A Mix of Life

This week has been one of those weeks that I both love and hate at the same time.

It's been busy with working on homework and other outside activities such as the lecture on Modern Egyptian history that we had on Sunday, yesterday's movie night (which I will elaborate more on as you all know my love of movies) and the girl's night that will occur tomorrow night as the start to my wonderful weekend. Well...hopefully wonderful weekend. 

The nice thing about being busy with all of this stuff is that it allows me to forget about all the social skills that I lack that are now coming into view. I don't mean for this post to be a downer and I promise I'll end it on a good note, but for now I need to vent. 

-Begin ramblings of feelings.-  

It has occurred to me, in the three weeks I've been in Egypt, that I don't think I will find anyone who will be my "travel buddy". The someone that just goes with me when I want to go somewhere or the someone who calls me when they want to do something. I'm finding out that the girls here just don't understand me and I'm unsure as to what the boys think. I mean, we get along fine in classes and when we hang out in groups it seems fine, but outside of that, I feel like I'm pushing myself out there to make friends and its all for nothing. I have to really make it known if I want to go somewhere or do something or I have to be there when plans are decided or I'm left out in the cold. 


My one flatmate, Garrett, has Egyptian friends from college living here and so she's often running off with them. My other flatmate, Ann, gives me this vibe of not really liking me. Like I'm an obnoxious little flea that she just wishes she could get rid of. The other girls all live together and while I want to be their friend, Haley just sort of ignores me, Lindley is ok, Shruti doesn't understand what I'm saying half of the time and Rebecca is lumped in with Haley and Lindley.


I don't know why this is either. I've been as nice and friendly as I can and I'm still not getting anywhere with anyone. I'm hoping that this is just the first three weeks being awkward, but I'm unsure. And in a way, it's making me angry. I just want to do things on my weekends so that I don't feel like I'm wasting my time in Cairo. But, as of right now, I guess that means I have to go it alone. 


-End ramblings of feelings.-


So, now that you've actually seen some feeling coming from me...as most of you never see any kind of feeling come from me or from this blog anyway...now you have. I hope that this post changes in the next few days/weeks, but I don't know. 


In other news, the lecture on Sunday night wasn't too bad. But, we did try to cram a lot of history into a short period of time. Probably not the best idea, but it had to happen. We all needed to know how Egypt got to this point in time. It helps to understand where we are coming from when we do things like walk down the street everyday. 


On Monday, we held the first Arabic movie night. I was rather excited because you all know how I am with films. I get all giddy every single time I get the opportunity to watch one. So, we watched The Yacoubian Building, which is considered the biggest Arabic movie in terms of budget to ever be made. I had heard about it before, but I had never seen it. It was really good. It does things that some movies have a lot of problems doing. It weaves together the lives of several individuals (5 main characters) all of whom live in The Yacoubian Building. You watch on screen as the characters' lives intersect and collide in ways you never thought imaginable. As a filmmaker, this film was amazing. 


After the movie ended, we had the opportunity to talk about it with some of our Egyptian peers who had also come to see the movie. I got to meet my language buddy, Emam, here. (I hope maybe we can be good friends at least.) And it was while I talked to Emam's aunt I realized that she had a very different perspective on the same film that I had just watched. She said that she did not like the movie because it only showed the negative side of living in Cairo. That she likes movies that bring people together, not ones like this. 

It took me a little bit to understand where she was coming from. I mean, I view these characters as just that characters in a story. And in order to make a story interesting you impose problems and allow them to deal with them in the manner that would fit their character. She, however, saw this as a representation of her culture. That this movie made in Egypt, by Egyptians, tarnished the way others would view the Egyptian culture based on this one movie. I guess that makes sense, but for me I wouldn't think of it in such a way. But, maybe I should start adding that perspective to how I watch movies. Who knows...I might be onto something...like a term paper topic...


And that pretty much brings us up to the present. I'm tired and still have to work on my Egyptian Arabic homework before class tomorrow morning. I may just take the book upstairs and work on it in my nice comfy bed, in my layers of nice warm pajamas. That just sounds really appealing, especially as the car horns outside the window are getting really annoying. 


I'm kind of looking forward to girl's night. Hopefully, it will bring me closer with the girls, but who knows. I'll let you know as time goes on. But, for now. I really should get back to my homework. 


More updates coming soon....

The Cairo Amazing Race!

Today was the last day of orientation. Thank goodness. Tomorrow is Friday, which means the first day that we actually get to sit down and relax since I got to Egypt.

Right now, as I write this, I'm extremely exhausted and ready to just sleep straight until tomorrow morning. But, I know I can't do that just yet as the football game against Egypt's rival Algeria is tonight in the semi-finals and I kind of want to see that. Also, in case you are wondering the picture to the left, I took on the Nile cruise that we took.

But, anyway. Back to the last couple of days. Well, Tuesday was more orientation. The typical morning of survival Arabic, followed by lunch and then a lecture on the culture of Egypt. After, we met with some Egyptian students that study at Cairo University and chatted with them. I talked to two gentlemen named Ramin, and Mohammed (I think). Ramin studies English literature and art, while Mohammed studies Geo-physics. Both are Master's students, but they were a lot of fun to talk to. I wish I had talked to more students, but I'm sure I will be seeing them around AMIDEAST as they are always invited to come and socialize with us. They like helping us with our Arabic.

Wednesday came around and it was once again the usual orientation in the morning. We then met for a lecture on the culture shock that were going to experience and the street harassment that is common for women in Cairo. We have already experienced some of the street harassment, like men hissing at us when we walk, cat calling, etc. But, some of this stuff is the same stuff that American men do as well. I guess, it's a universal theme to harass women.

After the boys left, the girls stayed with Nadia, our academic manager, and our Arabic teachers arrived. What we thought was supposed to be an "anti-harassment march" throughout the neighborhood, was actually girls night out with our professors. It sucked that my one flatmate, Garrett, was sick and couldn't go. But,it was so much fun. Yasmina, our survival Arabic teacher, took us to a Yemeni restaurant where we had so much food we didn't know what to do with it. It was really fun and very funny, especially because our teachers didn't even know what was going on. After the food, we were taken to a drink place to get sugar cane juice. It was very sweet, but extremely delicious and I would never have tried it if it wasn't for my Arabic teachers. Before we all departed for home, Yasmina and the others insisted that they buy us a box of sweets to take home with us. As if they hadn't done enough for us already. They are so sweet, and I'm so glad that I decided to come to Egypt, even if I wasn't exactly excited to leave.

The pictures above are the sugar cane juice drink which was delicious, the Yemeni feast on the table and of course, Yasmina with the two bags of treats.

So, that brings us to today. This morning was our last day of survival Arabic and then we began The Cairo Amazing Race! If you haven't seen the show The Amazing Race, it's definitely worth watching. We were split up into teams of two or three and given a mission to complete. I was paired with one of the kids in our program named Sean, and our mission was entitled, "Lions and Tigers and Bears...Oh My!", which meant that our first stop was the Giza Zoo. When we got there we had our picture taken at the front gate and then bought tickets to the zoo (which were 20 EPD...we later found out that they were only supposed to be 2 EDP and that we had been ripped off, which is rare at the zoo...but, it still happened.) Once inside, we proceeded to take our pictures with 10 animals and we learned the names of them in Arabic. Pictures will be up soon, once I get them from Sean.

After leaving the zoo, we continued to follow the instructions which led us to the opera house, downtown Cairo, the Ramses train station, and some other cool places where we had other tasks to accomplish. The only problem we encountered was on our way through our detour. We happened to stumble across a man who was very keen on helping us,which was fine as he did help us a lot, but he was also a perfume salesman and it was difficult to try and leave. I ended up buying a bit of perfume from him just so that we could keep moving, but that detracted us for at least half an hour or more. Once we escaped him, another one found us...luckily we were extremely rushed and told him no we could not stay and chat about the stuff. The other problem that we had was concerning The League of Arab States. No matter how hard we tried to ask them our questions, they either didn't understand us, or they refused to answer them. It was very difficult and actually it's what made me finish with the game.

We returned to AMIDEAST headquarter, also known as Babel Villa, and found out that we came in last. It was sad, but we had a lot of fun doing it. I feel like I've accomplished something by navigating myself around Cairo with no help. And I feel like I will be more willing to talk to people and ask questions. It was just a lot of fun!

And that brings us to now. Well, I'm waiting to hear on the plans for the football game as I want to watch Egypt vs. Algeria. Tomorrow is the first day that we have to relax and explore on our own, which I will probably talk someone into doing with me. It should be fun. And then, as if I haven't mentioned it enough, on Saturday I get to go see the pyramids in Giza and ride a camel! Cooool!

So, stay tuned, more's on the way!

Film Back-Log Day 7, 8 & 9: This Week Didn't Seem to End!

It felt like last week went on forever. I can't believe that it was only a day and one week ago that Kris and I were out in the park shooting our own movie. Now, we are at the finished the shooting cycle and we will begin the post-production part soon...

So, Friday I was on Steph and Shayna's shoot for majority of my day. That was of course after I spent the morning working on the blood for Tarek and Drew's shoot. I arrived at Steph and Shayna's shoot and we got straight to work.

I have to say they worked really fast and efficiently. There was not much wasted time anywhere. They knew their shots and how they wanted their actors to act and everything went really well. I was quite surprised because there is normally at least one thing that goes wrong in the production process and they seemed to be doing just fine. I got to continue my job as a slate girl with them and I helped to coordinate lunch/dinner/anything else that needed to be done. And though it was fun, it was exhausting. I was grateful for the beer we got after we wrapped. It made the night a bit more relaxing.

Saturday morning I got up and dressed in the nice dress clothes that I brought with me and headed over to Drew and Tarek's shoot where I was to be an extra in their laboratory scene. I played the part of the mathematician-scientist as I ended up writing calculus equations all over the board and solving them. I'm glad to see that the math classes I took in high school are coming in handy somewhere.

Being an extra was a lot of fun. Their movie seemed to be coming along better than I expected. I was worried that they may be making things up on the spot as they went, but they seemed to have a pretty good grasp on what needed to be done...so needless to say, I was rather impressed.

When I got home that night though, I felt like crap though. Not from being an extra, but from working on sets for so long and just continuously going. My body just ached. I think I went to sleep at like 7:30pm that night and didn't wake up until 8:30am the next morning, which was just before I needed to wake up. (Thank goodness I went to sleep when I did. I woke up feeling so much better. They only thing I had (still have) was an annoying cough.)

Sunday was a day of fun for me! All of the blood that I had been working so hard on for Drew and Tarek was finally going to pay off. I was finally going to show off the fact that I do well with gore. And boy...did I ever...

As a comparison, we checked on Saturday and found that the human body has approximately 5 liters of blood in it. I made approximately 5 liters of blood...and we poured about that all over the floor of one of the directing rooms in FAMU...so...much...gore...it was AWESOME! The actors weren't entirely pleased with me as the blood was still cold when I had to cover them in it, but beyond that it looked pretty cool. The only problem with the blood was that it functioned like real blood. The more it sat out, the darker the color became and it began to dry to things...like actual blood does...it was a lot of fun to play with though.

Here are some of the picture I took from Drew and Tarek's shoot!


They are me as a scientist, Gordon, Dave, and Kim strapping the Kevin (the lead actor) down to the "love machine", Kevin covered in blood splatter, and...the bloody floor and chairs...when it was still neat (It got messier once we put actors in the mix.)...also,minus the actors in their underwear (I just felt that I shouldn't post that here...)

After my fun time with the blood, I came back to the apartment...along with Drew and Tarek's cast...and I wasn't able to escape quickly enough. As much as I like being on film sets, I don't think I enjoy them being in my apartment. So many people, it makes me feel like I need to host...even when it's not my event. And this is how I ended up trapped...well, that...and the little children that I ended up watching.

You see, two of the actors were once married and in order for them to do the roles in the film, they needed to bring their children with them. Well, I ended up sort of pseudo-babysitting...which wouldn't have been an issue if I actually knew how to handle children. But, seeing as I'm me...and children scare me a bit...I didn't really know what to do except humor them when they talked to me...perhaps I'll get better with children with time...

I was so excited to go to bed Sunday evening. It meant that the week of shooting was finally over. But, it also signified a very sad fact too. What was once a great adventure is now slowly coming to an end. But, I'm not going to look at it that way at all.

So we may only have three weeks left in the Czech Republic, but that doesn't mean that I won't be exploring. The Christmas market has just opened up and I only wandered briefly through it tonight, so that's to be seen. And of course there is adventures to be had in the editing room once Kris is feeling better again. (Poor Kris caught the flu...:-(...) And I'm sure much, much more too! Keep watching!

Film Log Day 2: I Hope the Fog Lifts When We Start Shooting

Day 2 of filming was a lot less hectic than day 1. I guess because I knew what to expect...also because we didn't have 7 boys running around on the field that I had to keep track of. We only had the two main actors, Lenka and Vojtek, plus the crew...which was very minimal to say the least, but they did one hell of a great job. I don't know what we would have done without them.

We began the morning similar to yesterday, with Kris, Josh and myself catching the tram only this time at 6:55am, not 6:15am. We made it right on time for crew call, however I was a little worried about the fog.

By 9am we had all of the actors keeping warm in the apartment that we were using nearby, but there was no sign of the fog lifting, so we went ahead and had to shoot anyway. Everything should work out when we go through and color correct things that need it. The fog did eventually go away, but it took a while and had we waited, I don't think we would have finished before it got dark.

Shooting today went rather fast. By lunch time we only had approximately two shots left to do and approximately 4 minutes of stock footage left to do it in. We managed to shoot everything we needed plus more to finish out the second roll of film.

Everything went incredibly smoothly. I couldn't believe it. I truly think that this has to do with the amazing amount of planning that Kris and I put into this shoot before we actually got there. The shot list saved our asses and allowed us freedom to tell the story as we had displayed it on the storyboard, but it also allowed us to work with the actors and use them to tell the story.

So, next on the agenda is heading to Barrandov Studios on Wednesday to watch the telecine transfer and have the film be digitized. Lets see what happens! Cheers to being finished!

The Creation of All Things

It's over. After three long days of working in the studio at Studio FAMU last week, the FAMU kids finally reached...the weekend! And this weekend was an interesting one. As one of the few FAMU kids that stayed in Prague this weekend, I decided (along with Kris) to explore some parts of Prague that we have yet to see. (Or at least I have yet to see...) But, before I get into what we did, let me tell you about the last two days of the lighting exercise.

To start, it probably shouldn't be called a lighting exercise. It should probably be called a cinematography exercise as we did a lot with setting up shots and directing as well as lighting scenes.

Day 1, as I mentioned in the previous post, consisted of portraits and lighting of an early morning bedroom. Day 2 moved a little faster than Day 1 did as we had finally started to get the hang of how to read the light meter and set the scene. We shot a hallway scene that connected into the story of the early morning bedroom scene, a mirror scene, a television in the dark scene, and a poker game scene with candles. These scenes were rather fun to work with. I got to operate the camera for the mirror scene and I got to act in the television scene as well as the poker game scene. I really do enjoy being in front of the camera occasionally.

After we finished up the lighting exercise for the day, we headed over to the FAMU main building to have a class with Pavel Marek. Luckily, we didn't have to discuss our scripts again and instead we watched a few short films/clips of movies that may possibly inspire us in some way for our own movies.

Day 3 started with the continuation of the poker game scene. We did close ups and shots around the table which are pretty neat. After we moved ourselves out into the hallway, where we proceeded to take over and create different lighting scenarios on the stairs and in the hallway. We messed around with mixed lighting and trying to fix florescent light color. We also did some shooting outside, which is extremely useful for Kris and myself as we are only shooting outside.

Here are some of the pictures I took during the lighting exercise:






















































































































The pictures are, in no actual order, lighting the hallway in Studio FAMU, Drew and Shayna protecting the "yummies" Kim sent to us via Gahut, part of the set in the studio, Dave and Tarek passing out after a long day, Steph filming with the camera, Kris and Gahut looking at the light meter, a picture of Studio FAMU and Tarek and Dave adjusting the camera.

Upon completion of the lighting exercise for the day, the FAMU kids headed home for some relaxation. But, before completely leaving the area, we stopped at a little Italian shop where I bought some ricotta cheese to make dinner for the night. Dinner would be gnocchi with chicken. I was making the homemade gnocchi that I know and it turned out to be delicious.

Later on Friday night, Kris and I finally got around to seeing Surrogates. It was a pretty good movie. And the best part was that it was in English...with Czech subtitles. The movie going experience itself was rather interesting. The price for a ticket wasn't all that bad. 129 crowns. I think that's cheaper than back home in the states. And then food wasn't too expensive either. Overall, I say that seeing a movie after three long days was one of the best things to start the weekend.

Saturday rolled around earlier than expected. I didn't get to sleep until late on Friday due to my current addiction to Dexter...I just needed to know what happened...But, I was then woken up slightly when Steph's alarm went off around 4am. You see, five of the eight of us went to Vienna, Austria for the weekend. They were seeing the Vienna Film Festival. While the other three of us stayed in Prague and went about a rather normal weekend.

So, after falling back asleep from Steph's alarm, which really wasn't a big deal, I got up around 9:15am and went with Kris to get a Thai massage before our sound class. It was absolutely amazing. I didn't realize that I had so much tension in my back and in so many places. While it hurt a little during the massage, the after effects made the entire thing well worth it. We then headed to sound class with Drew, which was at least interesting. I now have another way to ruin movies for people. Soon, no one will want to watch movies with me unless my mouth is taped shut. Oh well...

After class, Kris and myself went home for quick lunch break and then set out to buy tickets for our adventure on Wednesday. We got extremely lucky and managed to reserve the last two seats on the train. Should be a fun trip. We then headed out to Petřin to see the lookout tower and mirror maze. (I'll post pictures of these places the next time I go...stupid me left her camera battery at home...). They were a lot of fun. The views of the city were phenomenal. I can't wait to go back when I actually have a camera, so that everyone can see the amazingness that is Prague. Especially right now. The weather has changed back to normal and the trees are gorgeous.

Around 6pm, we headed back to the apartment to get ready to hang out with Rebecca and Lisa. We had plans to play card games and find out how their ten day trip around Europe went. It was a lot of fun. And it was good to see them.

Sunday was a lazy day. We were originally going to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, however, we found out that with children's films they don't do Czech subtitles...they just dub the whole movie. Which means it would have been pretty hard for us to understand what they were saying. Oh well. I'll see it eventually. So, instead I wandered over to Novy Smíchov to see if I could find a new purse as mine is starting to bother me.

I searched the entire mall, but to no avail. However, I did discover that my need to go into bookstores hasn't left me. Whether there was an English section or not, I felt the need to go into the bookstore and look around. I guess somethings just never really chance. I then returned home to make some dinner, talk with my family and Geoff on Skype and then continue with my Dexter addiction until it was time to try and sleep.

And so, here we are on Monday. The start of a slow week. As many of our professors are in the States this week, we don't have the usual amount of classes. Today was History of Animation, Czech and then the guest lecture class. Tomorrow is going to be us at Barrandov Studios watching the telecine transfer of footage from our lighting exercise. I'll then have my Acting Theories class, which is always a lot of fun. Wednesday is Kris' and my adventure to....VIENNA. But only for the day. You see it's a National Holiday and thus we have no classes, so we're taking this as day trip. Should be fun! Thursday is Acting Studio, Film Language and then my history class. And then Friday is a trip to the Jewish Quarter followed by Friday Night Fright Night.

So, as you can see. It's a slow, but fun week. I can't wait to see how nice Vienna is and I can't wait for this upcoming weekend. It's Halloween and I want to have a party and do fun stuff. I hope everything works out.

And now that I have told you everything you probably ever wanted to know about the last few days and more, I'm going to return to my addiction and begin Season 3 of Dexter. I'm just so curious as to what's going to happen that I can't help but watch. More things to come! Čau!

The Most Amazing Movie...That We Never Saw...and Lighting Things Up!

So, while I'm still semi-conscious, I figured I should probably recount the last of my weekend and the events that have led me to this point in time...

I said that the weekend wasn't over on Friday and I was right....more excitement took place on Saturday.

Saturday morning came around a lot quicker than I wanted it to. More sleep would have been nice, but you do what you have to do. Kris and I met around 10am to work on our storyboard before our meeting with Pavel Marek.

The meeting itself went pretty well. Kris and I are in very good shape with our movie. We have a solid story, a location and a possible actor as well as the start of a storyboard. I'm quite excited that things are going so well. Of course, I know there will be a snag. There is always a snag...but, for now I'm not going to think about it and I'm going to say that everything is running very smoothly.

After the meeting, Kris and I went back to our apartments and then eventually made our way to "This and That". A store near the CET center that was rumored on the expats website to have a very good selection of fall decorations. Well...they do. But, only if you have a house...they don't have much for an apartment. It was a very neat store though.

On the way back to the apartments, we stopped so that Kris could get burcak as this last weekend was the last weekend of the season for it. Once back I made dinner of mango rice with chicken and sweet & sour sauce. It was pretty good. While I was cooking, Liza, Drew, Tarek, Dave and Marek wandered over and we watched Twelve Monkeys while I ate dinner. They eventually all left to go make their own dinner and I got ready to go to the movies with Kris to see The Surrogates.

Going to the movies was quite an adventure, let me tell you. The directions seemed simple enough. Take tram 7 to Anděl and then tram 9 to Krematorium Motol. Well, we followed the directions and took the 7. Once arrived, however, we could not find the 9. After a few moments of looking, we spotted it coming around the corner in the direction that we needed. So, in true action movie style, we darted after the tram and just made it as the doors closed. Everything seemed to be going well...until we ended up in the middle of the highway. We walked down the road a little, trying to find the mall...and eventually we came across what looked like the "concrete jungle". It was then we realized that Google maps had lied to Kris and we were actually nowhere near a mall. So, we got back on the tram and headed back to Anděl. I knew there was a movie theater in the area, so we attempted to find it.

My lovely sense of direction led us in a big circle with finding the theater, but we did eventually find it...along with the other theater we were looking for. Turns out, if we hadn't been in such a hurry to catch the 9, perhaps we would have realized where the theater was. (This movie has become a trip for this upcoming weekend...here's hoping we make it.) By this point, there was no point in seeing the movie, so Kris and I opted for desert and drinks at a nearby cafe. I myself got a Brandy Alexander (that one is for you Manya) and it was delicious. Kris got a B52, which they lit on fire. There was also chocolate cake and crepes involved.

Sunday was a day of laziness. We had plans to go to Kutna Hora, but they fell through as everyone was so tired from Saturday. I did productive things though...like updating my online portfolio and cleaning my computer.

Monday and Tuesday were fairly normal. But today started our three day lighting exercise with Michael Gahut. While I'm learning a lot, it has been an exhausting day. I have learned about how to use the light meter. How to properly direct when in a studio and on location. How to make a slate. And the ins and outs that I never really thought about. Oh and of course, I'm learning how to light just about any scenario you could possibly ever want to light. Today's lesson dealt with portraits and early morning bedroom scenes.

After 8.5 hours of lighting today, we also had script analysis and then a meeting with Pavel Marek about our scripts...totaling about 12 hours of class with not a whole lot of break. But, that's ok. That's how I expected this program to be and so, I shouldn't be complaining.

But, now that I have physically exhausted every inch of my being. I'm going to say goodnight and curl up in my bed and sleep until the morning...when I get to do it all again.

So, goodnight all! More excitement ensues in the next few days...I'm sure of it!