Moving On: Part One

I'm moving to my first real "adult" apartment in 22 days. Of course I have lived on my own for the past four years but it has always been in residence or student apartments, so now that I've graduated this move feels more "real" I guess.

Back in the spring when I had originally decided to move to Halifax I was intent on living by myself. I have lived with F and a variety of different roommates in a variety of "interesting" apartments over the past four years while at university:

Me on my "bed" in residence

First Year: F and me in a residence room that was probably about 3/4 of the size of my bedroom back at my Mum's place in Toronto. Now let me tell you, I have never shared a room with anyone in my entire life (sleepovers and cottage visits exempt). It may sound a little spoiled but that's just how my life worked out. I always has a place of my own to escape to, but in res. that became a lot more difficult. I had also not slept in a single bed since I was eight years old, so you can guess what size the beds were in our room. Needless to say, F and I were looking for an apartment for second year by October of our first.

The infamous wood paneling in our first apartment

Second Year: My first apartment! F and I find a place that we call the Big Blue House. An old house that had been turned into three levels of apartment. We're on the middle floor. Underneath us? Wannabe frat boys. Above us? International students who think BBQing on the wooden staircase, that serves as both the only entrance to the upper level apartments and a fire escape, is okay. The apartment seemed awesome at the time, but looking back only a couple years later all I can see is miles and miles of wood paneling. Also guess who moves in?! F's boyfriend from back home moves to Sackville to be with her. K (the boy) and I go way back to the fourth grade and although we were never close friends we get along okay. However, apparently getting along has nothing to do with being able to live together. Our inability to co-habitate is mostly to do with the fact that he's a dirty, messy boy and though I wouldn't consider myself a clean freak, I still don't appreciate month old apple cores and half eaten pizza slices hanging around. By the end of the year K is back in Toronto, F is a little heart-broken and I....well I'm sad for F but can't help feeling a little relieved.

Vegan cupcakes!

Third Year: F and I stay in the Big Blue House and find a new roommate. A GIRL this time. She's great! A fine arts student, a baker and a vegan. She teaches us to bake vegan goodies, we watch silly movies and make cookies at midnight. We all have the usual roommate spats but nothing out of the ordinary. But despite the great roomies, we are still living in an apartment with carpets an indescribable shade of.......grey?......brown? A toilet from which you can easily reach the sink, and a strange fruit fly infestation that, even when the place is spotless, won't go away.

Me on the roof of our last house

Year Four: F and I part ways with our other magnificent roomie but we stay close friends. We're originally supposed to live with couple other friends from school but things fall apart and F and I are left without a home a month or so before we're supposed to move. Eventually we find a house and pride ourselves in the negotiations we make with the landlord. A six bedroom, two bathroom house for just me and F at only $1,000/month, all inclusive. It's a good deal considering the place was home to some very exuberant soccer boys for the past few years and is now falling apart. But despite the holes in the wall, atrocious paint job and strangest layout for a kitchen I've ever seen, we call the place home for the next year.

So come graduation, after four long years in student housing, I was ready to strike out and find a place to really call home. I was not, however, prepared for the battle field that is finding an apartment in the city.

1913 hours and 44 minutes of real life

I graduated 79 days 17 hours and 44 minutes ago on May 17th 2010 from Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. I've got a beautiful hand printed diploma framed in mahogany and the right to say I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Fast forward to August 5th 2010 and I am working at an IT company in Halifax, Nova Scotia and using very few of the skills I learned in class at university. In fact I'm pretty sure I'm using none of any skill I possess. The work is boring at best and an extremely boring at worst. Though I will admit it pays well. I get up, go to work, go home, eat, sleep and repeat. NO ONE TOLD ME REAL LIFE IS SO BORING!

Luckily I've got it in my head that I want to be an actor, so I may be able to escape this real life thing once in while a do something I enjoy.

And I do actually want to be an actor. I'm not someone who decides after one stint in a high school production and just jumps in with no training, experience, or knowledge of the business; so GOD FORBID someone tells me one more time that acting is a hard business to get into. I KNOW! In fact, most actors you tell that to probably already know and have experienced it first hand. Why everyone assumes we're so ignorant of the business is beyond me. End rant....

Anyway, I want to act and so I will be taking my first step toward that goal on September 27th when I start an eight month training program at Neptune Theatre in Halifax. In 53 days I can blissfully escape the real world for four hours a day four days a week and return home to theatre world!

The Pre-Professional Training Program at Neptune runs at the theatre for eight months and includes classes in voice, movement, text, singing and dance; plus discussions of all the plays preformed in the current season and a list a 25 plays to read.

My audition was in June and I have never been more nervous. I spent three weeks preparing two monologues, one from Nicky Silver's "The Food Chain" and one from Shakespeare's "As You Like It", and the song Part of Your World from "The Little Mermaid". The auditions were held at Neptune in a rehearsal room and the current head of the theatre school was the only person present.

Immediately afterwards I felt great about it, but as the days went by and the deadline at which we were supposed to hear back went zooming by and still no letter had arrived, I began to get worried. I had taken to calling home everyday at 11am to inquire whether the mail had arrived, to which L would reply "no letter today" before I could open my mouth to ask. Eventually, in order to keep my sanity and fragile ego from shattering to bits I had to tell myself I didn't get in and set to work figuring out what I was going to do for the next year. I had a plan to move to Europe as an Au Pair for a year before re-auditioning for the program and starting to build my acting resume.

Then, a few weeks into July, after a very long and horrible day, in which my computer decided to declare a vendetta against me, I realized I has less than $5.00 in my bank account because I hadn't been given my first pay-cheque yet, and I lost my last bus ticket (and obviously couldn't buy more) so I was forced to walk the 6 miles across the city to home, I got a call. Not a letter, A CALL, with a real live person from Neptune Theatre who was telling me I had been accepted into the program. I was ecstatic, even the fact that I was walking home in 35 degree weather across a long bridge with no shade couldn't dampen my mood. I had been convinced that my only alternative to going to Neptune was running away to Europe for a year (which would be so bad but I wanted this program more). I called F right away and then Boston Dad and J and then my sister and probably just about every other family member and person I've met in the past four years. So Europe was cancelled, I was going to acting school and the hunt for an apartment for F and I was on (more on that in another post), because as much as I love the Bennett family, I do need my own place.

Only 1272 and 39 minutes 'till departure from real life!

Ballet Shoes

So after the hottest shower on earth my body feels relaxed enough to start a small post about the newest addition to my shoe collection, a brand new, scuff, rip, gaping hole, and gaffer tape free pair of ballet shoes for my upcoming dance class at Neptune Theatre School (more on school later).

I've been dancing on and off since I was about six years old. I took ballet, tap, jazz and even dabbled in swing in my late teens but never took to dance really seriously except as a form of exercise or the occasional drunken night in university (ie: not that long ago I just like to think I've matured incredibly in the past 2-3 months). But come fall I will be back into regular dance classes and I can't wait!

And so the time has come to get new dance shoes as I have been using the same black leather ballet shoes for the past several years and they are a little....worse for wear:

Exhibit A: The Old Girls

These shoes have seen me through several dance classes, at least 10 shows, and countless hours of rehearsal. I'm pretty sure I spent at least 3 months at a time never taking them off. I have sewn them back together about five or six times and they now have some very well placed gaffers tape keeping them from disintegrating in my hands. The Old Girls are very precious to me but will not suffice for another year of dancing. And so enter.....

Exhibit B: The New Girls in Town (next to the Old Girls)

As you can see, a much better prospect for class, though it's going to take some time to get them to the comfort level the old ones have.

And though I can't wear them anymore the Old Girls will be kept as a keepsake, who could bear to throw out a stinky old pair of ballet slippers? Not me.

The Scrapbook Saga

For the past month I have been working on one assignment that has completely consumed me. The project was for a class I'm taking about Paris, called Paris: City of Light. We had to choose one of three options for said project: an essay, which I'm terrible at writing, a power point presentation based around one topic related to Paris, or plan a two week trip to Paris in the form of a scrapbook. Now in my usually logical thinking I said to myself, "Oh! A scrapbook, wouldn't that be fun and creative." What I didn't say was, "Oh! A scrapbook, that will take an infinite amount of your time and energy for the next month." So what did I do, I chose the scrapbook. I had one month to complete the project and in my mind that was easy. I even started my research right away, figuring out what hotel I would stay in and when I was going to go and what I was going do when I got there. I even had a long weekend during this month in which I spent 3 days working on this scrapbook. But it just was not getting done, in fact I think the longer I worked the more I had to do. Every night for the week before it was due I was up way past 3 am, gluing and cutting and typing like mad. I was even skipping classes so I could get this stupid thing done, but the miles of glue and paper seemed endless. And when I was just about to disappear into the very dark, never-ending, scrapbooking pit of despair there was a light at the end of the tunnel and I glued my very last piece of paper to that book. I handed in the project today, 2 days late, but it is done and I will be damned, to the scrapbooking pit of despair, if I don't get an A on it.

-Emily