*I wanted to post this a lot earlier, but I was having trouble with my internet. Technical difficulties... sigh. Carry on*
Sofia, our friend Candace, and I have spent every morning this week at art camp. We chose stained art because we thought it would be fun. It was, and I have several battle scars to prove it.
"You will get cut," both our teachers told us Monday. We set a record: most classes averaged between 15-25 injuries. We finished the week with a whopping 3 cuts, not including the minor scrapes and burns we ignored. I contributed with one gash on my finger (Forgot how to hold the glass when breaking it, go figure.).
I really liked the school. The entrance is a shaded garden, surrounding some old, stone buildings. My little brother, Alfonso, took his perspective class in one of the classrooms here. When I pick him up the first day, his teacher is staring at nothing, his hands stuffed into his pockets.
"Can I take him?"
"Huh? Yeah."
No papers to sign, didn't ask how I was related to him. Just nods a little, says even less, and hands over the child.
"He's kind of distracted all the time. And he tells us to call him by his first name," says Alfonso.
I decide that I like him.
My own teacher leads our class across the street to another campus. The receptionist is nice. She says hello and goodbye every time we come in or leave. On the last day, she says it was great seeing us. I give her an A+ for service.
This campus is also stunning, but in a very different way. It has high ceilings and long staircases. The hallway we walk through has black and white photographs. My favorite is one where a ballerina is sitting in what looks like a closet, surrounded by charred corns, still in their husk. You only see the bottom half of her, and her full, long, white skirt is illuminated like a lamp. I wonder what it all symbolizes, but I don't have a lot of time to ponder on it. Though it does occur to me that perhaps her skirt burned the corn.
We open the door to the kitchen, then open another door to storage room (albeit a very nice storage room). On the first day, several very large wooden crates are piled in the middle of the room. I wonder what they have inside. The next day when I run in late with my sister and Candace, I stop to notice that the crates have bee replaced with exhibit cases.
"Ooh, new stuff!" Says Candace.
"We could probably fit on the bigger ones," says Sofia.
I imagine myself crouched in one of the cases, staring at the people staring at me. I wonder if I would be a hit, go on tour, win awards... for originality? For exposing myself to the world? For being too lazy to come up with real art?
We open one more door to our left, and walk into our classroom. Our other teacher waits for us there every day. She's short and has wispy graying blond hair and glasses. She talks in a soft but somehow disorienting voice. She's very overwhelming, in fact. She confuses me whenever I ask a question, giving me more explanations than I can take in, because the fact is, I can barely cope with measuring the glass. I'd rather not say anything else about her though, because she is very sweet. She even gives us all her number on Friday, in case we decide to take up stained glass and have any questions.
Our other teacher is pretty quiet in comparison. He's straightforward, and he does a lot of the work for me. I want to think he does this just because he's a genuinely nice human. While this is completely true, I think he also realizes that I will probably never finish my project on my own. Also, I might accidentally kill myself without careful supervision. Either way, he's my hero.
I spend the first two days in class observing my peers-for-a-week (I also begin my project, a much less productive, much more frustrating activity.)
One boy think he's all that because he's moving on to a prestigious high school. He turns out be a very immature fourteen year old, but his piece is amazing. He make a guy playing a tuba, and there are a bunch of other little guys surrounding him. Every day, for break, he eats an apple. I call him apple picker.
The oldest girl there has already graduated from high school, but doesn't brag about it because she has a little something called maturity. She tells us she's here because she wants to "broaden her horizons." She's very good at broadening her horizons, and finishes about four pieces by Friday. She's almost sweet when she's not shy, and has a nice laugh. At first, I think she's pretty, but upon closer examination, I realize she is perpetually scowling, even when she's smiling. I decide she's (undeservedly) a Eustace, as much as I like her.
One girl is studying in Singapore, but she spends her summers here. She tells me that since there's only so much you can watch on TV, she's keeping herself busy, and is enrolled in several other classes, camps, and courses this summer. She has pale, flawless skin, and auburn hair. She warms up to me by the end of the week, and chats about her life in Singapore, the food, the culture, the vicious monkeys, the humid weather. She tells me that there's only about a dollar or so difference in currency, but everything is outrageously expensive over there. A good pair of jeans will cost at least $99. Nail polish is $30 (She has already stocked up while here.). I decide to call her Julia, just because it seems to fit her.
On the first day of class, this girl rushes in 30 minutes before the end of class. She's taller than everyone, so I assume she's an assistant or something. She's not. The next day, she doesn't show up. But after that, she does, always considerably late. I call her the White Rabbit, and laugh in my head. She's very relaxed and affable. People like her. She reminds me of Maeve's older sister, Winifred. She makes a sun and a moon.
A boy and a girl show up the second day of class. Only the boy comes back. He has shortish, black, gelled hair, and thick eyebrows. I expect him to have a deep, masculine voice. I almost jump out of my skin when he answers the teacher's question and his voice is soft and almost high pitched. Maybe that's why he barely talks. He emanates so much shyness, I cannot bring myself to speak to him. He's so serious, almost stern. But I notice he has a beautiful smile, and I get very close to complimenting his stained glass coat of arms. I hesitate a second to long, and I want to kick myself. His name is Julian. I really hope he doesn't read this blog.
The last boy in the class has blond hair and blue eyes. He gets the other two cuts in the class, and about twelve burns. During our break, he says the class is not what he expected. His sister got a stained glass kit for Christmas and this is nothing like it. I almost laugh in his face, but when he describes what he thought stained glass was, I realize I was expecting more or less the same. So we're both stupid. I tell him glass is not my medium. He says he likes pencil. So do I. He wants to be an architect. So did I, until I almost failed geometry, but I refrain from mentioning this. Instead, I just smile and nod.
I call him St. George, because he is positively holy. At least to me. I don't know where I get this idea from. However, in my mind, he has a halo around his head and an aura of pure innocence enveloping him. I soon feel the need to protect him. To shield him from the evil of the world, keep him from lies, and drugs, and SAT's, and teenage girls.
His halo starts to dim by the end of the week though.
"Your little angel is a grump," Sofi tells me. Silently, I have already begun to suspect this.
"Why do you think?"
"I complimented his work and he just frowned and grunted. He's rude to everyone."
I begin to think I imagined his aura. I think a little more, and I'm sure I did.
His bad manners do me good, though. My need to be everybody's mortal guardian angel is going to get me killed someday, out of sheer emotional exhaustion. I need someone to remind me of that, and he does so promptly.
For this, I should send him a thank you card. And fill the envelope with shredded glass, as a memento.
Oh, I ended up making a box. Just one, but I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself. It's a little bit crooked, but you can't notice unless you look at it from the top. Which I guess you would do any time you put something in it...
Whatever.
