Things I'll Miss About Elsewhere

1. The constant flow of people
2. Late night, spontaneous overhauls and re-dos and re-organizations of the most complicated and overwhelming spaces
3. Lily making that dance-y face.
4. Stephanie's crazy smile face
5. North Carolinian accents
6. Clapping for everything.
7. Saying, "Wow. What a great _____." and meaning it!
8. Having long serious discussions about capitalization.
9. Community dinners with 15 people nightly.
10. That one night that it was just me and Lily and four residents at dinner and it was like a tiny family.
11. Group complaining about the bathroom being disgusting.
12. George's dancing hands
13. Danna laughing uncontrollably.
14. The SmackDown with The Slaughterhouse and the Dannaconda. Tellin' it like it is.
    
15. When Mary's face and eyebrows go up and she asks if you have anything else you'd like to share or talk about.
16. J's giggling
    
17. General Gamble Giggling
    
18. going to the pond in the country.
19. Super Piano Bouncy Ball, and finding bouncy balls EVERYWHERE.
20. my lily bean
21. everyone hanging out in the log cabin with the lights in there and talking about middle school.
22. Everyone swooning over how cute and great Grant is.
23. Everyone swooning over how cute and great Chef Graham is.
24. Having Chef Graham come visit us each night after his restaurant closed. Why does he even like us so much?
25. Playing CITY.
26. Eating so much JIF and feeling like it's an ok thing to do.
27. Monday mornings
28. My amazing studio-mates
29. Absorbing new people into our community
30. Going to Coe's and buying Cheerwine.
31. Not showering for three days in a row and feeling totally fine about it.
    
32. Trying to figure out how Mary functions with her very picky eating habits.
33. Receiving mail art from my family!
34. Playing dress-up everyday.
35. Pretending to be a legitimate costume designer.
36. That everyone walks around with a billion projects ideas just like me.
    
37. Dance parties where everyone dances their hearts out.
38. So many small soft crawl-y spaces
39. Swimming and working out at the friendly clean YMCA.
40. The big waterslide!
41. So many ribbons
42. My tree branches and ribbon nests over my bed.
43. Laminating things.
44. How excited everyone gets to have pretzles and eggo waffles and pickles.
    
45. The endless massive race to eat food before it rots
46. Every artist conversation event. And all the future ones that I won't get to see come to fruition first hand.
    
47. Being in such a creative exciting community-based environment.
48. Having my daily "work" be sewing ruffles and seaweed and installing art pieces in a small nook in elsewhere.
49. Calling up places and asking them to give us things for free because we are a non-profit.
50. Working 11 hour days, 6 days a week for free.
51. Meeting and working with the coolest artists ever.
    

I guess this is a for-now-goodbye elsewhere. I will miss you terribly. I hope hope hope there is a future for us together next summer, because you are a beautiful place with a beautiful vision. It's so nice to know there is a place with open arms and delicious food that's there at the end of this final-year-of-school thing coming up, and to know that it's filled with beautiful people, even if none of them are getting paid.

Until then! Thank you Stephanie, George, J, Mary, Danna, Ian, Saralee, Lily, Eliza, Yuri, Colleen, Chelsea, Katie, Chris, Alex, Ellis, Shalin, Jona, Kaylan, Claire, Suse, Jason, Abby, Amy, Leanne, Les, Travis, Meng, Joshua, Chad, Brian, Grant, Chef Graham, and all the other people I heard stories about.

Thank you very loyal blog readers. I hope you will continue on to my obviously more boring real-life blog when I make it. I feel like it's time for a new blog as I am obviously a new changed woman.

LOVE,
ALIYA