooth, nonetheless. It looks a lot better in real life! Also, I had to turn it a bit to avoid the reflection of the computer screen):If you can see, it looks kind of hazy. I originally thought I had smudged the negative or something, but that's really how the picture was taken. I think it looks like something out of an old book that's been tucked in a corner of a library for 50 years. I'm in love, if you can't tell. There are 4 lovely ladies from Japan in my class, and they were all obsessed with it. One even offered me money for it. I politely declined, but wow! It sure was a lucky shot. Because we were only given one roll of film, every picture I took was of something different. I didn't bother to take multiples of anything, changing different camera settings. Anything I happened to get was by chance. So yay for lucky shots!

Slowly coming alive

I still don't feel 100% yet. My sore throat keeps switching sides. It finally leaves the left side... only to start hurting on the right side. And so on. And it's making my ears hurt, too. I'm getting rather fed up with it all. Anyways. Because of that, I haven't been very adventurous all week. I took a few pictures of campus:
As you can see by the lens flare (evidence of my wonderful photography skills) it was actually sunny! I've been spoiled by the past few days. It's been surprisingly Minnesota-like. Sunny, clear, bright and COLD. It was -6 degrees Celsius today. Brrr. So I've been very bundled up, but dry, at least. Also... how gorgeous is this campus?! It still stuns me, and I've been here a month (which also stuns me). I need to get pictures of the courtyard which is in the center of the main building (the one with the huge spire). I didn't even know it existed until my friend Martin showed me around campus. I could have sworn I was in Hogwarts. And then we got chased off the grass by a disgruntled security guard. I would have felt worse about it if I hadn't been laughing so hard. We scampered out quickly and I had to hold onto a railing while I collected myself. I'll try to get pictures of it tomorrow. Hopefully the weather will hold. In other news... look what was sent to me!OM NOM NOM. I got it yesterday and it's already about 1/3 gone. I've been eating it by the spoonful. There is a long story behind it all, but essentially, I thought the package was something else I had ordered online and when I opened it expecting clothes and instead found peanut butter, I was very pleased. So pleased, actually, I almost cried. It was just what I needed. Who knew the key to my heart was peanut butter shaped?

In other news, I finally started knitting the pair of socks I bought yarn for ages ago. I'm always shocked at how soothing it is to me. I lose myself in knitting. It's my therapy. It can be incredibly challenging (like starting the toe of a sock. While doing that, I frequently let slip a barrage of words that would make a sailor blush) or it can be monotonous to the point of boring. I just like having something to busy my hands. Reading can only get me so far. So, here is the very start of a toe. I'm just past the point of sailor-blush-swearing. Smooth sailing from here.Tomorrow is my photography class. We will finally be making prints of our negatives! So maybe I'll fiiiinally have something to show you all. Maybe? Don't hold me to it, I anticipate printing to be a very laborious process. Hopefully I can resist the urge to grab my film and find the nearest photo printing station...