From One To The Other

So, today has been an extremely nerve-wracking day. You would think after having both skydived and bungy jumped, and traveled to a random country without knowing anyone that I would not have been nervous on my first day back at Colorado College. Unfortunately, you would be wrong. However, loss of sleep managed to calm my nerves as I was too dazed to be affected by the stampede of acquaintances that I have not seen in 8 months. Having a schedule again has also helped calm my nerves, yet has frazzled my brain, which is wondering why I ever missed the intensity of the block plan. To break another nerve, I finally entered my essay into Nicholas Kristof's Win-A-Trip on the day of the deadline. This essay has been a long time coming (the contest was announced a month ago) and I do not believe I have much chance of winning. However, I can say that I learned a lot about myself and confirmed the general direction that want to head in life. It also gave me a lot of new ideas for this blog and youtube page, so get pumped!

Today's photos are of Spirit's Bay in Northland, New Zealand. For the Maori, it is where the spirits of the dead head off for their journey to the afterlife. Considering the pain, rubble, and shock in Haiti right now, I feel that showing images of this amazingly peaceful place brings a little hope that though we are in pain on earth, those who have left us are no longer suffering (and are perhaps, better off).

Stand Tall

Cape Reinga, New Zealand

New Zealand Christmas Tree

A pohutukawa tree outside of Auckland.

Run & Jump

While my parents were planning their trip to visit me in New Zealand, I made sure that they put Wellington on our itinerary. After all, since learning all about Peter Jackson in my New Zealand cinema class, I felt the need to stalk him (with the hope that we would meet and he would discover how passionate I am about good films and decide to give me a job... as you may have guessed, this occurrence only happened in my dreams). My parents patiently stopped by the Weta Cave with me as I drooled all over the displays (I feel like this happens a lot - the staff was ready with mop in hand). Then they wanted to go to Te Papa, the national museum of New Zealand, so I fulfilled my daughterly duties and went with them. Don't get me wrong, I am all about learning new things, they just need to be either (1) on the discovery or history channels with cool graphics and reenactments or (2) interactive. I soon discovered that Te Papa is highly known for the latter :) I took this photo near the end of our adventure through the museum. It's an interactive map of New Zealand that shows one how each part of the islands was formed when one walks over certain locations (you can see my lovely parents in the background pointing out Wellington). Call me a nerd, but it was awesome.



Now for some cool links, I know I haven't posted any in a while, so I hope these make up for it:

(1) Watch this interview by Rachel Maddow; it's a few days old, but oh so good. She schools a well-spoken but utterly simplistic thinking (is idiotic too harsh?) man: Click Here

(2) There are no special effects in this video yet it's better than half the special effects infused blockbusters. Crazy, aye? Click Here

(3) Another reason I love my generation is because of websites like this (most of us have a good sense of humor)!

(4) If anyone is concerned for my future in filmmaking, this article may not be for you... but don't worry, I'll change it all when I get there... :/

Flying Into Wellington

I counted my photos today and all together I took over 27,000! I agree with you, that is was too many! However, that number includes multiple images of the same subject as well as experiments with exposure settings. In truth, most of the images I took will only be viewed by my eyes because I took them to remember the moment: instead of writing everything down, I take photos of it all... perhaps too many, but I'd rather have more than less photographs.