Day 5 – last day of class!  As the rest of my classmates spent a considerable amount of time making the tails of their “big birds” fancy, I was able to catch up and finish at the same time as everyone else.  I have some ideas to pretty up the tail of mine, and might do that when I get home, although it’s quite fine the way it is.  I also still have to prime and paint Burton and will see if I can do that sometime next week in our bunky yard.  In the meantime, here’s a peak at a naked Burton.

(I think I have to adjust his neck – poor guy won’t be able to see any fish…)

Chuck had brought in a beautiful hummingbird attached to a “flower” that he had sculpted out of wire.  Because we still had a full afternoon ahead of us, he agreed to teach us how to make one of our own.  It was a very disappointing end to my week, as it was quite small and I wasn’t able to sculpt even close to the right shape, despite trying twice.  I’m not a quitter but I did not finish my hummingbird.

This week has been an eye-opening experience for me and has caused me to do some reflection, which I hardly ever do.  When I signed up for this course, I had a general sense of what to expect and it never, ever occurred to me that I wouldn’t excel.  It’s not that I didn’t end up with results I’m proud of, it’s that I struggled to achieve those results and that’s what’s new to me.  Although I’m not an idea person, I can (usually) take someone else’s creativity and fairly easily make it work for me.  I’m trying very hard to push my feelings of inadequacy (in this situation) into the background while I focus on my outstanding results.  Also, between the anxiety and the amount of (unanticipated) physical effort required, I came back exhausted every evening.  I’m so glad this course was during our first week or I would have returned to work feeling like I’d never had a vacation.  (My expectations of next week are fun and relaxing.  I’ve been teaching myself how to play my Ukulele since I bought it 2+ months ago and I’m doing okay.  As we don’t need any experience going into this next week, I have no doubt that I’ll be able to keep pace.  Sure hope I don’t have to retract that statement…)

All in all, my week was very good – even though the pub tried to kill me!!!  🙂

On Tuesday, we attended the students’ reception at the Rails End Gallery, where we snacked on hors d’oeuvres, sipped punch and appreciated the work on display by the various artists of the community, including some of the teachers.  On Thursday, we participated in the “walk-around” – an hour-long tour of the other classrooms to get an understanding of what was going on in other courses and a sense of what others were accomplishing.  Following that, we were entertained by Rick Fines, an internationally-known singer/songwriter, who hails from Peterborough! and is an occasional teacher at the summer college.  Steve will be learning guitar finger-picking from him next week.  He sure gave an excellent demonstration of that on Thursday, and the songs he sang for us all had a story based on something local.

We finished our week with dinner out at Hali’s Bistro, a bit of an upscale restaurant which, in my opinion, tries too hard with their combos and presentation.  But their prices were reasonable.  I had trout, rice, and a very delicious salad, all of which I quite enjoyed – no cashews in site!!!