Filed under: Lauren Selden, art, emily carr institute, film and video, personal intrests, vancouver | Tags: emily carr institute, experimental film, Lauren Selden, memory
This is a story about stories. My grandfather is a terrific storyteller, I’ve always admired his talent, and lately I’ve been trying out storytelling myself. I think what makes my grandfathers’ stories so entrancing is that they are all real, perhaps embellished upon over the years, but real nonetheless. And besides, embellishment is part of the natural growth of memory.
My favorite story to hear is the story of the dog’s stomach. Now I’ve begun to tell it myself to friends- its the perfect, slightly gory anecdote. Hearing myself tell the story is so entirely different from the way my grandfather, who lived it, tells it. I think as the story passes through more hands, more generations, it begins to gain a sort of warmth and surrealness. I wanted to capture the evolution of storytelling with this short experimental film, Memory Stones. Enjoy, and think about how you would tell the story.
Filed under: Ireland, personal intrests, travel | Tags: architecture, Dublin, Dublin Castle, emily carr institute, Ireland, Lauren Selden, Luas, NCAD, study abroad, travel
Today was the first day of classes at NCAD, I took the train in to school and, after getting slightly lost, I made it there at 10:20. The school seems tiny from the street but today the big gate was open and when you walk inside you realize the school is huge! It’s probably 3 times the size of Emily Carr University.
I met with my tutor for the semester, as well as some of the students in my year. Their system is much different from ours at home, instead of having classes with separate teachers each year is assigned one tutor who keeps tabs on you, mostly though bi-weekly meetings. There are also lectures you are able to attend, as well as technical seminars (so I gather). The media department seems quite small- I think there are only 16-20 students in my year. There are only 11 fourth year students. This might be because the media department here is fairly new- I think the program is about 6 years old.
The students seem very nice, I was surprised to learn that there are no other students on exchange from Canada- I think there is one girl from the US though. Apparently most students come here from Europe only- because its closer to home. I had lunch today with two exchange students from France, they were both very nice, and hopefully I will meet more people from school as the week carries on. Our café at the school is downstairs in the basement, the food is pretty gross- mostly potatos and beans and sausages- so I think I will be bringing my meals with me or eating somewhere else. The café looks like it’s a subway station- pretty cool. It’s all brick and there are little oval alcoves with glass block skylights above- you can see people walking on the street up above.
After school, I walked back to my Luas stop, taking my time and enjoying the sights. I stopped for a bit at Dublin Castle, which is beautiful and also right in the middle of the city!
Like my school, from the outside, the castle doesn’t look like much, but once you walk through the gates . . .
. . . you realize how huge the place is! It’s really beautiful just to walk around outside and admire the architecture. What I like about Dublin is that there are loads of beautiful old brick and stone buildings, and then right next to them you can see brand new, modern glass and steel structures. It’s a great combination, I think. Walking around Dublin is really nice, but I’ve been having a lot of trouble crossing the streets. It’s tough remembering which way to look for oncoming traffic- even though at some crosswalks they have arrows painted on the streets to show you where to look. There are walk/dont walk lights at the crosswalks- but they take forever to light up- and no one seems to pay attention to them. Everyone jay-walks and crosses whenever they can, I felt like a bit of a dork standing at the corner waiting for the walk sign. As if crossing the streets weren’t bad enough, the buses here are double-deckers and its insanely terrifying to watch the bus come hurtling towards you on the road, especially as it turns sharp corners onto the tiny little one way streets that cover downtown.
Tomorrow I think I might go on a bus tour of the city, maybe it will help me get my bearings a little bit more. I’ll leave you with some photos of my walk to and from school to my house in Milltown. Today started out grey and windy but by mid-afternoon the sun was able to peak out of the clouds! I haven’t even had to use my umbrella yet! If you would like to see more photos of my trip you can visit my Flickr page, here
Filed under: Lauren Selden, aura, emily carr institute, food, personal intrests, travel, vancouver | Tags: Dublin, emily carr institute, Euro, food, Ireland, Lauren Selden, NCAD, study abroad, travel
Things are great here in Dublin, its actually much warmer than in Vancouver, and very mild – although it is chilly and windy. No snow to be found, and actually my roommate says that it hardly ever snows in here. (yay!)
My flat is super nice, a bit away from the city but still very nice and in a good, safe area. We have a cute little garden and the kitchen and bathroom are beautiful and modern (thank goodness!) For now I’m sleeping in the spare room in the attic, it has 4 skylights! The the stairs leading up to it are quite steep and narrow- but I’m sure I will get used to that. I move downstairs into the bigger bedroom on the 13th January.
Yesterday I arrived home(here) around 3pm, exhausted and frustrated because of my poor shattered and completely destroyed suitcase. (you can see from the photo above that one wheel was torn off- and that’s not even the worst of the damage!) The airport people were not very helpful but my taxi driver was extremely nice, thank goodness! Johanna my roommate (whose room I will be taking over later on) was home and we sat and had tea for a bit, then I cleaned up and we ran some errands in a cute little part of town (reminded me a bit of 4th ave or maybe Main street in Vancouver). I had a great warm salad of grilled vegetables and red pepper cous cous which was delicious, at a little cafe/restaurant there and we had my key made and did a bit of grocery shopping.
EVERYTHING here is expensive. Euros are scary!! Plus they have weird amounts of coins, 2 cents, 20 cents, along with the usual 1, 5, 10 and 50. Strange!
Today I slept in, then headed downtown to the tourism office in search of a map of the city. The tourist office is in a huge old church, pretty amazing! All the buildings here are beautiful.
I forgot to bring my camera out with me today so you’ll have to trust my descriptions of Dublin. When I first noticed I’d forgotten my camera, I was crushed, but then I realized that I will have the next four months to take photos, its nice to be able to just walk about and relax without having to worry about documenting everything.
Found a map, and a power adapter and then headed for a walk to my new school, being Sunday it was closed of course- most smaller shops and institutions in Dublin are closed Sunday. But I had a good walk around the city and enjoyed looking at all the architecture, even if it can be challenging to walk on the cobblestone streets.
Another strange thing about Dublin is that there are NO STREET SIGNS ANYWHERE! Some of the buildings have the street name written on them along with the number, which was helpful when I was trying to find my way to school. Thank god I had a map to follow the streets along with, as well as a good sense of direction- or I might have gotten lost.
Above, you can see the area that I’m living in, downtown Dublin is further up and to the right of the area in the photo. If you can tell, behind our house there is a beautiful little river and hills, with a trail that goes along it. I will have to cross over the river in the mornings as I go to the train station. It’s a picturesque walk. The train here is very similar to the skytrain in Vancouver, and is called Luas. It takes only 10 minutes, maybe less to get to the city center probably the equivalent of 3 stops or so on the Vancouver Skytrain.
Now I’m settling down with my computer for a while, and planning a relaxing night in. Tomorrow morning I will have my first day at school- I’m very nervous about it, but hopefully all goes well!
