Devin's paintings

Portraits by Merlin

homelife

new art exhibit

Our art tutor, Shawn, is having his work exhibited in Dan's program gallery. His paintings are colorful and when you walk in to the hallway it's really quite arresting. He has some of his older stuff (from when he was in high school) up on display too- these are the very impressionistic gouache landscapes. The oil paintings are ones that he did during his undergrad years. Now he's a graduate student, though I haven't really figured out what his program is. He's in the art department and about the closest I could get was something like physiology - basically he studies body structure, but in relation to art, not health sciences. He's spent the last few weeks in his studio with a lot of bones, learning how to draw their structure and then applying that to his paintings of people.

This is him, on the left, with Dan and several of the program's students and tutors, at the opening ceremony for the exhibit, which was Shawn's first.

paintings, lately

Oh dear, these are from October! I totally forgot to publish this post. Now I have to catch up with all the paintings we worked on in November.... I'll be back later with those.

A great end to a great month!

We won!

Merlin
10,156 words in 30 days
****

Devin
80,743 words in 30 days
****

Wendy
103,557 words in 30 days
****

We got up early and wrote, we raced home from Chinese class and wrote, and we wrote instead of watching movies. Merlin let Devin write when her word count was behind and Devin let me use the computer when mine was. I went easy on all the other homework and we can now say we've written novels.

Tia asked if they'd be available any time soon and honestly, you wouldn't want to read them at this point. They're incredibly rough and probably too wordy (we were aiming for quantity here) and though Merlin won two times over (she finished her word count goal AND finished her story), Devin and I didn't actually finish the stories. We're going to work on that part-time this month and hope to finish filling in the general plots and then we'll do some major editing. Besides, I still need a title. Neither of us knows if we'll do anything with them (Merlin's already recognized that her story too closely resembles fan fiction to be able to do anything with it besides cherish it as her first NaNoWriMo Novel. Her novel's style is based on a book she really likes, though the characters are all her own).

Now, we can't imagine November without all the fun and despair. Dan was lucky he missed half the month (his trip to North America), that way he only had to put up with the insanity for two and a half weeks.

All in all, it was a success.

Big update

We're writing like mad over here, simply like mad. And it's only a slight exaggeration to say that we're subsisting over the weekend on pastries (ok, I give in, I'll cook dinner!). I haven't been this willing to get up early (4:30) in the morning in ages, Devin begs me to get her up at 5:15, and Merlin writes when she gets up at 6:30.

The stats so far:

Merlin:6,599 words as of this afternoon, or 94% of her word goal which may be revised soon to reflect her true capability. Her synopsis:

The Miraculous Journey Beyond, a Summary: A girl named Feena dreams of living a life in the wild but she is kept in the castle as a princess. One night, she runs away from her province and ends up with a wolf pack. As she journeys toward the Firelands she must defeat Minya, the evil king of the Firelands. But will she and the pack members defeat him and his warriors?

Devin: 22,221 words as of this afternoon. She's at 55.5% of her new goal of 40,000. She intends to actually write 60,000 I think. Her synopsis:

Season of the Dragons, a Summary:

Freyja an orphan girl of age fifteen is trying to protect the pendant that her mother had given her only a year before her family was destroyed by the Dragons of Koraith, but some how her necklace is stolen and she sets off on a long journey to get back her only memory and link to her mother. Some how Freyja was gifted with the power of Dream Sighting and the band she is traveling with soon realizes that and agrees to head off to Koraith the land of the South. But before she is allowed to plan out her revenge she has to receive the Six Elemental Elixers from a few special beings of directions. And there is more trouble than Freyja can ever imagine. Will she get back her pendant or will someone else keep her essence imprisoned?

Wendy: 29,373 words as of this afternoon. This is 58% of the the 50K goal everyone strives for, but I'm actually working for somewhere between 60-90,000, which means I'm 48.9 to 32% of the way there. My synopsis:

Untitled at This Point, a Summary:
Survivor of a ritual sacrifice which has left her mute, a young captive in the walled city of Tavall discovers her connection to a deep source of power that promises an end to a decades-long drought, but which shakes the foundation of the only home she has ever known.

Meanwhile, Dan is heading for Nashville, Tennessee for a work conference and a pair of cowboy boots. When he returns we'll be able to post some of the photos he took during his students' field trip to Qinghai. Should be good, as usual! :-)

Last minute preparations

NaNo checklist:

1. A supply of snacks stocked. Check.
2. Rewards for reaching word count goals purchased and stashed. Check.
3. Calendars with word count time lines mapped out. Check.
4. Character outlines, world/culture building notes, plot structure, languages, religious practices, maps worked out and ready to use. Check. (well, Devin and Merlin each get a check, anyway).
5. Good writing music transferred to the mp3 player. Check.
6. Computer repaired (the giant dust bunny was evicted). Check.
7. (Pre-)NaNo cold caught and out of the way so we don't have to deal with it in November. Check.
8. External hard-drive ready for backups. Check.
9. Time zones correctly set on the NaNo site so we can write according to our local time rather than always keeping an eye on Oakland time. Check.
10. Stories summarized for easy explanation. Check.
11. A teaser to get you to come back and check for our next NaNo related post. Check.

And no, we're not staying up until midnight just to get a head start. We'll be at it bright and early tomorrow morning, though. The housework will have to wait.

Yay! A violin!

Yay! I just got my new violin (and hi Tanya - my violin teacher in Davis). I've been really hoping to get a violin for I don't know how long. My dad had been so busy (and my mom didn't know where to get one), but we finally did it!

So when we bought a violin in China it wasn't like we just went to one ginormous music store, we actually went to many tiny stores about the size of half of Davis' Baskin Robbins. We went to a bunch of stores and they were jam-packed with instruments. Down at the bottom is a gourd flute (something they have in China) and up at the top is something that might be a Chinese zither.

Right here I'm learning how to put in fine tuners and how to restring the A string. This is the shop owner he actually gives lessons and taught me a few things for free!

My mom and sister are watching also, there's my mom, with my bow.

While I was watching the shop owner put in fine-tuners, my sister was with the shop owner's friend learning how to play an erhu, a traditional Chinese stringed instrument.
Here he is playing it for Merlin and talking at the same time or looking somewhere else.
We are just about ready to leave, only waiting for the extra strings and a few touches of the new violin that only cost half as much as it would've in America.
*********
By Devin

What's New

Here and over on the right you'll see two new graphics related to our latest endeavor: Novel Writing! Merlin, Devin and I have joined NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) with the goal of writing seven-thousand, thirty-five-thousand, and fifty-thousand words, respectively, in the month of November. We'll start on the first and end on the 30th and most likely be insane in between. We've been planning our stories out for the past few weeks, alternating between excitement and slap-ourselves-on-the-forehead, what-have-we-done insecurity. Gulp.

We need all the good wishes we can get - that Merlin will maintain her enthusiasm, that Devin will see a project through to completion, and that I will MAKE time to do this even if it means we eat ramen for 30 straight lunches in a row.

I've also got pictures to post and things to catch up on here - Dan's sister has been visiting, so I haven't been online much this week, but I'll try to put a few posts up in the next few days.

Hey, is anyone nuts enough to join us in this November craziness? (the icons in the sidebar are links to the NaNoWriMo sites)

Home is where the ART is

We've been having a great time with one of CUN's recently graduated art students, Cao Shuang. He's about to start grad school, but has had free time to meet with us once a week. It's so nice to have an excuse to draw and paint. The last time I did any drawing at all regularly was when we were living in Hangzhou, and then we just had crayons and watercolors. Now we're learning how to use gouache, which we all like a lot.

He's had us sketch regularly, which is nice practice.

Here are some of the things that are up in our "gallery" at home.