today, I became an actor

For some reason, we got up early and did a major workout this morning. I don’t know where the energy came from, but it felt good to move my body in an intense way. After that, I became an actor… Well, sort of anyway. I had to act as a friend of the woman in the movie and hold her arm as she was walking into her aunt’s funeral. It was a beautiful and sunny day here and we shot the scene at the chateau. So, in some ways I felt I had a day of rest. The actors have it EASY… I mean seriously, today, I sat around all day and waited and pretended to be sad and I had big breaks in the middle of the day. I was thinking what a different perspective it is to be in front of the camera versus behind it. There is so much going on behind the scenes, running around taking care of this and that and figuring out all the missing pieces. And the actors sit there and wait to say their lines and pretend to be someone else. I like both. They both have their own challenges and I think it is good to be challenged and inspired by something that is so out of my comfort zone.

We got off at 7 tonight. So, we borrowed a car from the chateau and went into the nearby town for some food. It was a nice evening away.

Tomorrow, we are shooting the car scenes. I will be back on the clapper, I think!!

Oh how I love working on this project, even though it is thoroughly exhausting me.

The dinner scene!!

The dinner scene… Oh man. The dinner scene, this is where we started with the movie. Since I didn’t know anything about filming movies, I agreed to do the continuity for this movie. Um… Let’s just say, a dinner scene is DIFFICULT! Yes, DIFFICULT, is a good word. 3 days later we still have the same food, and its not smelling so good. We are not shooting in order and the table has to be set a certain way for each take; one take with food being eaten and then with food, but not eaten and then with no food and then again with food being eaten etc.. And the bread basket has to be in the same spot with the same bread. The person in charge of set design, does not always remember continuity. So suddenly we will be shooting and the cheese plate disappeared. Of course she didn’t tell me she put the fricking cheese plate in the fridge because she is French and can’t stand that the cheese on the cheese plate is sweating and sitting on the table. And of course I didn’t notice because I am also the clapper and the script supervisor and of course we can’t do the scene over because we are already way behind… oh la la

It’s so funny… Seriously, and I just keep cracking my shit up, because what else can I do? I love it…

scene 2.... oh la la la la la la

She screamed, “Who took this bag from the chateau? There is a lady on the phone, she is crying, she has been looking for this bag for two days. Tomorrow she is getting married and she has everything in that bag.” She picks up the bag swings it over her shoulder and yells, “ Who took this bag, there is a lady on the phone crying, it is hers. She must have it, she is getting married tomorrow and all her things are in it.” She runs out the door hops in the car and yells. “ I am taking it back to the chateau.”

We all look at each other and just start to laugh.

Scene 2 is being shot and no, that is not part of the movie, it’s just part of the chaos. We have taken over a beautiful old farm house out in the countryside of southern France, surrounded by complete beauty. The kind of beauty you imagine, with fields of sunflowers, golden hills and green trees. There are 16 of us, I think one of us has worked on a movie set before maybe two. It is, shall I say, a little bit crazy.

On day 2 of shooting the tension between us has risen, but we are all wearing many hats doing this, doing that. I am impressed by the patience existing in the group.
Since we don’t really know what we are doing there is a lot of chaos, but it is so much fun. A full on challenge and which is totally inspiring to me. I don’t know if I will be able to watch a movie in the same way again.

After a 14 hour day, we walked back to the chateau, a 30 minute walk, on the tiny winding roads. The full moon was glowing orange and we used her light to see our way. We looked up in the sky and saw the longest, slowest shooting star….

I’d have to say, I think it’s a good sign.

a French sort of melancholy

Today, I walked around the land of the chateau, as I’ve done everyday since we arrived, but today I decided to look, to feel, to smell and oh how things change. Things changed when I shifted my focus to the external beauty surrounding me to just feel as I walked to see what I saw, and smell what I smelled.

Since I haven’t gotten a photo of the peacocks yet, I decided to try this morning. I walked right up to the first one and he immediately spread his beautiful feathers for me and turned around in several circles. I found it to be quite funny as I was thinking it wouldn’t happen so effortlessly…

My walk continued around the land near the beautiful buildings, the garden and down the trail to the wooded area smelling of Je ne sais quoi, but smelling lovely none-the-less… The sunflowers were not sunning themselves this morning, as the sun has not shone, and I finished the walk as I rounded back to the chateau.

I am feeling melancholy for the moment, but I know that will change soon. I am off to a meeting for the costumes and props for the movie we are shooting…First full dress rehearsal for scene 1 this afternoon..

sweet fat goodness

Can we talk about the butter? I mean really, the sweet slightly salty creamy smoothness of the French butter. Actually, I hadn’t tried it until this morning with breakfast. OMG, it’s so good and I’m not really a butter person. We just don’t use butter at our house, but I think, I may be eating a little more than I should while I am here.

We are staying at a chateau and they have meal times so, we don’t choose what we eat. Which is kind of fun, but the food is atypical French. It’s all vegetarian hippy type food and if you know me, you know that makes me happy, but I’d love to sink my teeth into a lovely brioche or another pain au lait, which I had the other day and almost had an orgasm. Seriously, the French know how to do pastries and bread and butter for that matter. We may have to sneak away and indulge in some sweet fat goodness.

Sorry no photos of the food, but here is the chateau!

en francais s'il vous plait.

We arrived at our final stop. Well our final stop, for a few weeks anyway. There was a bit of mis-communication and lack of technology to get in touch with the people to pick us up last night, but that’s ok. We found a little hotel near the train station in Toulouse and stayed up late talking.

In the morning, we took another train to a beautiful small town 40 minutes away from Toulouse. Someone was there to pick us up and drove another 10 minutes out into the countryside to the chateau where we are staying. Let me just say, ‘IT IS BEAUTIFUL!’

The rolling wheat fields are mixed with fields and fields of golden sunflowers. There are two peacocks here at the chateau. They are beautiful, the male enjoys displaying his tail feathers often. I can’t get over all the colors and have never hung out so closely with a peacock. Our room is up on the 3 floor looking out over the trees and into the distant fields. Oh the magic.

Barcelona on the livability factor??

One of the things we love about traveling is seeing how people in other countries do things differently or how things function differently. We love to check out livability of a city. Of course that is our own opinion and certain things are important to us.

Barcelona, is pretty livable, to us. First of all it is on the Mediterranean, second, I love the open and kind Spanish culture. Then there are things like, public transportation, which we loved and used everyday. They have a fantastic underground. It pedestrian friendly, and many more things. Here are a few.

The courtyards, they are everywhere, you walk a little bit and suddenly you are in a big open space where people are sitting outdoors at cafe tables, socializing, children are running around, bicyclists riding through. This is so appealing to us and somehow we did not take a photo of one..

Now this may seem funny, and well, it is, but one of the things we noticed (and liked) in Barcelona were the garbage bins. They were so cool! First of all they were plentiful, neat, clean, non-stinky (in 90 + humid weather), they were double sided (which I love). You could add garbage from the street side from a big lid or from the sidewalk side, which had a foot peddle to open up the bin or a small (hand size) opening to put your rubbish in. Usually there were 3 bins, sometimes 5, like in the photo. 3 recycling bins, one for paper and plastic, one for glass, and one for compost and 2 for regular garbage. I just love this, it is practical, and it is environmentally friendly. And apparently it works, because there was not garbage anywhere! (We have since made it to France and this is not the case here.)





The other thing we loved, was the bicycle sharing system, although it had a major flaw. We couldn’t use them. You need to be a resident and have an annual subscription to the program. Other than that, the city wide bicycle program is very cool. You can use the bikes all over the city, they are parked in several different places, they are equipped with a front rack, and lights. Plus they are red, which I like!




Overall, we both thought, we needed more time to get a feel for the energy of the city, but it ranks quite high on our list of livable places.

Barcelona..

We are leaving Barcelona today. It has definitely been an adventure. Here is a little bit about our day yesterday.

Hmmm…. It seems this trip to Barcelona has been about lessons, about how travel is amazing and amazingly frustrating, about how expectations are just that… Expectations.

We had ideas about today. They were great. We were going to rent a scooter, but it didn’t work out. We were going to go to the train station and buy tickets and it didn’t work out. All this not working out took all day of running around, with a few cafe/sangria stops along the way. We decided after several disappoints and not getting anywhere to go back to our flat to try to get the tickets online. Which after another hour or so, we think worked. So, then it was 8:30, we went on a walk through the beautiful Park Guell and we were going to have a fine meal up on the hill and guess what? You got it, it didn’t work out.

Sometimes that is how things are. Sometimes making plans just isn’t a good idea. This trip has been like this so far. From the beginning to the near end.

As tomorrow we are off to France. We hope!!

With all that said, we’ve seen a lot of beauty and experienced some wonderful things.

Lucky Girl!

we made it to Barcelona and it's amazing. Although, I have to say we did not arrive without a few small inconveniences...

I should have known, when we got on the plane and my seat was in the middle of, the middle of the plane. You know, the seat where no one wants to sit. My husband very graciously switched with me. He's so sweet...

The plane took off and I decided to recline. Nope, it wouldn't recline. I asked a flight attendant about it and soon all the flight attendants were helping. No one could figure out how to make this stupid seat go back and since my husband already switched with me for my comfort, I wasn't about to make another peep. Our flight was over 9 hours.

So, needless to say, I did not sleep the whole flight, which isn't entirely the end of the world, but it kind of sucks. It also did not help that the family, with 3 kids behind us did not shut up the entire way. I guess they didn't sleep either, but at least, they did have reclining seats.

We got off the plane in Amsterdam and as we were going through security, I realized, I left my jacket on the plane. Ugh.. We had already gone through security so I could not go back and still make our next flight. We asked a friendly and helpful KLM woman, but no jacket to be found on our plane.. So.. I lost my jacket.. We went to our very crowded gate and waited. We ended up sitting on the air condition duct because there were no seats available and when we stood, my shirt got caught in the duct and it tore a huge hole in it. I thought, oh man, hopefully all this stuff only happens in 3's... because 3 things already happened...

We finally made it to beautiful Barcelona.. Yay!! We arrived at noon on time. Then we went to baggage claim and it took over an hour to get all our items off the belt, it was sooooooo slow... Steven's guitar was in the oversized things and it did not arrive so we had to wait in a very slow moving line at the lost baggage area. We waited and waited and waited. Finally, they told us his guitar arrived and they will send it up right away. So, we left our precious spot in line to go to the other side of the airport to pick up his guitar, which did not come. We walked back and waited in line again.. We ended up in this cycle 3 times before his guitar arrived, 4 hours after we had landed.

At this point we were both quite frustrated, we hadn't slept, we hadn't eaten and we had 7 pieces of luggage between the 2 of us including 2 guitars, camera equipment, our carry ons and one suitcase for our clothes. I suggested taking a taxi to our destination, but Steven did not want to do this, he wanted to take the train. I pretty much had a conniption fit, but followed him to the bus (carrying 5 things). He carrying 2 50lb bags. Then, we got off the bus and had to walk 20 minutes to the train, by the time we got there, I was about to kill someone. We got on the train with all our shit and realized we had to transfer. I said to him. There is no way, I am schlepping this stuff any further, we are taking a taxi. So, we took the train a little further. We got off and had to carry it another 10 minutes. We found a taxi, got in and ahhhh.... relaxation.

We made it to the place we are staying, which is so cool. We are renting a room in someones flat. We found it using this website. www.airbnb.com. It's a new trend in traveling and it is so cool. The NYT just did an article about this type of thing here.

Since we had taken forever to get there, the lady at the place we are staying had gone off, which I would have done too. We had our taxi driver call her. She came back in about 20 minutes. and voila... We made it!!

I was still about to kill someone, but at least we made it safely. And our flat over looks the whole city. It's beautiful and amazing! And I am such a lucky girl to be here..

one hour...

Frantically...cleaning the house, organizing, last minute packing. One hour til we leave.. I love it.

Spain... France... here we come!!

I have decided to completely shut down all operations here at Karazi Design, while we are away filming a movie in S. France.

For the next month, I am going to try to travel blog as much as possible. Please, if you know anyone interested in travel and reading about it, pass my blog on to them.

We leave in 2 days and I am quite excited and totally not ready... First of all, what do I wear? I'm so used to traveling to India and the Middle East and I have my go to cover up baggy clothing, but Barcelona and S. France? So, I decided, I will wear dresses all sorts of dresses and maybe only pack dresses, because here in the NW, I never really get to wear all my beautiful sundresses, (the sun don't shine much on these parts). I guess I answered that question.


photo from the uah.edu website


Next, what to do in Barcelona? OMG, I am sooooooooooooo excited, a new city, on the Mediterranean, in the summer, in Europe. OMG! I know we will find plenty to do, but we only have 3 days and we like to wander and serendipitously run into magic. On the other hand, I don't want to miss any of the really really cool stuff that exists in the city.. Oh, balance, such is life... I suppose a little structure and a little spontaneity will do the trick.

Then, the train to Toulouse. I am quite thrilled about the train ride there... Through the countryside that inspired painters such as Van Gogh, and other artists. I have not been to France since 1994 and am quite excited about this journey. It will be thrilling in all sorts of ways.


photo from leelau.net


ooo hold on.. I just got an email from the people we are filming the movie with..I'll be right back!

I'm back. It is our detailed schedule for the first few days at the movie set.. Kind of funny since I was just writing about taking the train to Toulouse. Which is the largest city closest to where we are going to be. The rest is a bit unknown. I'm hoping to write more as I learn more.

Sale ends tomorrow.

I sit here this morning organizing, going through mail, lengthening necklaces and thinking, tomorrow is the last day of my sale in my etsy shop..

Only one day left. Check out all the beauties 20% off all the jewelry including gold.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/karazidesign

sleepless nights...

Sometimes it happens... More lately than usual. These sleepless nights. My mind scrolling through all the things, the things to do. I wonder why. Why this month has been so hard for me to fall asleep and sleep through the night? I feel like the answers are there, but I am not following them, taking their lead. They tease me with their relaxing ways and I grab, but can not reach and slowly slowly move in the direction of awakeness... aaaaaaaaaaaa

Do you ever feel this way?

Seafood fest on Sunday!!

Just a little reminder, Kathy and I will be selling our "Treasures from India" at 30-50% off this Sunday, July 11 from 10-4 in front of

Duque Salon
5348 Ballard Avenue Northwest
Seattle, WA 98107-4060

Plus I will have some of my jewelry at 20% off..... If you are in Seattle, come on down to Seafood Fest.. We hope to see you there.

And if you are not in Seattle, all the jewelry in my Etsy store is 20% off until July 14th!!

Check it out!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/karazidesign

SALE SALE SALE SALE

I'm in one of those moods.. It happens rarely, like I've only done this one other time... ALL ITEMS IN MY ONLINE ETSY SHOP ARE 20% OFF FROM NOW UNTIL JULY 14TH.. EVERYTHING! Including gold! Yes, gold is on sale! So, now is the time to take advantage of this rare and fleeting moment!