Episode 3: Of Construction, of stories

Though I'll try not sounding like a politician when I say this, but I promise to install some form of regularity with my blog posts.  There is construction of some sort going on on the top floor of our building but sounds as if it is right above us and that at any moment the ceiling is going to cave in on me creating a Becca Sandwich, making me a human pancake for the rest of my life, or at least until the Oompa Loompas can put me back together again.  It is this construction, however annoying it is, that makes me reluctant to leave because I hate being in their way.  If I don't wake up before they get there I wait till they go on lunch break at 1.  I miss half the day but I avoid very awkward situations.

Any apprehension I had about taking classes in a new place with new structure and new topics evaporated.  Tuesday nights I take a Food, Culture, and Society class, and after learning a brief but very instructive history in Italian gastronomy we made crepes.  Spinach and ricotta cheese crepes.  Our professor taught us the best way possible: by throwing us in.  I remembered once a long time ago, as in sometime in middle school I believe, when I tried to make crepes.  Now I understand everything I did wrong.  I know how to mix the batter so it doesn't have any lumps, to flip a crepe without making it fold, and how not to burn the olive oil on the pan. So much goodness.

Wednesdays I have Contemporary Italian Literature, and then Italian again.  Almost everyone has read all or excerpts of Dante in my lit class.  I feel as though I have missed a very important memo.  But I am still really excited for it, reading literature from the minds of a nation set free from 20 years of harsh dictatorship.  A place that was once the mecca of art could grow and return to a portion of its former glory.

Then on Thursdays I have my final class, the one that stimulated most of my school anxiety: Photojournalism.  I felt way out of my limit.  I'm not a journalist or a photographer.  I'm a story teller, that's what I do.  That just shows how little I knew about photojournalism, because one of the first things my professor said was that photojournalism was about telling stories.  When we each had to say why we were taking the class it made me discover I am surrounded by people who were majoring in either photography or journalism. I confessed honestly the limited knowledge I had in digital photography since my previous knowledge was based on my father's 35mm Pentax and that I was a writer who loved telling stories.  This made me realize by the expressions of my classmates that I was one of the only ones who had a film based background, making me feel smaller.  But my professor commended my history in film and my background as a writer, for he told me writing is a wonderful gift and the ability to write well and take good pictures was rare.  This made me realize I am in the right place, not that I have both of those gifts but I can learn what it will take to have both.

Well, I think this blog is long enough.
 Until next time!
Ciao!