I miss peanut butter

18 June 2010 Jyamirkot

Today was a much more relaxed workshop day. As usual we started off with pancakes for breakfast- this time with peanut butter! Until today I hadn’t realized that I even miss peanut butter. It’s just one of those small things.

As our moderator left early this morning (she had a wedding to attend), I became the recorder for this session. We started off by going over what everybody had thought of and come up with between the end of yesterday’s session and the start of today’s. There have been some really great ideas coming out so far. After everyone went around the room and shared their ideas, they were then sent off to creat models of their designs, using whatever materials they could find.

This for me was the coolest part so far, to see how people translate their thoughts, words, and drawings into a three-dimensional object. I think that was always my favorite part of scene design class as well. Up until lunch I was pretty bored, as I wasn’t really involved in this step of the process. I did, however, take a lot of pictures and videos to record the process.

After lunch, Ashmina put Piero and I to work with Rabita, to help translate her original model and idea into something that could accurately represent the space she intended to create. Due to all my training (or some may call it an anal-retentive search for understanding and control), I tried to focus more on a scale model, as I believe that they give the most accurate representation. After scene design, I can’t imagine things not in scale.

Around 4:30 we all stopped working so the projector could be set up for the World Cup- Germany vs. Serbia (Go Germany!). After about a half an hour or so, we finally got the channel. We lost it for good about 5 minutes later because some people wanted to get a better signal. In my experience (and I was certainly correct here), when you’re camping or whatever, there is no such thing as a ‘better signal.’ You suck it up and be grateful for what you have.

Our intent was to do a final review of today’s work after the game, but we figured people were pretty upset over the lack of the game and therefore wouldn’t be in the best mood to do that. Eventually the power went out anyway (I’m starting to dislike you, load-shedding) so everyone headed to the other house to wait for dinner.

I played with Aba a lot today; apparently he’s taken quite a liking to me. While we were waiting for dinner he really enjoyed making me clap my hands. Peek-a-boo is another favorite. After awhile he got tired and cranky, and climbed upon my lap because it was reflecting the light. I started rubbing his back as he was close to crying, and he promptly fell asleep. Adorable.