"George Clooney is nice"

Hello!

I've officially been in the city for one week now...which means I only have four weeks left.

I feel like the first week away from home is always the hardest for me. As most of you know, I'm very rooted to my hometown. I always have such a hard time knowing I'll be away from Ledyard for awhile. I had some major homesickness for the past week. It was a little rough sometimes, but I'm trying to enjoy every single moment this project has to offer me. Besides, this first week just flew by. So, to everyone at home - know that I miss you all dearly and am eagerly looking forward to seeing you guys soon!

These past couple days have been mind blowing. We met with out mentors we'll have for the summer. Basically, they're all Christian artists making a living in the city. They'll help us learn about what it takes to make a living as an artist and how not to compromise your faith for you art...and ways to incorporate your faith in your art while still making it relational to those who are not Christians (this is a lot harder than it sounds!). My mentor is a painter and children's book author. She seems really cool and offered me a chance to partake in some awesome opportunities (call me for more details!) I'll be meeting up with her about three or four times throughout the last couple weeks left, and she'll help me with my portfolio. She also really took a liking to me and is interested in the activities I am a part of outside of art. I'm really looking forward to my time spent with her.

I'm finally starting to adjust to how different city life is than Ledyard life. I really struggled with that at first, since its just SO different. Everything is a little too fast paced for me. Getting familiar with the streets and the subway routes has definitely helped the city seem a little smaller to me. I've decided that I could never live in the city. As fun as it is to be here, I'm a small town girl :)

We got to view other people's portfolios today, which was awesome and intimidating at the same time. There is some awesome talent here on this project. I'm excited to see how we're all going to pull our specific gifts together in order to form a collaborative piece. Please just pray for that process.

So...studio time. We've been in the studio so much lately, and will be basically living there for the next four weeks. One thing I really loved about the studio is the sense of community when we're all there. We get to hang out in the kitchen and the "classroom" portion. Today, we all ate lunch there and played cards while we were waiting for our next activity. Its just awesome to really make that space our own and get really comfortable. I feel like I've gotten a bit overwhelmed with the time we've been there too. We've been in the same room for hours at a time, making plans to pitch for our exhibition. The plan making has been a little frustrating on my end. I feel like I've had a creativity block recently. That just added to me feeling overwhelmed. Please just pray that we don't become too overwhelmed during our studio time.

I went to Tim Keller's church on Sunday and got to hear him speak. I wanted to write a little about what we talked about since it was awesome, but I dont have my notebook near me. I'll update you guys on that later.

One thing that's really just blown my mind is knowing that God is bigger than this city. How awesome is that?! I just think thats something really fun to think about. Even though this city is huge, our God is much bigger :)