Samhain in Scotland

Wow, Scotland continually amazes me. I finally feel like I'm settling in to my surroundings. I've found some good friends at Church and living in my block of apartments (yes, person who lives in 3/8 who will undoubtedly read this blog and for whom  haven't thought of a self-conscious nickname yet). It's been a while since I've laughed as heartily as I did this weekend, or even tonight at activities over at the ward building.

Last night, I took some time to go to the Fire Festival celebration on the Royal Mile by the Beltane Fire Society. I met up with two of my American friends, and we just watched as the dancers passed us by, costumed in deep-hued body paint, branches and brambles, bits of fur, crepe and animal costumes. It was a procession from pre-history; these were actors who reenacted how close humans once were to nature, having costumes of fire demons and winter demons. They burned incense, beat drums, held aloft lit torches. It was so much better than any other Hallowe'en I could have imagined for myself. Indeed, it wasn't even a Hallowe'en celebration but a Samhain (pronounced sow-wen, apparently) ritual.

It wasn't quite the drug-induced pagan-fest it appears to be in the pictures. I was shooting with the 'night mode' on my camera, but the 'auto mode' works much better.

There were dancing red devils that ran and shouted through the other procession members, solemn blue branch-wielders that kept the crowd back, a glowing-eyed raven attended by smaller crows, an elephant, a lion, all sorts of birds, and winter spirits with white fur, black eye makeup and spears. The winter spirits were probably my favorite for the reason that they were near us in the crowd as we watched.

The fact that we were standing in front of St. Giles' kirk did not escape me. The square where the procession performed was the site of the old Edinburgh Tolbooth, the prison. Who knows how many mobs have assembled there on a night like this one? A cold night, fires burning, crowds of people, not being entirely sure what was going on... However, unlike the mob nights where such a man like Porteous was taken from the Tolbooth and hung in the Grassmarket, like in Walter Scott's The Heart of Mid-lothian, tonight was much calmer. However, I would imagine that the crowd gathered for the Samhain festivities would have left a guinea in payment for any rope they had taken.

Ooch, bring yoor torch and pitchfork!

And, if everything uploads correctly, there's even a video to show you! Yay! I haven't watched it myself, so I don't know what you should expect.

In summary, a Scottish Halloween is better than an American one.

Also, a quick note on adding my sentiment to what a lot of my friends are thinking about: staying a whole year abroad. I haven't much thought about it; even though I love the city and am really starting to love the people I've met here, come mid-December I will be ready to return home. I have been away for a while, and I want to return to my native land. It's wearying being abroad, and I want to return to Scripps and prepare for my senior year and thesis. However, that does not mean I won't come back to Edinburgh. A lot of the people I've met from Church are here doing Master's programs, and I'm seriously considering coming back as a degree-seeking student in a few years' time.

So the natural proclivity to stay in Edinburgh is still in me, but in a more subdued/sleeper form.

Only Pictures

Stuff I have been doing:

Cawdor Castle - it exists!

Stained glass in St. Margaret's Chapel at Edinburgh Castle.

Greyfriar's Bobby

Tall buildings from left to right: Appleton, David Hume (where I'll have at least one class), and then McEwan Hall is the big round dome.

Arthur's Seat

Edinburgh Castle at evening.

Me hiking up to Calton Hill (sp)

Hats!

Parad!

Nor Loch, beneath Edinburgh Castle.

This is the Place

How to Make an Interesting Photograph (Or: How to Make Photographs at Which You Don’t Cringe Every Time you See Them)

This may be a part in a longer series. My rage at poorly-taken pictures has abated, but that's not to say it won't flare up at a later date.


Whenever my family goes on trips and we only have one camera, I automatically make myself in charge of the camera (unless J-Chan is with me – then we can switch if we don’t have two cameras. Come to think of it, not having two cameras is a situation we will rarely encounter because it’s so important for all of us kiddio-sies to have them. Katie-Po might also be an exception). I have a compulsive need to be in control and take good pictures. If anyone else takes the photographs, I get annoyed and frustrated because they are done in a curmudgeonly fashion. No one has enough sensitivity to frame and composition.

To take a picture, it first helps to have something to take a picture of. I’m feeling lazy, so these pictures will be old ones from my albums.

Pictures with people and famous things - Pictures of a person standing in front of a famous thing are a great way to personalize your pictures and make your trip more memorable, and to all those non-believers back home you can point to the picture and say “Proof!” until they refute you with “Photoshop!” Once that accusation has been made, you can't really refute it, though. However, you know you were there, and that’s what matters. 

And I am here so you can take better pictures of that person standing next to that famous thing.

First thing you should know: take as few pictures of the person in the dead center of the picture as you can. In an interesting picture, your eye will move around (namely, from that person to famous thing and back). You need a really good reason to take a picture of the person in the middle – for example, imagine someone sitting along a wall with their feet up. If you’re near their feet, take a picture of them. This will mean that your camera will catch the depth as your friend’s feet go away from you, and their feet become their body, and their body becomes their face.

In the picture above are Teddy and me. Yes, we are important, but what we’re sitting behind is also important – a Cubist statue of Christ being scourged. Note that the angle of the picture has cropped out most all of Christ's body and that there is a lot of empty space at the bottom of our feet. Due to the vertical nature of the statue, I am okay with having Teddy and me be in the center of the picture, and even though I don't want a picture of a tourist in front of the Sagrada Familia (such as is there on the right), it actually balances out the picture. Also, this is not a good picture because it is blurry.

It is not necessary to take a full-body picture unless you want to expressly include that person’s clothes or to show how big/small the famous thing is. Besides, your head is smaller than your body. (Unless you are a baby, in which case your parent should have taken loads of pictures of you, some of them are bound to be good, and hey, most of these rules don’t apply to you anyway because you’re a baby.) Any picture taken of that person from the bust up is acceptable, because it means you as the photographer are close enough to get the details of his/her beautiful, radiant face, while still getting that famous thing in the background. Like so:

Depth! Bust! I wish there weren't a crane in this photo!

Okay, I somewhat liked the sultry look of the full-body shot. But note: I am not in the center, and my body is balanced by the Holy Family on the left and the strong diagonal of the column.

The Barcelona 100

Today marks a momentous occasion. This is my hundredth post, and what better way to celebrate than posting about my adventures in Barcelona, Spain‽ Thank the stars for the concordance of trips and posts into such an opportune time. It was a wonderful time, and I fulfilled one of my life dreams by going to Barcelona. However, before I talk too much about Barcelona, I'll tell you more about Teddy's visit. We spent the first day of her visit here in Madrid, exploring Puerta del Sol, the Prado, the cathedral behind the Prado, and Plaza Mayor.

The Prado is that-a-way, man.

As we were outside of the Prado, we were approached by an older man who started to talk to us and ask us about Madrid. We were obviously tourists, pouring over our maps, and I wasn’t necessarily happy to be approached by a well-meaning but overly-helpful Madrileño. He asked us how much Spanish we knew, and said that we should practice Spanish everyday for eight hours for several weeks if we really wanted to get good at it. Who has the patience and the free time to study Spanish for that long?

There was a cathedral behind the Prado, and I wanted to see inside it. The man, very kindly, asked if he could come with us, and we couldn’t exactly say no. We walked up the steps (on a red carpet, mind you) to the entrance, and we walked in on the middle of a wedding. The cathedral was full of people, and the bride, groom, and priest looked small as they stood at the end of the nave. We made our visit brief, and were out in front of the cathedral in no time. The older man did not overstay his welcome by much, as Teddy wanted to listen to a guitar player in the shadow of the Prado, and the older man wanted to go to the Botanical Gardens nearby.

The following day, we got on a Renfe train, and three hours and a lot of Spanish countryside later, we arrived in Barcelona. Barcelona, say it slowly and let it roll off your tongue. Barcelona, city of dreams and magic and wistful futures, of voyages and crossroads. We had arrived.

Leaving the apartment early in the morning

You bet your bottom that's a Renfe train.

What the Spanish countryside can look like.

We got our tourist Metro tickets, and then we were off on the Metro to our hostel in the Gothic Quarter. Our first night was to be at the hostel Alberg Palau, and we wandered the narrow, winding streets of the Gothic Quarter before finding the correct, cozy little side street where our lodgings were located. I had never stayed at a hostel before, so this was going to be quite an experience.

I was really surprised when we arrived at the hostel and it was so clean and neat. It took up an entire floor of a building from the nineteenth-century, and all of the rooms circled around a central skylight. The windows were always open, and you could see across the courtyard into every part of the hostel (well, every part of the hostel which wasn’t a room). Every room got light, especially the breakfast nook.

Look at the happy frog! How can you not trust that frog?

I did not remember to take a picture of the common areas of the hostel, but I did manage to find the drawing I had made in order to get from the train station to our hostels.

Teddy and I were put into a room with five other chicas, one from Seville and the other four from France. We had French doors which opened onto a balcony overlooking the street below. There was no air conditioning, but a nice breeze came through the door. We settled our stuff down, made an itinerary, and were off to wander around Barcelona.

We saw a bit of Las Ramblas, although we didn’t spend too much time there, and we got lost and distracted looking at clothes - especially kurta pants, which are all the rage in Spain. We wandered over to La Cathedrale de la Santa Maria del Mar (who knows if that is correct). Interestingly enough, we caught the tag-end of a wedding at the Maria del Mar. Two cathedrals and two weddings in two days. Go figure.

We walked along the Carrer de Colom (they say “carrer” instead of “calle” for street in Barcelona, I think) and towards the marina just as the sun was setting. The air was moist and cool, and the sky was pink and cold. In the middle of the sky, there was a little glowing white wedge. Any pictures I have taken don’t do justice to the atmosphere and the immensity of the marina, the street, the sky, the moment.

Sunday morning, were off to see the Sagrada Familia. A few stops on the Metro and we found ourselves blinking in the sudden sunlight at the mass of towers that is the Temple of the Sacred Family. I was incredibly excited, because I had wanted to go to Barcelona and see buildings by the famous architect Antoni Gaudi for nearly five years. (That is a quarter of my life span, by the way. If I have any older readers, like Mom and Dad, that isn’t much to someone like you who is much wiser and has experienced more, but my perspective changes when I put the years into percentages. I hope yours does, too.)

We bought our tickets and the use of an audio guide, and we were on our way into the cathedrale amidst the milling crowds.

I am happy.

Despite being in the process of achieving my dreams, I was a little dissatisfied as we entered the cathedral. There were a lot of people and it was rather warm out, making me sticky and sweaty, which took up a lot of my patience, but then I had problems with my camera. First of all, my camera wasn’t taking crystal-clear pictures every time like I expected it to. Secondly, everyone I asked to take a picture of me didn’t know what they were doing. It gets boring if you take a picture of someone and they’re standing in the middle of the frame in every single photo, full-body shot. There is a reason why the viewfinder and the digital camera preview were invented: you can see your picture before you take it, which means that you can crop the picture and make it artistic, or at least interesting!

Note: As you can tell, I did not take this picture, which is why I don't particularly care for it.

Anyway, this was a momentous occasion in my life, and I wanted to document it well – not have a collection of poor, blurry pictures as remnants of my memories. I didn’t want to spend all of my time taking and retaking pictures until they came out, either. (Yes, Mom, this is a blatant plea for a new camera for my birthday.)

I was also disappointed by how incomplete the cathedral was. I knew it was still under construction, but I hadn’t realized how much it needed. Much of the area where the altar will go is unfinished, and there was nary a hint of a pew. The audio tour expected it to be done by 2030. That’s a whole lot of work which needs to be done on the cathedral in twenty years by about 200 or so people. I take solace in the fact that the exorbitant fees charged by the Sagrada Familia are the only way that construction continues on the cathedral. Now Teddy and I have contributed a little piece of the Sagrada Familia, along with millions of other people.

Nevertheless, it is still a beautiful, beautiful building. My immediate impressions were that it was a gigantic sandcastle.

Sandcastle!

The colors were really, really beautiful, like a watercolor rainbow.

After the Sagrada Familia, we checked into Sunday night’s accommodations, Hostel New York. We had our own room this time, although it was on the fourth floor, had one tiny little window, and no air circulation. The hostel was kind enough to give us a fan which we kept running constantly. Hostel New York was nowhere near as quaint or personable as Alberg Palau, but not all things can be equal. After a quick change of costume in our room, Teddy and I were ready to hit the beach.

The view from the Alberg Palau, where we stayed the first night.

Thus ends the first installment of the Barcelona adventure. This post has already gone on way too long, and I have lost so many details and thoughts just getting the bare bones of what we did down.

This One Has Pictures

Picture time! I’m sorry I’ve been bad about posting them, but I’ve been working a lot. Instead of doing touristy things and gallivanting off somewhere every weekend, I’ve been staying put in Madrid and doing Madrileno things. I’m actually living in Madrid, and sometimes that means doing monotonous things like going to the grocery store and taking the Metro to the same stop every day, five days a week.

Last Monday, we went walking around the apartment because I hadn’t seen that part of town. I wanted exercise, too. Look below for some lövely pictures.

Las fuentes en frente del piso.

Belén being herself

What it looks like from a jogging path near the apartment.

On Tuesday, we went to the Temple of Debod. I thought it was a cheap knockoff of the Temple of Dendur in the Metropolitan in New York City. However, this is not the case. It’s a real temple given to Spain by Egypt during the 19th Century as a thank-you for helping them save some other temples. The Temple of Debod was outside in a beautiful little park. I am entitled to say that the Met keeps better care of their ancient Egyptian temple than Madrid does, and no one needs to point out that Madrid is in an arid clime which is more similar to Egypt than New York’s climate is.

Temple of Debod

Don Quixote y Sancho Panza

In the words of my brother, "Hewwo!"

After the Temple of Debod, we walked to the end of the park and saw this.

A blurry picture taken from the park near the Temple

A much better picture taken near the building

Palacio Real! I still haven’t been inside yet. That is a project for some other day.

On our little excursion to the Temple and the Palace, one thing really stood out to me: joggers. Joggers were everywhere! Mostly men who looked to be 35 or 40, but there were young women, old men, teenagers. In the space of one minute, I saw about six joggers. That's even more than the numbers of joggers and cyclists on Wasatch Boulevard back Home in the morning.

The Mirror Experiment: Photographs Take Me By Surprise

I was flipping through Facebook when a little red flag popped up, followed by another and another. Notifications! They seem to come few and far between to the college student who finds it as a method of procrastination. And to get three at a time - red letter day! They were identical: a friend of mine had tagged three photos of me. Curious, I clicked on them, and then was taken aback. Friday the 5th of March I had gone to the opening of a friend's art show. I was writing about it for my college newspaper, so I was sauntering about trying to catch snatches of conversation, opinions, photographs of the art. I had seen another friend 'o the artist about with a bulky, lensed, professional-looking camera snapping photos of the art and guests looking at the art. Her camera put my point-and-click Kodak to shame. She must have been a photographer snapping shots for one of the other newspapers among the other campuses. I didn't know that this art show was big enough to attract attention from other campuses.

When I clicked on the photographs, I realized my mistake. She was no rival photographer but a friend documenting an auspicious moment in the life of our mutual artist-friend. And I happened to be in the photographs. Before going to the art show, I had brushed my hair, but my mirror was still covered. Did my hair really look that bad? Did my clothes fit that poorly? Okay, the photographer had gotten my nose at an angle that made it look really cute, and which I can't see looking at myself straight- on, but still. I didn't want to face the reality presented to me by those pictures. I clicked ahead, finding it a safe sanctuary to look at other people. In the photographs, they looked the way they did in real life. I had been trying to run away from that reality by not looking at myself in the mirror and was confronted about reality in an image on a computer screen.

I have since looked at the pictures again, forced myself to look at them, and in doing so I realized that they're not that bad. Yes, I could have brushed my hair a little more before the show, but I didn't; even if I had, the messy clumps were in the back and I probably wouldn't have gotten them straightened out anyway.

I still don't like the fact that I have to see myself as other people see me. However, these three photographs were a good reminder that I cannot hide from that mysterious Other or see how that Other sees me. While on the article for my newspaper, I wanted to be the unseen one, the invisible reporter whose voice everyone would hear, not the interpolator in the photographs, in the art show. It would be like I wasn't even there. Looking back with clearer vision, that is a very frightening thing. I am not just a voice, but I am a body, a mind, feelings. And because I live in this physical world, which connects me to everyone else, I have to take the consequences of being seen as well as heard. Even if that means seeing myself sometimes.

I feel like I should have learned something, but I'm still not happy about whatever it is. And okay, I admit it again - the pictures really weren't that bad.