The Daily Tom

These are photos from an interview/meeting with SIU students from Columbia. Pablo, in the middle, is one of our multimedia guys and shoots and puts together videos for the web (www.siude.com). He is also from Columbia. Danny Wenger, reporter and editor for the Daily Egyptian, is doing a series of stories about students from other countries, profiling a different country every week, and talking with those students about how life is different here in southern Illinois compared to life back home.

As it turns out, Danny (of the DE) speaks Spanish. Very fluently. I myself have had a couple semesters of college Spanish and have even attended a Mexican church, but can't really follow along and continue a conversation in Spanish. So, I kinda kept my mouth shut and took pictures like I was supposed to, firing off an occasional flash here and there.

I brought along an old Vivitar 285 flash mounted onto a Bogen Superclamp and wired to a Pocketwizard, to provide a little better light than what was coming through the windows. Luckily for me, all the ceiling and walls were a smooth white, making Pablo's apartment my very own giant softbox. I clamped the flash onto their entertainment system/tv stand/whatever you want to call it and pointed it up at the ceiling.

Also, Pablo has a kitty. That's all I'm really gonna say about Danny's and my trip to Pablo's apartment. They fed us some bread that they made along with cocoa that they put pieces of swiss cheese in. Apparently that's something they do in Columbia.

Didn't really shoot anything today. I turned in my 8-page paper at my 2 o'clock class and we had a class discussion about something I didn't read. The volleyball game tonight is at Mizzou, so I won't be going to that. We will, however, be leaving at 6:30 AM for tomorrow's SIU Football game @ Indiana State! That'll be exciting. Plus I'm driving so I'll get paid like 9 hours for the trip. Saturday night is some kind of cage fighting thing that Pablo was hoping I could help shoot video for, but I'm not sure if we're going to be back in time.

That's it for today. I'm tired, so I'ma take a nap for a little while and then go see THE KINGDOM cuz it's probably gonna be awesome as hell. Adios y buenas noches, mis amigos.

TB