[dcs_heading size="1"]Frequently Asked Questions[/dcs_heading]
[dcs_p]Below are some of the questions I get asked quite often, as well as questions submitted by my readers. To ask a question of your own, please use my contact page. I look forward to hearing from you![/dcs_p]
[dcs_toggle_flat title="You mentioned that you have moved around a lot. Can you explain?"]
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[/dcs_img_right]I have been highly nomadic in the last 9 years. I have moved 28 times (I count a move as moving all, or almost all, of my belongings, including within a given city) in the last 9 years. I’m quite a pro at it at this point. I enjoy new scenery on a regular basis, and Iike to take advantage of my high mobility. However, Marc and I really enjoy our current apartment and location here in Alexandria, VA and will likely be here for awhile.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="What languages do you speak?"]
I speak halfway decent French that’s getting better the longer I’m with Marc. I understand it well enough to follow a movie in it without subtitles, and my reading is very good – I can read novels and whatnot in French, but I am very shy when it comes to communicating in it. I speak a little German, but again, my reading is much better. I have never formally studied it, but I could get the gist of newspaper articles when I was in Switzerland. My accent in German is also way better than my accent in French, for the same reason. I have a vocabulary of about 200 words in Korean and am currently working on learning Mongolian. I’d love to learn Russian, and I think that it’s one of the sexiest accents out there.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="How much did your parents/family influence your life? In what way?"]
Well, they certainly influenced my choice of profession. I think that watching my mother take photos for my entire life gave me the eye that I think it takes to be a good photographer. They also have generally encouraged me to pursue my dreams, which I have. Also, in sort of a more negative tone, my father spent much of my life telling me “You’re not trying hard enough!” regarding many things, which I think is part of the reasons I am often so determined and contrary. I feel the need to prove to the world that I’m capable of great things. My parents were also both in the “creative class” as artists, and were both self-employed, which has given me something of an uncommon outlook on life and a different set of values than most folks.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="What are your weaknesses?"]
Men in uniforms or period clothes. Oh wait, I don’t think that’s what you were looking for…
I have very low resistance to offers of ice cream, gummi candy, and back scratches. I also absolutely love playing around in the woods or in rivers and cannot be counted on to stay dry if there’s one around, no matter what the situation. For a more traditional definition of weakness, I’d have to say water, as I am terrified of deep or opaque water due to having almost drowned when I was a kid. Kind of ironic for a sailor.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="What was your first job?"]
Unpaid: 3 years volunteering for a wildlife rescue. Paid: eSiteful, a web design firm, where I was a photoshop monkey. I have also worked at Whole Foods as a cashier, for a major Middle Eastern oil company as a project manager, overseeing 7 other workers, for an organization that helped groups of middle school girls make films as a video editor, for a public access TV station in various capacities, and for seven rural South Korean middle schools as an English teacher.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="What kind of motorcycle do you own?"]
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[/dcs_img_right]Marc and I own a Russian Ural sidecar motorcycle. It is the second Ural we have owned. The first was a 1995 Ural Tourist named Smutyanka, though we had to sell her when we discovered that she needed engine repairs beyond the scope of our abilities as well as our budget. Our current bike is a 2005 Ural Tourist, named Nadezshda. Despite the recent manufacture, Ural motorcycles are copies of the Soviet M-72 military bike, which was in turn a Soviet copy of the German WWII sidecar bike made famous by Indiana Jones as well as The Great Escape, the BMW R-71. The technology is quite outdated and simple compared to modern bikes, and the entire bike can be repaired or even disassembled entirely by a grand total of 5 tools. The bikes were originally designed to be repaired by illiterate Russian farm boys, so they’ve been really delightful to learn motorcycle mechanics through. As a (for all intents) vintage sidecar bike, she gets a lot of attention whenever we ride her around town, which is always fun.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="What do you currently do for income?"]
My current income is split between substitute teaching, freelance web/graphic design, photography lessons, and a lot of bartering. I’m a big fan of bartering, as it reduces my costs, helps someone else get something they need, and it avoids taxes. I trade my design services for a wide variety of things, from weekly cuts of meat from the butcher down the street to housing while I’m overseas. I’m also skilled at home improvement, carpentry, gardening, sewing, and other more physical tasks, which I sometimes also trade for.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="Do you have any particular skills?"]
I’m a master networker. I’m an only child and I spent much of my childhood accompanying my parents along to events that are usually just adults; art openings, international parties, and I even attended the opera at least 8 times a year from age 9 to 17 or so. This has meant that from a very early age I learned how to behave around people, and as a teenager I tended to hold small groups of adults in rapt attention. On a less serious note, I know how to weld with an oxy-acetylene torch, am a decent carpenter, I used to be a professional sailor and am probably still competent at it, I can identify about 200 dog breeds on sight and tell you at least one fact about them, I am a very good shot with either a rifle or handgun, and I know an awful lot about English etymology. I’m currently hoping to barter with someone for some instruction in motorcycle mechanics so that I can improve my skills in that area.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="Do you have any bad habits?"]
I chew my nails horribly. I also talk WAY too much. One of the things that I have been trying to work on is talking less and listening more. I share both these habits with my father. I also tend to be extremely lawyer-ish when I argue, which rarely goes over well.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="Do you think you’ll ever have kids?"]
No. I like kids, but don’t really care to have any myself. I have bipolar disorder, which has approximately a 70% pass-on rate, and I feel that it would be selfish to risk having a child that would have potentially tremendous difficulty in life, just because I wanted a kid. If I do have a kid, it will be just one. I think the fact that I was an only child meant that my parents were able to give me the attention and personal time that I needed to become who I am today. For instance, if I had had a sibling, there was no way they could have afforded the sailing, had time to drive me to reenactments, etc. Plus, at this point, I feel that I could better use the half million dollars or so that experts currently estimate it costs to raise a child for my own life. Sure, it sounds selfish, but with that money, I (and my hypothetical husband) could travel, have more money to put toward reenacting, potentially buy a small plane like my dad’s, etc. Plus, my hobbies are not generally very child-compatible, and I’m not really willing to give them up for the 12 years or so it would take for the kid to be able to participate. I think I’d rather just be some friend’s kid’s “cool aunt”.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="Why did you choose photojournalism to be your dream career?"]
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I like documenting the world, both for myself and others, to almost a compulsive degree. I also like the challenge of trying to tell a story visually. I’m a strong believer in the power of photography to inspire someone to educate themselves on a subject, and as a result I’m very passionate about introducing people to things (cultures, people, etc) that they would likely have never known about otherwise.
Plus, my mother, grandfather, and great grandfather were all photographers of some sort or another, professionally. To say it’s in my blood is an understatement.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="If you could go back in time and grow up someplace other than Texas, would you? And where would it be?"]
If I could still have the same parents? Totally. I wish I’d grown up somewhere more liberal like Oregon or Washington, or anywhere on the east coast Virginia or northward. I’d say Massachusetts, but I think I would’ve ended up a much different person. I don’t much care for most Massachusetts people who are under 18, never have. Maybe Vermont? Yes, I think Vermont is my answer. Within Texas, I wish my parents had stayed in Austin, where we lived until I was 4. I am SO much more an Austin person than a Houston person.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="How large is your extended family? (Like, aunts, uncles, cousins…) How close are you to them? Tell me something interesting about one or more of them."]
Pretty small, actually. I have one cousin on my mom’s side, and one aunt. On my dad’s side, I have an aunt and an uncle, and two cousins. That’s it. My mom’s sister is a relatively famous chef (5 cookbooks now, former friend of Julia Child), and my dad’s brother is on the board of directors of the National Science Foundation, after having been Dean of Students at Georgia Tech for something like 20 years. My two paternal cousins are both phenomenally smart, to almost a genius level. One of them made a perfect score on his SAT when he was 15 and was admitted to Yale at that young age. I’m not very close to any of my non-immediate family. They all live very spread out around the country and I didn’t see them much as a child.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="Have you always been a tomboy?"]
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[/dcs_img_right]Since I was a little kid, yes. I have always been really fascinated by the outdoors and very adventurous, and I never played with dolls or cared about clothes or boys as a kid. Getting me into a dress required catching me first, and I didn’t willingly wear a skirt until I was 19 or 20. I’m an exceedingly practical person, and I’ve always felt that the things that are stereotypically “feminine” such as nice nails, shaved legs, long hair, tight clothes, makeup, dresses, and high heels are all highly impractical, time-consuming, and unnecessary in the greater scheme of things. I don’t begrudge others who enjoy them, but those sorts of things just aren’t for me. To date I have never once worn heels and though I’ve worn makeup once or twice, I’ve never owned any of my own.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="Of the things you had to get rid of in your pre-Korea Stuff Purge, what was the toughest?"]
Stuff that was given to me. My family and friends tend to send me a lot of letters/cards/etc, and I also tend to get various presents from people from time to time as well, even outside of celebrations such as Christmas or my birthday. I have an extremely hard time getting rid of things that people have given me, no matter how ugly or useless they may be. It’s not that I’m worried about offending them, no, it feels to me like I’m *betraying* them. They gave me that item as an expression of love/friendship/whatever, and by getting rid of it, I feel like I am saying that those expressions mean nothing to me. It doesn’t matter that in my concious, logical self, I know that isn’t true, and it doesn’t matter that the gift-givers would know that wasn’t the case, either. For some reason, I just can’t shake the feeling that I’m saying that they mean nothing to me, if I get rid of the things they have given me. I suspect my OCD comes into play heavily on this one, since that’s textbook hoarding behavior.
After that? Some of my clothes. I had a lot of clothes, and I had to evaluate them all based on how much I felt I’d use them in Korea and when I got back. Honestly, my clothes tend to gravitate towards the khaki shorts/t-shirt variety, and they do so because that’s what fits my lifestyle best. As I went through my clothes, I was confronted with the fact that in all likelihood, I would not have as much of a need for such clothes when I got back, because I would be entering a more “real” stage of adulthood upon return. Going through that sort of existential crisis while sitting on the cold floor of a cement storage building was not one of my more pleasant experiences, to say the least.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="Is there a specific direction you’d like to go professionally? To put it another way, where would you like to be (job-wise) in five years?"]
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Well, unlike many people these days it seems, I do intend to go into what I studied, which, as I mentioned above, was photojournalism. Photography runs strongly in my family (multiple generations of professionals), and there’s a bit of a history with journalism as well, and I have definitely felt those cries pretty strongly throughout my life. I was expecting to have a hard time breaking into the field, but I seem to have a good combination of great luck and an ability to find great contacts, and that has resulted in a few things that make me feel a little bit more confident in my ability to find a job in the field. I’m hoping that The Mongolian Experiment will help me get my name out there.
In 5 years, I’ll be 32. By that time, I’d like to have a photography job that pays enough for me to live comfortably and keep up with reenacting (sometimes I think being a crack addict would be easier on my wallet), and that isn’t soul-sucking. I fantasize about having a job shooting for, say, National Geographic or Time Magazine, etc, but I tend to be relatively grounded in reality. It’s not impossible, and I tend to be a very determined person, but for now I’m sticking to more achievable goals.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="You’ve clearly got strong wanderlust. Has that always been the case? Any idea why?"]
It runs in the family, on both sides. My maternal grandmother used to drive half-way across the country just for a weekend with her boyfriend or family. My paternal grandfather had visited all but 8 or so countries (as they existed at the time, at least) in the world when he died, and all 50 states, as well as all of the Canadian provinces.
I tend to be the type that needs a lot of personal time to think. Traveling puts me constantly into new positions and situations, which tends to provoke a lot of introspection. I also have always just had this urge to *go*, whether that meant walking a few blocks away to play in the bayou (I’m not white trash, I swear!) or getting on a plane and flying to Switzerland for a month to go do some solitary hiking in the alps. I walk, generally, for at least an hour a day, if I can help it. Sometimes it’s more along the lines of 2 or 3, depending on how much space I have to walk in, and how much I need to let my imagination have some time to itself. If I don’t walk for a few days, I get a sensation similar to cabin fever, even if I’ve gone out and done other things. Sometimes I feel like there’s this non-specific voice calling to me, saying “come see what’s over here!”, and it’s hard to resist. I also could be a little emo and say that sometimes I am most definitely going *away* from things, rather than towards them. The easiest way to forget about something is to remove yourself from its presence (or the situation, or whatever), and the easiest way to do that is to travel. While travel is nowhere near being primarily a method for me to run away from my problems, it certainly does fit the bill quite well when I feel the need to.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="Who is this Marc fellow?"]
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Marc is my boyfriend. He is a dual citizen of the US/France and has lived all over the world. He was born in France, and lived there as a child, but due to being the child of a diplomat, he has also lived in what used to be Yugoslavia (before it broke up), Botswana, Benin, Nigeria, and various other places.
He is bilingual and quite proud of his French origins, though he has lived in the US for 10 years now and is now in fact slightly more comfortable with English than with French these days. He is an avid reenactor (like myself) with a habit of collecting many impressions, and is a history buff of the very purest kind. We both also enjoy bad movies, gin and tonics, and folk music. Not all at once though.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="Where have you traveled?"]
I get around.
International: Switzerland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, England, Scotland, Spain, Mexico, Canada, South Korea. By the time. Every Canadian province except Newfoundland, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Nunavut.
Domestic: Every US state but Hawaii, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="Why are you fascinated by Switzerland?"]
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[/dcs_img_right]I have no idea. Well, some idea. I like many of the laws in Switzerland, for one thing. When I find out about most Swiss laws, they’re typically things I have wished that the US would institute, though I doubt we ever would. Plus, the people are generally reserved, but friendly once you get to know them, which is somewhat how I am. Plus, it’s a beautiful country.
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="How long have you been a reenactor and how did you get into the hobby?"]
Excepteur sint occaecat..
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[dcs_toggle_flat title="How did you and Marc meet?"]
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We actually met online, though we quickly realized that we both had several mutual friends through our common hobby of reenacting (some of whom actually helped us get together). I give Marc mad props for willingly entering into a relationship with me knowing full and well that I was leaving the country for a year only two months hence. We were friends before we started dating, and our transition from friendship to dating was a very casual process, though we both generally mark our joint trip to Quebec City as the start of our more formal relationship.
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