It has been 44 days since I arrived back in Oregon from my first year at Harvard (and two years to the day since my return from my year in France just putting that out there...). I like to think that I did a lot within these 44 days. Regrettably, there are also things I did not do. Here is a brief list of things that would have been good to do but I just didn't get around to.
• start a YouTube channel (though there's a chance I'll actually start later in the summer when it'll be more interesting)
• acquire a camera for this YouTube channel (though come on, there's a webcam camera...)
• write more entries in this blog, i.e. entries whose titles I actually have saved somewhere in case I ever felt like writing but didn't actually do it (are you wondering what I'd have to say on how I can relate to a certain tortoise or how at this point Pinterest governs my life? Too bad, your curiosity won't be fulfilled anytime soon)
• meet the man of my dreams (the likelihood of this happening in Oregon is next to nothing because the man of my dreams is probably in some far-off country anyway, unless he happened to be some French guy going on a solo trip across the west coast of the USA)
• see certain people (I had this very "I'm not gonna bother making plans with anyone unless they wanna see me" mentality, but I did get around to seeing a few good friends!)
• put more songs on my SoundCloud (I guess social media-ing isn't really my thing, as I tend to not be on the Instagram I finally made this summer too much either)
• actually complete the 30 day fitness challenge I said I was gonna do (though in my favor, I did also do Zumba on some days which could make up for the days I ignored the challenge)
Anyway, now that those disappointments are laid out and quasi-forgotten, here are the things that I did accomplish yay.
Math
I have a love-hate relationship with math. I could go on and on about it. But to cut a long story short and because there are more interesting things to write about, I took a free calculus course online (thanks Coursera!) whose lectures were taught by a guy who went to Harvard (made me feel better somehow). I don't want to be completely screwed (read: I'm paranoid) when I take calculus next semester, so it was good to at least get a general idea of what I'll probably be learning.
Español
Este verano trabajé en una heladería mexicana que pertenece a una familia que conozco desde muchos años. Contratan solo amigos y amigas de la familia, y cuando aprendieron que estaba buscando un trabajo y que quise aprender español, me dijeron que podría trabajar allá. Así aprendí mucho sobre la cultura mexicana (quisiera una chamoyada? Una bola de helada con sabor de mamey?) y practiqué a hablar con los patrones. La mayoría de ellos fue mexicana, y por eso mi español pudo mejorarse poco a poco. Tenía también una tutora que me ayudó con ciertos conceptos gramaticales (como el subjuntivo). Después de un mes en Bolivia, espero hablar con más fluidez que tengo ahora!
Piano
My motivation to practice piano went way up after Annie and I decided we would have a joint recital next semester. After deciding on a repertoire, I went and practiced the six pieces that I'm going to be playing during this fabulous event. I have two solos (one American piece and one Filipino piece hehe), and Annie and I are performing four duets. It's going to be so much fun! I'm glad I had the time to learn the pieces.
Art
Art is something I wish I had a lot more time to do, which I barely ever do when I'm at school. It was my intent this summer to get some decent pieces of art done, and I'm proud to say that I was able to do a lot of art.
First, I found this 30 day drawing challenge on Pinterest (which governs my life btw) that I knew I wanted to do over the summer. Here are some examples of drawings I did to follow it:
I wish I could say that I stayed true to the challenge and only drew each day's specified challenge without going back to modify previous days', but on two occasions I completely forgot to do it at all. The first one was for "Something new," which actually kinda made sense, because I hadn't previously forgotten to do a challenge, so the "something new" was the blank page representing my forgetting. The second one I forgot to do was "A couple." I guess I had just been trying to block thoughts that even remotely relate to romance in my head, so much to the point that I succeeded in forgetting something I had been doing so religiously. To put something on the page because leaving it blank had already been done, I hastily took colored pens and drew two stick figures and wrote "OOPS lol sorry."
I got around to doing some considerably impressive pencil works. I even took pictures throughout the process so I could look at the drawings evolving. This first one is a detail of a Louis Faurer photograph.
Writing
I didn't anticipate doing this this summer, but what's nice of not having too many things on the to-do list means there's a lot of room for opportunities to come up spontaneously. The Harvard Bookstore wants to publish an anthology of travel writing called "Around the World" and is basically holding a contest to pick pieces of writing to publish. After wondering what I should possibly write about (there were too many things that I could have chosen), I decided to write a tribute to my group of girl friends from Eurotour, Les Filles Formidables. It's written in the form of vignettes, one per country that we visited, with my usual philosophizing at the beginning and end. It turned out very well. Should it be chosen, and I hope it will, I'll probably post it on this blog (all 3,560 or so words of it, hehe).
I also drew an accompanying illustration in the hopes that it'll also be chosen for publication, using one of my most favorite pictures ever as reference (it was taken in Venice).
All in all, I'd say it's already been a very productive summer, and the real excitement hasn't even happened yet.
See you in less than three days, Poland. I'm finally coming back.
• start a YouTube channel (though there's a chance I'll actually start later in the summer when it'll be more interesting)
• acquire a camera for this YouTube channel (though come on, there's a webcam camera...)
• write more entries in this blog, i.e. entries whose titles I actually have saved somewhere in case I ever felt like writing but didn't actually do it (are you wondering what I'd have to say on how I can relate to a certain tortoise or how at this point Pinterest governs my life? Too bad, your curiosity won't be fulfilled anytime soon)
• meet the man of my dreams (the likelihood of this happening in Oregon is next to nothing because the man of my dreams is probably in some far-off country anyway, unless he happened to be some French guy going on a solo trip across the west coast of the USA)
• see certain people (I had this very "I'm not gonna bother making plans with anyone unless they wanna see me" mentality, but I did get around to seeing a few good friends!)
• put more songs on my SoundCloud (I guess social media-ing isn't really my thing, as I tend to not be on the Instagram I finally made this summer too much either)
• actually complete the 30 day fitness challenge I said I was gonna do (though in my favor, I did also do Zumba on some days which could make up for the days I ignored the challenge)
Anyway, now that those disappointments are laid out and quasi-forgotten, here are the things that I did accomplish yay.
Math
I have a love-hate relationship with math. I could go on and on about it. But to cut a long story short and because there are more interesting things to write about, I took a free calculus course online (thanks Coursera!) whose lectures were taught by a guy who went to Harvard (made me feel better somehow). I don't want to be completely screwed (read: I'm paranoid) when I take calculus next semester, so it was good to at least get a general idea of what I'll probably be learning.
Español
Este verano trabajé en una heladería mexicana que pertenece a una familia que conozco desde muchos años. Contratan solo amigos y amigas de la familia, y cuando aprendieron que estaba buscando un trabajo y que quise aprender español, me dijeron que podría trabajar allá. Así aprendí mucho sobre la cultura mexicana (quisiera una chamoyada? Una bola de helada con sabor de mamey?) y practiqué a hablar con los patrones. La mayoría de ellos fue mexicana, y por eso mi español pudo mejorarse poco a poco. Tenía también una tutora que me ayudó con ciertos conceptos gramaticales (como el subjuntivo). Después de un mes en Bolivia, espero hablar con más fluidez que tengo ahora!
Piano
My motivation to practice piano went way up after Annie and I decided we would have a joint recital next semester. After deciding on a repertoire, I went and practiced the six pieces that I'm going to be playing during this fabulous event. I have two solos (one American piece and one Filipino piece hehe), and Annie and I are performing four duets. It's going to be so much fun! I'm glad I had the time to learn the pieces.
Art
Art is something I wish I had a lot more time to do, which I barely ever do when I'm at school. It was my intent this summer to get some decent pieces of art done, and I'm proud to say that I was able to do a lot of art.
First, I found this 30 day drawing challenge on Pinterest (which governs my life btw) that I knew I wanted to do over the summer. Here are some examples of drawings I did to follow it:
 |
| My "Favorite candy" is actually a Filipino magazine called Candy, and a turning point in my life was when I crossed the Pacific Ocean to move to the USA. |
 |
| It took me forever to decide what to do for Day 28, so I made up my own prompt. This is a drawing of a picture I love very much of my good friend Maya and me from when we were living in France. |
I got around to doing some considerably impressive pencil works. I even took pictures throughout the process so I could look at the drawings evolving. This first one is a detail of a Louis Faurer photograph.
This one is a picture of my adorable Polish host brother, Konrad.
Finally, this third one is a portrait of my good friend Magaly.
Since I'm also a painting aficionado, I did this painting of a bangka (Philippine boat) that I'm going to be giving as a gift. (I like to give my hosts when I travel such things so I can say that I literally have my art displayed around the world) It ended up being primarily out of oil, though watercolors, acrylics, and pencil also played an important role in its creation. I'm actually really proud of it.
 |
| Ugh, it took forever to get the line art just right in comparison to the reference pic. |
 |
| Oils to start coloring the boat |
 |
| Water and sky with a watercolor base. I ended up making the brown part a lot darker so the white I'd add later would contrast properly |
 |
| Foam out of acrylic, details on deeper water out of oil |
 |
| Clouds out of oil |
 |
| Finally, the wires supporting the bamboo parts of the boat were added with pencil. |
Ahhh, details that fall under the responsibility of my hands to capture. Part of what makes art so fun.
Writing
I didn't anticipate doing this this summer, but what's nice of not having too many things on the to-do list means there's a lot of room for opportunities to come up spontaneously. The Harvard Bookstore wants to publish an anthology of travel writing called "Around the World" and is basically holding a contest to pick pieces of writing to publish. After wondering what I should possibly write about (there were too many things that I could have chosen), I decided to write a tribute to my group of girl friends from Eurotour, Les Filles Formidables. It's written in the form of vignettes, one per country that we visited, with my usual philosophizing at the beginning and end. It turned out very well. Should it be chosen, and I hope it will, I'll probably post it on this blog (all 3,560 or so words of it, hehe).
I also drew an accompanying illustration in the hopes that it'll also be chosen for publication, using one of my most favorite pictures ever as reference (it was taken in Venice).
All in all, I'd say it's already been a very productive summer, and the real excitement hasn't even happened yet.
See you in less than three days, Poland. I'm finally coming back.
Comments
Post a Comment