Day 2: 7-Eleven on 7/11

The day's premise: It's free slurpee day. Why not hit up each of the 7-Eleven stores in Milwaukee and make a zine out of it?

Thoughts:

• This Airbnb house is still nice as hell
• Making breakfast in this house and cohabiting with ten other people still makes me feel like I'm on a reality show
• I had 3 free slurpees and I'm still unsure of whether or not I regret it 
• We watercolored with melted Slurpee
• We met kids in a group/training program called Sea Cadets
• Visiting artist Hans Seeger was a very put-together guy, and he bought us some great mini donuts too
• I got to see the street my parents used to live on!
• We had a cookout for dinner (I did 12 peoples' dinner dishes by hand afterward!)
• Eleanor converted me to a goat cheese fan today by making a very good salad
• Turns out Veronica, the writer with us, is also a Myers-Briggs nerd like me so I'm glad I've found someone to nerd out with about personality types while I'm away from my sister. (They're both INTP–coincidence?)

More images to come–

Sea Cadet Boy

Brooklyn and Shawn at 7-Eleven

Slurpees, round 3

STP to NYC – Day 1

Sunday, July 10, 2016 – Milwaukee, WI

Rosy, Eleanor and Cooper in the RV

I remember coming home from school back in January and telling my mom and dad about “this awesome workshop thing where there’s this famous photographer and he's gonna bring a group of teenagers around in an RV to do art stuff and they're gonna road-trip to New York and collaborate with the MoMA and all this wild stuff and Mr. Shipman says he thinks I could maybe get to do it!! Oh my god it sounds so cool!”

This morning, Mom brought that day up in the car…as she was on the way to drop me off for the trip. 

Uh, holy shit, I’m actually doing this. 

For those of you who don’t know already, I’m taking part in the Winnebago Workshop, a free art and storytelling workshop for teens based out of Saint Paul and run by photographer Alec Soth. (I’ll leave it to the Kickstarter Video to give you the details).

I wrote about our first couple of excursions for Rookie Mag, and since then we took a pretty transformative four-day trip to Iowa which I unfortunately haven’t taken the time to write about yet. But today marks the beginning of our two-week road trip to New York City, so I feel compelled to begin keeping a good record of what I’m up to in order to share with my family, friends, and anyone else who’s curious about my travels.

Everyone arrived at Alec’s studio at 8 this morning and we hit the road not long after. We drove southeast through light rain and almost all of us slept on the RV, prompting Alec to put unflattering pictures of each and every one of our sleepy selves on his snapchat story (I sought revenge and did the same to him when he went for a nap later). 

We’ve started a tradition of making lunch stops at campgrounds and RV park restaurants–not ideal spots considering our high vegetarian count, but we make do–so we stopped at one outside of Madison today. It was the first of what I assume will be many baskets of sweet potato fries over the next couple weeks, which I say resignedly because I’d been on a bit of a health kick leading up to this trip and regret that I may not be able to maintain it. That said, I’m always a sucker for sweet potato fries.

We arrived in Milwaukee (our first of 4 stops leading up to NYC) around 4:30 and scoped out our Airbnb house. Let me tell you, we SCORED with this place. Not only is there a good amount of sleeping space for all 11 of us, it’s also near downtown, there’s netflix, a pool table, a huge backyard with hammocks and a hot tub. 

We ventured out to the studio of Colin Matthes, which was on the seventh floor of an old industrial building with a view of Lake Michigan, and he told us about what he does as an artist and how he dives into his projects (most notably his “Essential Knowledge” illustration series and a solar-powered mini demolition derby). I love getting to visit art studios–everything about them is photogenic, even their messes, and I dream of all the colorful junk and paint splotches that will cover the studio I anticipate having someday.

Map at Colin Matthes's studio

Ground floor of an industrial building

I immediately loved the industrial character of Milwaukee. It seems like you can find repurposed old warehouse buildings almost everywhere, not just in specific parts of town like in most places. They’re extra gorgeous when the sun is going down and it shines through their foggy windows and reflects on their bricks, like it did when we stepped out of the studio to do some wandering. 

First we found a group of guys doing motorbike tricks in a parking lot, and then when Galen, Chloe and I walked a few blocks away from the group we met a man named Tom whose favorite hobby was hunting for treasure with a metal detector. It was the perfect time of day for photos, too–the light, as I said before, was beautiful.

For dinner we grabbed Vietnamese takeout downtown, and extra-spicy curry noodles were a welcome change from the fried food I’d been having a lot of on our trips. 

While half of us went to the grocery store to get breakfast food, the other half of the kids hung out in the hot tub before bed.

I’m happy I got over the culture-shock mound back on the Iowa trip because now I’m eager to dive into all we have to do these next two weeks (hopefully we’ll be so occupied I won’t even miss my parents–I’ve never been away from my family for more than three days before so this could get interesting). But there’s a strong connection between this group now and I feel really good about the weeks to come and what I might create. 

Simply put, I’m really just excited as hell. 

Over and out, 

–Zophia

The Pros and Cons of Breaking Your Foot

Well, I guess this is an interesting idea for a blog post. Doesn't happen every day.

On Tuesday November 3, 2015, I wore a killer outfit, which included an adorable striped turtleneck I got from a friend and tailored myself to fit me, my green circle skirt, a denim jacket and some killer chunky 70s heels.

(it was this outfit plus a jean jacket and red crew socks)

As I was walking down the stairs between French and history class, listening to The 1975 on broken earbuds, my foot caught on something and before I knew it, I was on the ground.

Everything above my ankles was ok, save some scratches and bruising on my right leg. My backpack broke my fall as I fell onto my back and slid  down half a flight of concrete stairs, my ankles both inverting and bearing most of my weight.

Mind you, I was in heels.

My ankles inverted. In heels. As my entire body weight fell onto them. While I slid down stairs.

I was about to get up and walk to history class but realized that I was still in pain in both ankles and a bump had swelled up quickly on my left foot. So what I initially thought was a routine little spill (seriously, I'm no stranger to falling down the stairs at school) turned into an ordeal of the assistant principal walking me to the nurse's office (I managed to walk up the stairs and down the hall just fine) before getting told I'd have to go home because of the swelling. Though aside from some wincing, I didn't really do any crying about the pain.

Around then it occurred to me that if this was anything more serious than a minor sprain, I would no longer be in the school musical. It didn't seem like a break at the time, though, and I tried not to worry about it.

My mom had to come pick me up. It was her birthday. Happy birthday, mom!

She went out to birthday lunch while I sat at home in bed for a couple hours with ice on my ankles, having to hop on one foot to get whatever I needed. Then went into the doctor's office where I got some x-rays done.

Oh, the doctor sucked. He was a cranky old guy who asked in a very judgmental, condescending tone, "why were you wearing heels at school?"

Why? Because I looked fucking killer in them. You should've seen my outfit.

Anyway, he looked at the x-rays and I learned that I have a fifth metatarsal base avulsion fracture. The ligament pulled so hard on the bone when my ankle inverted that the bone cracked. Fun, right? I started crying when I saw the crack.

(did I vscocam my x-ray? no! never! of course not!)

No musical for me! In fact, I might need surgery! And I'm in a boot and on crutches for six weeks or something.

Also, if the tendon gets pulled too hard again, it could detach from the bone and fly up my leg. This is sort of an exaggeration, but it's also sort of not, and it's also terrifying, so there is no way I am taking that foot out of its boot unless I absolutely need to. I even have a system for changing my underwear that doesn't involve taking my leggings all the way off.

And both of my ankles are sprained. Fortunately, I'm cleared to walk on the right one and it doesn't hurt to, I'm just supposed to wrap it and ice it.

I went to an orthopedic clinic to get a few more x-rays and my boot and crutches, (again, happy birthday mom!) and was sent happily on my way, just in time to go to evening choir rehearsal.

Cause you know what, for what this is, I'm not doing too bad.

If you've been reading my blog for a long time you'll remember I got laryngitis the day of my musical audition last year and what a blow that was. What are the odds of something like this messing it up again, you know? Of course I feel bad about not being able to do the musical now, especially after having done weeks of rehearsals. Of course I feel bad about lots of other things. But I'm not in excruciating pain (I'm just on tylenol), and there's been an outpouring of love from tons of people I know and it's overwhelmingly sweet. I know I'll cry again. But for now, I'm more than alright. 

Cons:

• I mean, my bone is fractured
• no musical
• I am exhausted
• I have to sleep with a large hunk of plastic and foam around my lower leg and foot
• general decrease in mobility
• no ice skating with choir
• boot during Christmas caroling
• no self-portraits and less photography
• who knows how this will affect ballet?!
• everyone will get sick of me being dependent on them pretty soon
• my sister is being borderline evil to me
• I will be on crutches at my cousin's wedding next weekend
• have to wear leggings pretty much all the time

Pros:

• this delayed my calculus test
• Yes, I like attention, and this offers no shortage of it (for now)
• fun plans in order for Christmas choir performance boot decoration
• boyfriend is stepping it up
• I have to keep my floor clear so my crutches don't trip which means super-clean room!
• no rehearsal means more free time for homework/art/sleeping
• I'm considering focusing on drawing & painting right now since photography is difficult
• my arms will get nicely toned from crutch usage
• excuse to wear leggings all the time
  
  

A Love Letter To Winthrop, Mass.

At the end of the trip, we stayed in a little town called Winthrop, a little ways out of Boston. I really liked it, and I don't quite know why. There's not much there, some might say it's a tad gritty, the beach isn't superb and it's kind of a hike from the city. But for some reason I just liked it. A lot.

• We stayed at a great little hotel called the Inn at Crystal Cove, which I would totally recommend if you're cool with being outside of the city. It's recently remodeled and the view is great!
• I liked the general -brace yourself for the most overused word of 2015- aesthetic of the town. It has a really cool view of the Boston skyline and it's full of tall, colorful old houses that aren't in perfect shape, which are my favorite kind of houses. 
• Almost all of the restaurants are Italian restaurants. And when it comes to restaurants, that's all I need.
• Except there's also this little breakfast place called High-Tide where everything is really cheap and has a super small coastal town diner vibe. The food isn't life-changing, but it's sure worth the money. 
• You can get into downtown Boston in about 30 minutes taking the bus and the T!
• Lastly, the people there are wonderful. This place puts "Minnesota Nice" which is really just passive-aggressively saying 'that's interesting' about something you don't like to shame. Cars always stopped for pedestrians and waved and smiled. Almost everyone we passed on the sidewalk would say hello. When my family was out on a walk a local guy asked if we needed help finding anything and even recommended a place for dinner (that turned out to be really good!) 

So, enjoy a few snaps of this town that turned out to be just my cup of tea.

Boston, Mass.

I've spent the past few days exploring Boston with my family. We stayed at a hotel right on Copley square which was a wonderful decision since it's within walking distance of lots of shopping and food, as well as Boston Public Garden, which I loved. The area was surprisingly reminiscent of Europe! 

We spent most of our time walking, pointing out cool old brownstones and we took the T up to Cambridge and the North End. My sister and I did a little shopping on Newbury Street, and I made a conscious effort to dress cute every day. (I even walked three miles in heels!) 

Just a Life Update

So tomorrow, I depart on a Grand Transatlantic Voyage. Just kidding, I'm going to Boston. But I'm really looking forward to it! And I'm bringing the laptop along, so maybe I'll be able to update you along the way!

I've also got some photos from other recent excursions of mine, since I have some time ahead of me on airplanes and in cars to write posts.

Here's a nice interesting list of stuff I've been up to:

• taught myself to play guitar
• went to an instagram meetup
• did a ballet intensive where I got to do pointe work again!
• bought some cute clothes
• read Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
• started reading Americanah
• went to my cabin with friends
• listened to Bad Bad Hats and Two Door Cinema Club
• ate a lot of peaches and peanut butter toast

And now hopefully, I will blog about some of those things as well as my upcoming voyage! I hope you are all having a very nice summer/winter/life!

Tuesday Photo Diary //

Spent the evening in at a friend's house making ourselves dinner. It was one of our many cooking endeavors over the years, and one of the most successful. We made up some recipes for bruschetta-topped fettucine and sautéed bell pepper salad with garlic and enjoyed it out in the backyard.

Summer 2015: Day One / Minneapolis

        I'd say my first day free from school was a success. I went out for a dinner of waffles and iced tea with my sister and three of our longtime friends, and spent the evening wandering around Minneapolis. I'm glad to have brought my camera, as not only is it refreshing to take pictures of people who aren't me, I got some that I really like! (Special thanks to Grace for doing some posing and being super photogenic in general).

       Apologies for being fairly inactive here! It's difficult to update during the school year, when I may not have the time, resources or weather to do what I want to. But I'd like to keep this blog updated at least weekly over the summer, with photography, photo diaries, fashion posts, art, music, maybe even some DIY and recipes. (And photography-related tutorials! Those are quite a bit of work to create but I'd love to do some upon request!)

        I also want to rename and redesign my blog (my current name was intended to be temporary), although I can't seem to think of anything, and I don't know where to start. But I'll be trying to think something up.

39,000 feet

Sorry for the absence, it's been busy!

Boy am I excited to share my Montreal photos with you! This past week was spring break from school and my family took a trip to Montreal for a few days. Here are the photos from day 1, which was just a travel day. (We flew to Atlanta, connected to Boston, and then drove up to Quebec, which was long but made for some cool pictures!) 

It was a wonderful time and there are plenty more photos to come!