01_2015: Being Present

Sometimes I feel as if time is going by so slow that I just want to scream! There are so many things I want to do, places I want to see, goals and dreams that I want so badly to happen now, it can all seem like each passing day is an eternity... But then I wake up and it's 2015! How did that happen? Didn't we just start 2014? How can it feel like time is going by so slow, yet so fast at the same time? Ugh, these are the things I think about...

Farming and Reaching Your Goals

Well this year was certainly a first for me... My parents' house in the mountains is currently undergoing demolition, so we got to spend christmas house sitting for some friends of ours, who just so happen to be traveling around Europe. Did I mention they live on a farm?? Christmas included a diverse group of 7 horses, 16 chickens, 5 humans, 4 cats, 1 dog and 1 very large, very confident pig named Finnegan. Needless to say, we were outnumbered. After our morning coffee, our days began with egg collecting, chicken wrestling, pig feeding, and for me, snapping as many pictures of the horses when they would come close; I swear one was posing for me. All in all, I would say it was a pretty great Holiday.

out west

"I am very attracted to the great open spaces of the west," -David Hockney. There's something about these mountains that calls to your soul and invites you into something that seems both foreign and familiar. I have lived in Colorado for almost four years now, and I still feel as though I know nothing about the vast country that resides out west. Untamed, wild, free… everything I long to be seems to happen so naturally up here where the cars are few and the adventures are many. It leaves me feeling as though the problems and the stress don't matter up here; worry cannot exist in the presence of such peace.

ANCIENT BULGARIAN TREASURE

One of the secret treasures of the Black Sea port city of Varna is a garden of ancient Roman baths. Built in 2nd century AD, these babies are the 4th largest Roman Thermae in Europe and the largest in the Balkans. To walk through something that was still standing over 2000 years ago is still beyond me and there was certainly no shortage of tunnels and caves and things to climb on to keep us entertained on our first day in Bulgaria. We even heard a young american couple speaking english, over which we rejoiced at the sound of our mother tongue coming from someone else other than ourselves. It's the little things in life..

SPRING IN PETERSBURG

Spring in Saint Petersburg is like waking up from a dream; a dark, very cold dream that seems to have been both yesterday and last year. In the words of C.S. Lewis, "…winter meets it's death" while a world of stimulating beauty emerges from a once frozen city. Days grow longer as the nights begin to disappear, the fountains come on while the clothes come off and outside every metro station you can find the city's most ambitious musicians, in all their "up and rising" glory. The sun has begun to curve throughout the day making an almost complete circle in the sky. It's quite hard to remind yourself to sleep when it doesn't get dark till after 1am and the sun greets you again by 4.

FROM CENTER STAGE

I got to shoot the most beautiful interviews in my favorite theatre in the heart of Chelny, Central Russia.  Ever since I came here with a team from Colorado in January, I have been longing for it's black curtains and theatrical lighting- my fellow filmmakers you understand. Settings like this don't just happen in your everyday life and I was determined to make the most of it.

VILLAGE MOMENTS

After all the gloom and rain of a Saint Petersburg spring, waking up in the quiet village of Cheboksary was precisely what our wandering souls needed. Taking a deep breath you could smell the trees and grass and dirt surrounding you in the hot yellow sunlight.. my heart felt closer to it's small town Georgia roots once again. The people out here are the heart and soul of this country; they say that this is the 'real' Russia, and our experiences out here are ones that I will never forget.