A normal Friday at Uni...??

Friday wrapped up our first week back to Uni in absolute chaotic style. The morning began on the east side of town at the Minto House on Chambers Street. I haven't figured out the best path between Minto House and my studio in the Evolution House yet - although the southern-most path goes by the Brazilian Crepe Stand, Tupiniquim, one of my fave places to eat lunch in Edinburgh, so I imagine I'll be going that direction a lot. And it's flatter - that's a big deal here. Direct paths aren't always the best paths to take in this city as you can end up going UP and DOWN and UP! Anyhow, MFA 2nd-year students (MFA2s) have Context (the academic/writerly portion of our studies) in a tighter setting than last year's lecture theatre. I know almost everybody in my group now, and we'll get loads done on our dissertations, which occur this semester. (In the UK you write a dissertation for your Masters and a Thesis for your PhD - it's opposite in the states.) My theme is "Comparing and Contrasting the US Caldecott and UK Greenaway Award-winning Picture Books to Identify Trends, Similarities and Differences Between the US and UK Markets." Wish me luck!
     After our Context meeting, I had a meeting with my personal tutor back at the main Art building. My tutor works in Fashion Design, which gave me all sorts of fun ideas for my Exit Show, which will happen this coming May.
     I then had my one-on-one with Jonathan Gibbs, head of our illustration department. He was extremely helpful guiding my direction for the upcoming semester.
     Then it was back to the Minto House for our breakout groups - called Seminar. (In the future, I'll use this in-between gap time to go to the main campus library and write.)
     Then back again to Evolution House for our semester kick-off project called EIEIO. All illustration students - undergrads and postgrads were broken into groups and given a nursery rhyme to dramatize in some creative way (leaving the audience to guess which nursery rhyme you had). My group was assigned "The Little Nut Tree." I wasn't familiar with this one, but apparently it was a political satire based on Catherine of Aragon, who originally married Henry VIII's brother Arthur, who proved to be infertile, so she became the first wife of King Henry VIII and Queen of England. Ironically, there were two Americans in my group. Our third member (English) came up with the idea to adapt the tale to American politics. This is what happened as a result: We reworded the poem a bit. Instead of giving a golden pear and a silver nutmeg to the princess, as the rhyme states, the "prince" now gave a golden elephant and silver donkey to the "princess." OMG.
     The whole point of the project is to become familiar with the studio spaces and make friends, and that certainly happened! Turns out Harriet plays guitar. We went to lunch the other day at Hula Juice bar, then stopped by Red Dog music and jammed on their guitars for a bit - FUN!
     But my day wasn't over yet!
     Blackwell's Books hosted an amazing event that pretty much every kidlit fan in Edinburgh attended - An Evening with Oliver Jeffers, Sam Winston & Eoin Colfer (CLICK HERE to read more about it). Of course, that meant heading back over to Chambers Street again - seriously! A bunch of us met up at Revolution Bar to grab a snack before-hand, then head to the event hosted by our illustrious and dear Vivian French.Hazel Terry did a nice write up of the event - CLICK HERE to read. I was pretty tired, must admit. Needless to say, when I finally got home, I went straight to bed!