Kat Eye Studio

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Home!

Yesterday was a lost day. For some reason air travel feels to me like there is more “lost” time involved, as amazingly quick as it really is. It must be because of the waiting around in between actual movement. I waited several hours before my flight in England, waited for my connecting flight to Portland, then waited for the shuttle to Corvallis. But, for all of the time waiting, I made it home on schedule with no mishaps. I was home less than an hour last night before I crashed into bed. Aaaah, there is nothing more wonderful than to stretch out in your own bed with your own pillow after a couple of weeks away. Heaven.

Waiting in Canada for my connecting flight.

This morning is a catch up morning. Downloading photos, doing laundry and sorting myself out. Slowly. I’m not in a huge hurry. So many experiences and connections and conversations have led to lots of thoughts and ideas are swirling around in my head. But I’m going to give things time to settle before I do anything with them. I’ll have lots of stories to tell here once I have a little time to sort through everything. Not today.

The only thing I want to mention today (besides the fact I am home!) is that I am now on Instagram. My lovely friend Kirstin would not let me leave her house last week without getting it set up on my iPod. I’ve resisted since I don’t have a smart phone, but she got me excited about it and I had fun with capturing and sharing my last few days in London. You can find me there as @kateyeview if you would like to connect. I’ve created a hashtag already too: #scootersighting. I was so happy to be back in the land of scooters while in London I captured a few on Instagram and will share more here. I’m going to go into scooter withdrawal now that I’m back in the US though. Can you help me get my daily scooter fix by using this hashtag? It will be a fun way to connect.

For now though, it’s off to the unpacking and sorting and catching up. Ahhhh, it’s good to be home!

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I’m Off!

Today’s the day! I’m travelling to the UK. I’m off to find out what’s behind the red door of adventure. I’m eager to get back across the Atlantic. This is my first international travel since returning from Italy over a year ago, and I wonder what new things I will discover?

I’ll be blogging from the road, so you’ll get updates here and there about my experiences.

In the meantime, I have a few Kat Eye things to share…

  • I am excited to be the “Flickr Photo of the Month” for masteringphoto.com with my photograph “Scwinn Approved.” You can see it here.
  • Visit Grow Soul Beautiful, a lovely new site dedicated to the mind+body connection of yoga and photography, for a chance to win a space in the upcoming October/November Find Your Eye course series. Also Sherry Galey, one of my participants in the summer course series, wrote a lovely (and unsolicited) post on her experience with the Find Your Eye e-course. I hope you will follow Sherry’s advice and join us for this next journey!
  • This month’s Photo-Heart Connection will be from England. I wonder how that will affect my connection? Join me October 1 through 7 with your Photo-Heart Connection too.

I think that’s it! You’ll next hear from me on the other side. Yay!

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Reading the World Book

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. 
– St. Augustine

We arrived home late last night (early this morning, actually) from our week long trip to Madrid, Spain and Lisbon, Portugal. I must say this every time I get back from a trip to a new place, but my head is swirling! It is filled with new foods and experiences and sights and ideas. In the first moments home, the first blog post after I return, it is almost overwhelming to figure out where to start with images and writing. 2111 images captured. 3 major art museums, 4 additional art exhibits, so many historic and cultural sights, countless hours wandering. I sometimes feel like I’ve been cramming for a final with all of this travel. Reading as many pages in St. Augustine’s world book as I can before we move home in July.

Today I’m starting with the beginning of the trip, because it’s the best place to start while all of my images download to the computer. A little taste of tapas, a glimpse of the wonderful bar food from Madrid. Doesn’t it look yummy? Well, maybe not for breakfast (if you are reading this in the morning) but I can assure you that it was very yummy! Add a glass of Sangria, and you just might have a little piece of heaven right here on earth.

So, with that I’m back. A few more places visited, a few more flavors sampled, a few more pages of the world book read. It will be fun to sort out my swirling experiences in the next couple of weeks, and see what I find.

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Everyday Life with History

We just returned yesterday from our week-long road trip through Croatia and Slovenia. What a crazy trip – we travelled so much – visiting Split, Dubrovnik, Korcula, Plitvic National Park in Croatia and Bled, Postojna and Slocjam in Slovenia. We saw lots of wonderful and amazing places, and arrived home tired from the travel. Lesson learned – don’t travel quite so much in one trip. Downtime is needed.

Today’s image has a different message than that though, this is one of living with history. You see, in Split, Croatia most of the old city was built up inside of Roman emperor Diocletian’s palace. The palace walls were once the city walls and the medieval old city is a wonderful little place where Roman ruins are just part of the life around them. I love this image for what it tells you of this place. Look at the building – grass is sprouting from the roof and the stone is all cracked. You can just glimpse an arch of the Roman palace gate in the background and see the ruined wall beside it. But look closer, there is something in the attic window. Look closer, at the brand new shutters. Someone lives here. Someone lives in this house that looks like it could fall down tomorrow. Someone lives with this history, as part of their every day.

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One Year in Italy

What’s in this jar? Gelato spoons. 220 gelato spoons to be exact. Approximately one year of gelato consumption for a family of three, not counting the occasional cone we ate or spoon we accidentally threw away. This is a visual representation of our first year here, but there is so much more that has filled this year than can fit this jar.

One year ago today, I stumbled off the plane bleary eyed with two suitcases and a disoriented cat in tow to begin this adventure. I was a few days ahead of Patrick and Brandon, to get into the apartment and get things a little bit set up for when they arrived, while Patrick was finishing up with the movers and getting our house in Corvallis ready for rental.

I had no idea what I was in for.

In this year, I have learned:

– There is nothing like moving to another country, with a different culture and language, to humble you. You go from being a confident, independent, contributing member of society to a person who literally doesn’t know how to pay the bills or find an item in the grocery store. Everything is different, and you have no frame of reference. No experience to pull from. No language skills to work through new situations. You have to learn to laugh at your ignorance, accept where you are, because otherwise you will have a nervous breakdown.

– To throw out assumptions of “how things are done” because you will encounter, over and over again, that they are done differently here. It opens your eyes to how much we really do assume or take for granted by growing up in one culture. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense to you, you have to accept it and move on because doing it differently doesn’t mean doing it “wrong.” You will never be able to change the culture you are in to fit your own comfort zone.

– There will be things you love and things you hate about living here. You have to try it all and then revel in the things you love while accepting the things you hate. I have discovered I love the Italian pizza, real parmesan cheese freshly grated, visiting new places, creative store window displays, art exhibits, hanging out in the piazza of a city to feel the energy, to name just a few things. I have learned to accept the convoluted, confusing beaurocracy you run into, stores closed on Sundays, the passionate responses you get from Italians that quickly blow over, cigarette smoking everywhere, the non-standardization of electrical outlets and plugs.

– Travel is expansive. Travel changes your horizons. Travel gives you an insight into new places and people. Travel is nothing like living in the place you visit. Nothing.

– Many of the things we fill our lives with are not needed. I’m talking about things and activities and people altogether with this statement. By completely changing your environment, you can start to see the essential pieces of your life that are important and which you can easily live without. For example, we lived for two months without our household goods shipment, buying only the essential things we needed. We have a whole lot more in storage in Corvallis, too. But in those two months, there wasn’t much of all of that “stuff” we couldn’t live without. (Except maybe a wine bottle opener. That was at the top of the list of items we bought right away.)

So many ideas are popping into my head to share that I know I can’t share them all today. It’s like they each need their own little essay, maybe I should write them all down and put it in a book someday with some of my photographs.

I think I can sum up the learning from this first year in Italy with one word: Acceptance. Of who I am, of where I am, of the people around me, of the situations I find myself in, of ideas other than mine, of my own ideas. I can’t think of a better thing for me to learn at this time of my life.

I can only wonder, with a smile on my face, what the next year will bring.

Footnote:
I’ve mentioned previously that I’m participating the the Creative Every Day 2010 challenge through CreativeEveryDay.com. I’ve written a guest blog post that will be posted there today. If you have time, stop by there and read it and answer the questions I’ve posed. I’d love to see your answers!

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