Hey guys! It's been a while hasn't it? Nearly 4 months since I've posted anything on here, and really this is just to direct everyone where they can go to to hear more updates about what I'm currently doing. 

I'm back in Philadelphia, I've graduated, and I'm producing a short film. The film is known as 'Goodnight, Fish' and will be filmed in Philadelphia, and crewed by people that live in the Philadelphia area. Currently we're almost completely crewed up, we have our actor signed on and ready to go, and we have our location. The only problem is that we don't have the funds to get the camera for the shoot. 

For that reason we're raising money on Indiegogo. Yeah, I know. I don't post anything for four months and then I come back to tell you that we're running around the internet asking people to look at our fundraising page, think about donating, and then pass the link around to all of their friends and followers. It's not very fair how I've left you hanging for so long without some much as a new place you can go to to hear interesting stories about what's happening, or ask questions or see videos about what we're doing. 

To make up for this, I'm giving you two links. The first, is my new website. Just click on the orange link, and you'll be there. It's a very young website, just a few days old, but visit when you get the chance. The blog will be dedicated to explaining the process of filmmaking as well as answering questions and occasionally some posts about the ideas I have in my head or strange experiences I have in Philly (trust me, the things that happen here are weird sometimes and I like to share). 

The second link, is my youtube page. Because I have so much going on with this film, I'm offering up the chance to actually see me talk about what I'm doing. There are no videos up yet (except for a bunch of stuff from some cons), because I just had this idea, but there will be, and there will be more if you tell me what you want to hear about.

So to recap:

1: We have an indiegogo page for our short film we're making. Please check it out, support independent filmmaking by donating or sharing the link with your friends. There's some good incentives for your support, and if you have ideas for other things you'd be interested in let us know, we're always happy to include new incentives. 

2: I have a new website, the full link is: Tasarionfilms.wordpress.com

3: I have a youtube page, I'm gonna start putting it to use. Feel free to check it out and send me a message there. 

I hope everyone is doing well and if you're in the US you're surviving this insane heat. When I start to travel again I'll come back to this blog and there'll be pictures and stories for you to hear. For now though, this film is going to take priority, and I hope that you choose to experience the process with us. 

Take care,

Tasarion

I suppose it's time to finish off this isn't it? I've been back in the states now for a month. My last night in London was sad but beautiful (Spent watching the stars and then the sun come up on the Thames) and when I got home everything felt wrong. 

If you had an internship in London this semester you were required to take this course that goes along with it. We were emailed on December 8th, 2010, telling us what was going to be required for work in the class and what we should do to get the most out of it. 

Today is April 6, 2011 and everyone seems to be bitching about this class. This is severely disappointing to me, because I got so much out of the class. The simple fact is, if you weren't expecting the work we recieved, you need to learn to read your emails about the things you're participating in. If you didn't get anything out of the class, it's your own fault. You didn't do the work in a way that would help you. Those blogs were not a waste of time, they were meant to help you understand what you were getting out of your internship by forcing you to really think about what you were doing and what it was teaching you. The presentation was meant to help you understand your company more, and this paper is meant to help you finalize what you got out of the internship. If you did the readings, paid attention the film, and participated in the class conversations you would have realized this class was not a waste of time, but an extremely helpful tool in shaping your future. 

Stop complaining and learn to grow up a bit. Sometimes you have to take responsibility. 

That being said I'm gonna go back to complaining about a different professor for entirely different reasons while I avoid doing his assignment that is due in 30 minutes. 

I'm ready to go home...Ready for me to be back?

Today on the train back from touring the BBC studios with my class, 5 of us were sitting on the train and discussing celebrities. We were looking at them from the point of view that they are spoiled and discussing that they need to not be treated like babies and given everything they want. When the topic moved onto how we would react if we suddenly were majorly rich and famous the general consensus was that we would not ever treat people that were "below us" like they were below us, and that we would not abuse the power given to us. I challenged this saying that plenty of celebrities probably said that before they were given money and fame, but it was still fought that if you come from a place where you know what it's like to be stepped on you then won't do it to someone else. 

I still find this logic to be flawed, because if this was the case no one would ever act the way celebs do, but we went back to talking about the crazy things that we've heard about people doing (like J.Lo flying in 2 couches from France to London because she "NEEDED TO REST ON THEM") until we got off the train. When we finally reached our destination we got off and a man who had been sitting a few seats down from us stopped us.

This is London, so we assumed that he was going to tell us we were being rude for speaking so loudly on the tube and that Americans were always obnoxious and that we should try to be more respectful (a speech several of us have actually received on the tube). Instead he told us thank you. He appreciated hearing what we had to say about how celebrities act and how we hoped that we would never be like that. Apparently the type of Americans that often visit London are the kind that expect everything to be their way and act like people should cater to them and appreciate the face that they're even here. It was refreshing to hear that we as Americans had some of the same opinions as him, and made his day to meet some Americans that were not stuck up. 

And it made our day for an Englishman to tell us that he appreciated us. After several months of dirty looks and being told to shut up and being called "bloody Americans" it was refreshing to have someone that actually listened to what we had to say before dismissing us. 

It also made my day to meet the TARDIS. Isn't she beautiful?

Wednesday (March 23)

Today we went to the Globe Theatre instead of class. We took a quick tour, I got to touch the stage and get a few pictures, before we went downstairs and got a bit of a lecture from an actor about the history of the place. 

During the lecture the actor asked us to volunteer the person that was most cynical to listen to him tell the history of the theatre and call him out on any bullshit he might say (his words, not mine). Of course, I was volunteered. I also successfully caught him in every lie he told. It's good to know people agree that i'm cynical isn't it?

Thursday (March 24)

I had my internship and we were filming at the Barbican again. Quite a mess of a day. I slept through my alarm, showed up just barely on time. Liam forgot the tripods, just barely made it back before we needed to start filming. Speakers didn't show up, delegates left because they were bored, and all around it was a very boring, slightly stressful day. (That being said, I would never give this internship up for anything else, I love it so much)

Friday (March 25)

Internship again, today at Earls Court 2. We spent the day at this health and nutrition trade show. There was a lot of filming various workouts and talks about what vitamins you need to take/what ones are just people trying to rip you off. There were a few good talks and I did actually take some stuff away from being there, but it was yet again a mess. Thankfully it was the end of my week and the next day I was going to do some fun things. 

Saturday (March 26)

When we woke up today the plan was to start out at Portobello Market. I frankly don't have the patience to shop with these girls anymore (<3 you all), so I ended up bailing at that part and cleaning my room like a madman. All of my laundry is done, I vacuumed under my bed, on my bed, my floor and my closet, and almost organised all of my homework. Around 5 me and Sasha headed out the door to go to the Sherlock Holmes Museum, which I'll post pictures from sometime later. There's a link to their website here (or, there will be soon) if you want to check out. After that we went to the Sherlock Holmes Resturaunt and Public House for dinner. Jess joined us for this part, and we had a fantastic time. Except for that bit where I had to scare that old dude away from Sasha, but even that was *kind of* entertaining….   

Sunday/Monday (march 27/28)

Visiting Tom! I've been looking forward to this for a while, and I was very happy to finally get to Reading and see him. I once again was late, because the time change and someone forgot to tell me and my phone that we needed to get up an hour earlier than we thought. We went to Shake Away (which was amazing, link in the links page), and saw Rango before heading back to his house to just chill out for a while. I was introduced to some very good stand up comics while we were watching TV. They also have the most adorable puppy ever, and I played with her for a while.

Monday morning when I got back I went to a "Life After London" program to learn about some ways to come back here and get a visa, and then went to lunch with our professor from Temple at My Old Dutch Pancake House. It was delicious, but I was glad when I finally made it home and could take a nap. 

Now I have to go to bed so that tomorrow I can start the mess of work that is due next week. We've all just realised that we have almost no time left here, and that we have papers/presentations due in every single class next week. Should be a good time!

Goodnight, and sorry for the double post tonight. I wanted to get all of these things up here though. 

Enjoy your week

Tasarion

I've just realised I never posted this. So it was never a double post! So. I'm gonna post it now, adding on the past few days. 

Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday (March 29/30/31) were relatively boring, though on Thursday I did get to go into the BBC newsroom, which was actually kind of cool. We've been stressing out about work a lot this week, so I've been doing a lot of reading and emailing (which means I've been thinking ahead and doing work before the night before it's due. I'm quite proud of myself)

Friday (April 1) I left with Liam for Wales. This is something I'm trying to actually write up into a proper story so you'll be able to read it in an interesting format. 

Today is Sunday (April 3) and I'm heading out to the football match in about an hour then spending the rest of the day writing my 4 papers that are due this week. 

Have a good rest of the weekend everyone, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRENDAN BEGGS!  I'm going to try to call you today just to say hi and happy birthday. Since you're..ya know…old. 1/4 of a century this year is it? <3

Alright, that was a really long post. I'm done now, I swear. 

On Saturday, March 29th  I got up bright and early (10am) and got ready to head out the door. I had a change of clothes, 6 sandwiches, and my computer and cameras with me when I left, and I was travelling alone to North Wales. I honestly knew very little about the place I was going. I had found it on a travel site, liked the name, and heard it had some Alice in Wonderland ties, so I figured it was a good spot to go.  

Around 5pm I made it to Liverpool, where I had about 30 minutes to wander around before I had to get on the bus again. I had seen this radio tower from the stop and decided that I would see how close I could get to it before I had to run back to the station. I didn't make it terribly far, but there are some pictures included in the Llandudno photo album (I'll link you at the end). 

Finally at 8pm (about an hour early actually) I was in Llandudno. The bus station was just a stop on the road, and the streets were already abandoned. Llandudno is a very small beach town, you can walk from one side to the other in about 20 minutes, and when it's not peak season for tourists it's very very quiet. I found my hostel in about 30 minutes, it turned out to be right around the corner from the bus stop but of course I had gone the wrong way, and then decided to take a quick walk to get my bearings. I found my way to the beach, walked along it to the pier, and then started a climb up the mountain. I have a bad habit of scaring myself when I'm in creepy places though, and about halfway up the path I was on I had to run back down because I had convinced myself there were angry ghosts following me. Yeah, I'm an adult, can you tell? I decided to call it a night so that I could wake up early. 

In the morning I started my trek to the Great Orme and the old copper mines that were in it. I had been planning on taking the tram, but it turned out to be closed. So was the cable car, and the buses weren't running frequently, so I decided to give up and just explore the area at the bottom of the mountain. This turned into climbing every single path on the mountain. I finally found the mines sometime around 2, and made it to the summit around 4. It was beautiful, but 15 miles of walking had started to wear me out. 

The Great Orme has a few quarries on it, and near one of them people seem to have a tradition of writing things out of the loose stones. The first evidence I saw of this was this on my way to the summit:

Once I got to the summit and looked back down towards the quarry I noticed that the entire hill was covered in words and shapes. It was interesting to see what was spelt, though most of the time it was just peoples names. 

I only had 1 run in with the goats, and 1 run in with some horses. Dogs were a bit more of a problem though, and I had several decide that they didn't like me wearing a hat and that they were going to get it off of my head. I was successful in not showing that it terrified me when they jumped on me though, so I'm quite proud. It's easier to not be afraid of dogs here since most of them are so well trained that if they're jumping on you, it's likely they just want to play. I haven't seen one dog try and attack someone since I've been here. 

The next morning I played proper tourist. I took a bus tour through Llandudno and the next town over, Conwy. It was just me and about 6 old people from Scotland, which was an interesting experience in itself. When the tour got to Conwy I hopped off and headed for the castle. This is the first castle I'd been to since I've been here, so I was extremely excited. It was amazing to explore, and I had so much fun looking at the landscape from the top of the towers. 

When I got out of the castle I headed down to the docks, and as I was walking there was a man just chilling out holding a hawk on one hand and petting another that was sitting on a bench. I went over and kept a good distance for a bit before he asked me to come over closer and meet the birds. That's when this picture occurred (Brace yourself, I'm not wearing a hat, and I'm smiling. I know it's overwhelming):

The man was incredibly sweet, and the birds were as well. They loved to have you pet their bellies. Just down the road from him was the smallest house in the UK. I can't remember the dimensions but I'll put a link to the houses website in the links page. 

That day when I got back I went to the beach, and then back to the pier. The arcade games successfully stole a couple of pounds from me, but it gave me a few hours of entertainment. I ended the day with another walk along the beach, this time at low tide, and I found my sisters name written in stones where the water usually was. I think it may have been the last thing I expected to see.  

Llandudno is a fantastic town with excellent people in it. The Llandudno Youth Hostel is a wonderful place to stay, no matter what age you are. The first 2 nights it was me and a couple of older people as well as my roommate that was probably in her 30's. The last night it was just me, which was a bit creepy, but the people that work there are fantastic and the rooms are amazingly clean. The only problem I had was at the Town House, so if you're there and looking for a drink, don't go there. They tried to tell me that my license and passport were both fake and that I wasn't old enough to drink. I finally got my drink, but I was well angry by the time I did. There are plenty of other places to go that are much friendlier though. 

If you want to look at pictures they are here, here, and here and if you want some links to the things that I did you can check out the links page here. 

Ok, in the next few days (probably on next Tuesday, actually) I'll be doing a lot of updating this website. I have photos to add, links to add, and I'm gonna update my blog probably 3 or 4 times in one day. I understand this is exsessive, but I want to talk about Wales, and the Globe Theatre, and this coming weekend, and possibly something else. I don't expect anyone to read all of these updates, but I'll be sure to tag them well so you know what they're about and can skip what you're not interested in. 

I've seriously neglected this blog and website, and it's time to start shaping up again. I have 22 days left here. Each day I'm going to do something on my list I created before I got here. I also plan to spend more time in the parks and outside now that the weather is so much better, as well as be more social. Well, try to be more social. 

See you next week

Tasarion

I apologize if this post seems out of place, I understand this is probably not the best place for it, but this blog is supposed to be about all of my experiences travelling. I'm currently experiencing problems with some of my classmates here, and I feel it needs to be addressed so that it doesn't lead to me building up tension about it. 

I am striving to become a filmmaker. This means that I spend a lot of my life doing work that doesn't seem to you like it's work. Just because you're a "journalist" for a "newspaper" at Temple doesn't mean that you are better than me. We live two different lives, we have two different goals in said lives, and we should both work very hard to achieve what we want to. Life takes everyone down a different path and that's something you have you understand. While you work hard to find stories and tell the truth to the entire world, I work hard to write or find stories to tell people to help them escape from and accept the truth of the world. Both of these things are very important in society and neither should be looked down upon (unless, maybe, the job is being done wrongly or harmfully). 

I believe that we can all get along well enough just by not being nasty. However, if you are nasty to me I will not just sit here and take it. I will come and find you and talk to you in person, and if that leads to unhappy things being said, or our ability to be in the same room being shattered, then so be it. I graduate in 63 days and will probably never see you again, so I'm not heartbroken. I wish you the best of luck, and I hope that you can learn to understand that there are people out there that are different from you. It may be time to break out of your comfort zones that this digital ages has created for you and experience some new things. I truly hope this possible for you, but if it's not, I hope you enjoy living your safe life. 


Now that that's over we'll be back to our normal programming later this week. Tomorrow I work at the premiere of Mark's film, and then Saturday we're going to Brighton. It should be fun as long as no one ends up in the ocean. 

Take care, and be proud of what you do, stand up for what you believe in, and don't let others get you down. I know I still have some work to do on that last part, but I'm making progress.

Tasarion

I went for a run tonight around Westminster and Parliament. It was amazing, the London Eye was lit up, the aquarium was lit up, Parliament was lit up. It's all so beautiful at night, and it was so nice out all day that tonight things were still warm. It's the first run I've been on in almost a year I think, so it was a very good way to end a day. 

Today has been good for me. The past few days I've been feeling a bit off about something. I still don't know what it was that had me in a funk, but today has helped to sort it out quite a lot. My first class of the day was cancelled, so all the work I didn't get done didn't screw me over, I got my paper back that I had been panicking about and got an A- on it, our film class was extremely interesting, I planned a trip to Wales for the 19th - 22nd, and I went for a run. All very positive things. 

Now I need to organise my life more, clean, and defend my music choices to my flatmates. We've all recently realised that our itunes libraries are public and they've found out I have all of Clay Aiken's albums…. I'm glad that's what they decided to make fun of, I have much worse on there :P

Oh, also, I made the quote wall twice tonight apparently. 

According to Jess:

Flat 22 quote wall WHY DON'T YOU EXIST: Amanda Boisselle "DON'T TOUCH MY MAC N CHEESE" as she sprints to save her mac n cheese from the vultures in the kitchen hahahah

At this point my mother is on Skype with me, as I'm running out screaming at Nancy and mom's yelling at me asking if somethings on fire and if I'm ok and what's wrong. Yeah, we can cause panic over food, that's right. Probably much more entertaining if you were there but these are the moments I'll remember forever :P

The other quote (also from Jess)?

also- Amanda Boisselle: "OOO! Can I see your laundry??"

You have to see the amount of laundry Toya has to understand why it's so exciting to see. Seriously, it's insane. 

Anyway, I'm off now to clean and maybe do some homework (yeah, right). I have too much energy and I don't know what to do with it, but it needs to not be sitting on Facebook talking to my roommate that are just in the other room. That's just unhealthy 

Hope you're all well

Tasarion

Spring break has been an interesting trip for me. It started out with a 12 hour bus ride to Aberdeen to meet up with Mark. I've been talking to Mark for about 9 years now. We met on a Lord of the Rings website for the actor Billy Boyd, and have been talking on and off ever since. It was a rather nervous bus ride since I had never met him before, and I ended up getting about 1 hour of sleep total. 

Once I got there and found Mark and amazing weekend immediately started. We went to an Aberdeen football match, I was given lots of gifts from the team including a keychain, a bottle stopper, a clock, and a roster that was signed by the entire team. Mark also had arranged for an announcement at half time welcoming me to the game all the way from Philly. After that we went to meet his family, and I was somehow tricked into holding his baby nephew (I think there's a picture of this somewhere but I dunno where). Later that night we went to a pub to listen to some live music before heading to my hostel for the night. 

The next day we got up early, I walked around on my own for a bit, and then Mark and his girlfriend Dani took me up to the farm to meet Dani's horses. I had never really been close to a horse before so I was a bit nervous for the first hour or so and spent most of it hiding behind Mark. Finally one of the horses decided it was sick of me hiding form it and came up to me and pushed me over. We cleaned up the stables, brushed the horses, and then Dani set up Leila to ride her. I helped a bit, and was excited to actually see her ride when she handed me the helmet and said "So the fun part is that I'm not riding. You are". I think there might be a picture out there of the look on my face when she said this too. 

It was an amazing experience. You can see pictures here, there's not many because I got so caught up in being there and hanging out with Mark and Dani that I kept forgetting to take pictures of things. I'll have to ask Mark if he has any so I can have a few more. 

The next day I left for Nottingham. This part of the trip isn't nearly as exciting, infect it's kind of boring. I got here, we went out to a pub for some live music (it's a trend of my break I think), and that was really cool. I got to talk to the lead singer about The Damned and meet some cool people. The next day I slept, literally all day. Nothing happened. Thursday Simon had work and I was stuck in the house with nothing to do. Really, nothing. No internet, I didn't bring a book (lesson learned, again), and I spent the day laying around wishing I could be anywhere else. The same kind of happened again today. 

I just got a message asking if I wanted to go and film something at Abbey Road tomorrow with Liam for my internship. I could say no and stay here, but I'm not so sure that there's anything for me to actually do. If I don't leave now I'm here until Sunday night. I'm kind of over being here…I haven't seen anything and I don't believe that Simon's gonna actually take me to see anything except maybe the castle, which would be cool but it's not worth 2 full days of being bored to see one thing when i could go home and work on something really cool. 

I've turned into that really lame person that finds work more interesting than spending time with friends. I feel like personally it's a better decision to just go home…I don't want to disappoint Simon by leaving but I'm also not feeling so well being here and being trapped inside all day. 

School starts up again next week. Only 6 weeks left…I can't believe it's going by so fast. 

Until next

Tasarion