Inspiration Friday

This Friday I spent time on two different projects inspired by people I know.

The first was inspired by a friend of mine that loves music and languages. She is fluent in Spanish and now we are learning Arabic together. She's about 36 years older than I am and she picks things up so quickly. I don't think it's really true what they say about youngsters being more absorbent of languages, at least not this youngster. I won't say I'm doing badly with it, but I know it takes effort on my part to soak it in.

My friend also plays the violin and lately she's been getting me to play. I quit orchestra after my freshman year, partly because I disliked our teacher, playing tests, our nun-ish orchestra dresses, and I wanted to replace it with an art class.

So for my friend, I am creating a violin pendant necklace out of polymer clay. I think I'll write her name in Arabic somewhere on the pendant as well, or make another pendant with her name.

The other project I'm working on is a caricature of my two instructors that I have for a 2 week course I'm taking right now. They are being our instructors completely free of charge, and they arre so genuine! So I thought to capture the fun personalities that they have in a caricature would be nice.

I will hopefully be posting pictures of what I end up with soon. :D

Plane Tickets are Headaches

I have been planning to go to Norco, CA this summer for a convention that will be completely in Arabic. Sound daunting? Well, I went last year with a group of friends and understood tidbits. It will be interesting to see if I've improved after a year has passed. I had tons of fun last year. We went to a walima, the Arabic word for party. There was fast paced dancing, a sort of circle dancing where people clasped hands and did some kind of skipping foot motion to their right. I was too shy to join in (besides I wouldn't have been able to keep up), but this year I may get the courage to jump in there. We also went to the beach, Balboa Island, but we didn't get in the water. Another thing that will have to change this year.

So anyway I am very excited about going to California, the only problem is the silly plane ticket prices. They go up and down at the drop of a hat it seems. Do they have a "Buying Plane Tickets for Dummies" at a book store? I need it desperately! Really, last year it was all arranged for me, all I had to do was show up. This year it has been such a hassel. I don't know what to expect the price to be. I bought 1 ticket for a friend that is traveling in our group of 4, and went back to the site to buy another ticket and the price had jumped $89 in one hour!

If you happen to be reading this and are not as inexperienced with buying plane tickets online, I would greatly appreciate your help and insight. None of my 3 friends that are traveling with me fly very frequently or have experience arranging this kind of thing. It feels like we got thrown into the water before we learned to swim. Of course, I know it can't be that hard, but as a college student with a part time job and lots of time spent volunteering (and making art :) ), I do not want to pay $89 more than the reasonable price I got for my friend. Your help would be very, very, very much appreciated!