Gotta apply for my final exhibition too, and worry about getting accepted to do it. Ideally, this exhibition will be in the fall, and I'll be working on making posters/invitations to promote it around school and elsewhere. I'll be looking for freelance artistic jobs and regular jobs to help fund that stuff. I get kinda worked up and anxious when I think about this, especially when I know that I can't do much about it while in Germany. I'll be frantically trying to get everything together once I get back to Canada, and I'm trying to brace myself for that. This summer's gonna be artsy as shit! I'm a little worried I won't have much time to get a job!
Whew, it's a lot to think about. But it's a really good thing that the last stopping point of my project also happens to be right near one of my awesomesauce friends, who I've known since 2011! We met on the internet way back then, and have kept in contact ever since. Her name is Marie, and she lives in this gorgeous area near the Alps/Munich. I met her in person for the first time ever on the first day after getting to Munich, and again just last weekend. She invited me to come out to her town and stay the night there. Below is a photo taken from her parent's balcony. Oh yeah, I feel like I met her whole family while out there! Not only her parents and siblings, but her grandparents as well.
I took a train out to where she lived (OMIGOD those train tickets are super overpriced!) and we met at the train station. Then I met her dad, and he drove us to her place. What's cool is Marie has her own place, sans kitchen, so she can go from her flat to where her parents live and still have her own place to stay at overnight. We basically hung out at her place for a while and then went out to explore the town! Well, it's more accurate to say that she showed me around! :D
The next day, before going back to Munich, Marie and I went on a hike with her mother and siblings. Marie was the only one who could speak fluent English, so she translated what we said to each other when it was needed (or I'd drop some German here and there). Failing that, there was always basic body language and stuff. The trail that we took went up through a hilly forest and let out on this ridge here:
We stayed out until 2:30 in the morning or so, and then headed back and eventually went our separate ways. I'm dead-tired today; I woke up at 1:30pm! Now I'm on my last day alone in Germany. Tomorrow, my family arrives and I go from being an artsy-fartsy critical thinker to a tourist. Hopefully I don't get art withdrawal! With this biggest and toughest part of the project over, I'm just preparing for the deep dive where I'll really start making the large-scale works and shoring up the conceptual elements of my work. I almost wanna do one of those last-minute pretentious reflections about coming here and staying here for four months, but I think I'll wait to do that until I get back home. For now, I think the whole experience is still a bit too close to me for me to be able to 'look back.' I feel weird and listless now anyway, like I want to work more and yet do nothing at all until I get home. I even feel like this blog post is sorta half-assed compared to the others, but meh. That's how I feel right now: tired and 'meh.' Still, I'm excited/nervous to get going on the second phase of this project!