This morning was by far the nicest morning we’ve had on our trip so far. We woke up in such a comfortable home to a homemade breakfast. We’ll be forever grateful to the Rudner family for basically mothering us for a night and even setting us up with connections in other towns. We went to Starbucks right off the bat (of course - free wifi) and got some work done. We’ve gotten more used to posting blog posts in the morning because we wind up out really late and around wifi in the morning - so if you’re keeping up with us you should probably expect that as the new norm. We also woke up with a plan: crepes. Not for breakfast, but to film some people we'd met while they were making them in a tiny little shop they worked in. While the shop was crowded and the glare was bad, we may have gotten some good shots. Today was filled with mixed emotions as it was the longest we’d stayed in one place, with some of the best people we’ve met, but it was also filled with stress and technical difficulties and general setbacks. Lexie stayed behind at Starbucks while Morgan went with a friend from SDLC to buy a new SD card and film at the crepe shop. We almost lost an entire days worth of footage and couldn’t even process it before we (thank god) found it again. We’ve had issues with storage space, battery packs, and various release forms, not to mention money, but we’re prepared to learn as we go. This is a professional project produced by two total novices and it’s certainly going to be interesting.
After crepes we went to the house of a friend of ours, Sloan, to film the interviews we couldn’t get done last night, but, before that, well Lexie got lost and for the life of her could not figure out where to meet us. So we went and picked up her up. The interviews were some of the best we’ve done. Because we got to meet these people beforehand and get to know them, we knew what questions to ask and it wasn’t formal it just… worked. We say this every day, but we can’t wait for everyone to hear these stories and about these people, this just becomes more and more true.
What’s making up for any stress is the people we’re meeting. The stories we hear… they amaze us. Everyone is so well spoken, everyone is so unique not just in their identity and story, but in how it’s shaped them. It’s breaking our hearts to leave Dallas and the people we’ve met here, but we are so excited for everyone we meet on the rest of our journey.
This may be an emotionally exhausting trip, through stress and hard work and potentially huge setbacks, not to mention the emotions we go through hearing so many heart wrenching stories every single day, but even in just connecting with people so personally and immediately having to leave - potentially to never spend time together again, but it is so fulfilling to be doing this. We both honestly feel like we are doing what we are meant to be doing exactly when the world meant for us to do this.
