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| Me, age 4 |
So, I've had this blog for just about one month, And I thought it was high time I told you a little bit about myself and what brought me to Albania, of all places.
I was born in Toronto and raised in Burlington, Ontario. When I was 14, my dad got a job in The Netherlands, so we packed up and moved the family to Amsterdam, where I lived for 4 years until I graduated high school. During those 4 years, I was extremely lucky to be able to travel to all sorts of places, from Japan to Paris to Tanzania.
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| Modeling kimonos in Japan, 1997 |
I spent one year at York University in Toronto, where I lived with a family and took care of their 2 children every day in exchange for room and board. It was a tough year, as I had virtually no friends and very little free time. By the end of the school year, I was ready for a big change.
Luckily, my parents had just learned that they would be moving to Bucharest, Romania, again because of my dad's work.
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| My mom and I in Budapest. During the year I spent in Romania. |
I decided it was a good time to take a year off from school and plan what I was going to do next. My next move was back to Canada, and I spent the next 5 years in Hamilton, ON where I studied Art History at McMaster University. Hamilton was very good to me, it had (and still has) an exciting arts scene, and I was working at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and even had the opportunity to take another year off from school for a curatorial internship, which allowed me to spend a month in Moscow working at the State History Museum and The Tretyakov Gallery.
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| My view from behind the bar, at an opening at Loose Cannon Gallery in Hamilton |
Once I was finished my degree, I felt that it was time for a change of scenery, so I once again packed everything up and moved, this time, to downtown Toronto. I've lived in Toronto for the last 4 years, and really loved it, but I was starting to feel like the pace of life there was getting a bit too fast for me, and knew that I had to make some big decisions, yet again, about the path I was on and where I wanted to go next.
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| good times in Toronto. At Les Savy Fav during nxne this summer |
In the meantime, my parents had moved from Bucharest to Prague, and then from prague to Tirana, Albania. And once again, I was presented with the opportunity to join them in another country and figure stuff out. The plan, while I am here, is to get to know myself again, and take the time to do the things I love to do that I had lost sight of in recent years. This means being creative; making things, taking pictures, baking, starting to draw and write and blog again (I had a little knitting blog when I lived in Hamilton, but it is long gone...) One of the blessings of this move is that I was forced to part with a lot of my stuff, and leave the rest in storage. So I have the chance to start fresh, and filter out all of the distractions I once had, and really get back to the basics of what makes me, "me."
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| taking photos in Tirana |
So there you have it. An introduction, one month into my stay, and one month into my blog. Thank you for being a part of this journey, I hope you stick around!
