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Re: Time from B2 to C1/C2? (frustrated somewhat- seeking some feedback pls)

Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 7:23 pm
by Bluepaint
A reminder to everyone that politics is off-limits :)

Re: Time from B2 to C1/C2? (frustrated somewhat- seeking some feedback pls)

Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 11:54 pm
by blaurebell
A little excursion on kids learning languages: I'm half Russian and didn't learn Russian at home because my teachers told my parents that it would be bad for us if they spoke Russian with us. So, my mum stopped speaking Russian. Her German is far from perfect even now after more than 35 years. She plateaued somewhere and she will make the same mistakes, nobody corrects her anymore. I did for a while when I was a teenager, but it didn't help and only made her uncomfortable, so I stopped. I didn't pick up her patterns of speech, her word order or any of the mistakes she makes. As long as children get exposed to lots and lots of native content their brain sorts it out by themselves. They just know intuitively how to say it right. One of my friends found the right way to teach her boys English. They are too shy to speak, but when my husband and I visited them they understood everything we said in English, reacted to it, laughed about things. The reason why? They only get to see their cartoons in English. If they want to watch cartoons it has to be in English, otherwise, no cartoons. Just let them have fun with it and it will come.

Re: Time from B2 to C1/C2? (frustrated somewhat- seeking some feedback pls)

Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2017 11:29 am
by PeterMollenburg
I thought i'd write an update, just for the sake of it.

After swearing almost black and blue that I'd stick to my plan devised from (high quality) feedback from this thread (that I genuinely hold in high esteem) and combined with my own ideas, I didn't last long. I went back to courses 100% of my 'desk study time'. Of course I've been using native content outside of my dedicated desk study time, but nothing during that time but courses. I'm not asking for help here, just telling it how it is.

And doing courses has been fine. I've been scratching an itch. I knocked off a few easy courses- another thing I said I wouldn't do. I've still been consistently working at a more advanced course first thing every day. I then even went so far as declaring I was literally going to work through my whole list of 99 courses almost exclusively (any signs of OCD or a perfectionist here?). I came to my senses the other day and deleted 13 from the list. Couldn't bring myself to delete more yet. I still don't regret that move.

I've also been hitting Anki regularly for 45min a day. That's been pretty good, whatever that means, but it hasn't been bad. I've been waking at 5am lately just to get through my study. My days are so full even though i'm off work. That may seem surprising, but I have my reasons and I don't feel like blabbing about it all for whatever reasons.

I'm also getting itchy feet wanting to plunge my energy back into sport in a big way. One particular sport- kayaking. I'd like to race again. But finding the time to to train is nigh on impossible. Something has to give. Yet I can't let go of my 3 hours of dedicated French study at my desk each day. Thus I doubt the kayaking to get up and running in a regular way, even though I'd (idealistically) like to, I (realistically) have my doubts and know myself too well.

Learning with my daughter lately has been pretty motivational. Although I'm barely doing any reading myself of any decent amount, I'm reading on a regular basis with my daughter. It's surprising how many words and expressions I add to Anki on a very regular basis from her books and songs. It's fun though, and it helps us both.

And just like my pattern in the past I'm now getting itchy feet to swing back the other way to native content again. So I revamped my schedule and came up with this one. A six hour rotation. Thus I do three hours a day (target) and continue through the rotation the next days from whatever hour i'm up to.

--------
Intensive studies:
A Course
15 min SRS + 45 min de :
• Assimil Using French
----------------
Extensive studies :
Extensive reading
One hour of :
Un livre :
• Le Régime Cétogène contre...
----------------
Intensive studies:
A Course
15 min SRS + 45 min de :
• Vocabulaire Progressif du Français
(Niveau débutant)
• Préparation à l'examen du DELF B2
----------------
Extensive studies:
Extensive listening
One hour of :
A series (examples) :
• Les Revenants
• Gilmore Girls (doublé)
• STC (doublé)
s1,e9
• Station Horizon
• Girls (doublé)
• Disparue
• The Village
• Game of Thrones (doublé)
• Eureka (doublé)
• Lost Girl (doublé)
• H
• Nos chers voisins
• Un gars une fille
• Caméra Café (tc's)
• The Wire (doublé)
• Kaamelott (tc's, livres de tc's)
• Fais pas si fais pas ça
• Dix pour cent (Call My Agent!)
s1,e2 il en reste : 34.39
• Engrenages
• Hero Corp
----------------
Intensive studies:
Reading or watching
15 min SRS + 45 min de :
French learning magazine :
• Bien-dire
• Think French
Watching :
• Yabla
----------------
Extensive studies :
Extensive reading
One hour of :
• An easy reader/ bilingual text etc
------------------------------------------------

I'm not really looking for approval or disapproval of my above régime, the materials I'm using or what I've been up to of late (I'm at peace with my ups and downs to and fros and rediculous declarations- I know what I need to do and what I want to do). I just wanted to share where I'm at. I also highly doubt in many ways I'll strictly follow it either, still it's an ideal and something to aim for. Maybe i'll do better than I or others think. I sound hard on myself indeed, and in some ways I am for not sticking to the plan but in others i'm not, for I am still learning, prob. just not in the ideal manner. The major issue is too many courses I want to knock off. I'm hoping that slowly I can complete more of them and get better at culling the unnecessary ones.

Edit: I have genuinely found the help I've received on this forum unquestionably extremely value. It's not the forum itself if the people who make up this quality 'setting' whom are second to none when seeking out advice on language learning. Fortunately I've been able to give a little advice back from time to time- perhaps not always great, but still glad I can share my experiences.

2nd edit for additional comments on course study of late and forgot to translate some French from my régime into English.

Re: Time from B2 to C1/C2? (frustrated somewhat- seeking some feedback pls)

Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2017 12:40 pm
by blaurebell
I think doing what you find fun is always the best way to learn. We have a tendency to selectively and unconsciously forget unpleasant things, so learning is more effective when you just do what you like and have fun with it. If you like courses, do courses! If you feel like reading or watching stuff, do that. One question: What do your Anki decks look like? I actually noticed that I not only hate doing Anki, it also doesn't work for me - maybe connected? I will answer single word cards correctly, but it doesn't transfer to when I read the words in context in books, especially in highly inflected languages. For Russian it's already a success when my brain produces "I should know this from anki". Usually not even that happens and I only realise *after* I look up the word :roll: I find I learn vocabulary more quickly and efficiently by just reading intensively with Learning with Text and I always have all this context to make things easier. And I get to practice grammar at the same time! Also, I have very little patience with anki - 10min already feels like torture - and I can keep going for hours with a good dictionary and a page turner. Maybe it's because I don't enjoy anki or because I used word cards rather than sentence or cloze cards, but in any case, make sure anki is actually doing more for you than it does for me ...! I'm still pissed off about the 50h I wasted on Anki with Russian :cry:

Re: Time from B2 to C1/C2? (frustrated somewhat- seeking some feedback pls)

Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2017 10:22 pm
by PeterMollenburg
blaurebell wrote:I think doing what you find fun is always the best way to learn. We have a tendency to selectively and unconsciously forget unpleasant things, so learning is more effective when you just do what you like and have fun with it. If you like courses, do courses! If you feel like reading or watching stuff, do that. One question: What do your Anki decks look like? I actually noticed that I not only hate doing Anki, it also doesn't work for me - maybe connected? I will answer single word cards correctly, but it doesn't transfer to when I read the words in context in books, especially in highly inflected languages. For Russian it's already a success when my brain produces "I should know this from anki". Usually not even that happens and I only realise *after* I look up the word :roll: I find I learn vocabulary more quickly and efficiently by just reading intensively with Learning with Text and I always have all this context to make things easier. And I get to practice grammar at the same time! Also, I have very little patience with anki - 10min already feels like torture - and I can keep going for hours with a good dictionary and a page turner. Maybe it's because I don't enjoy anki or because I used word cards rather than sentence or cloze cards, but in any case, make sure anki is actually doing more for you than it does for me ...! I'm still pissed off about the 50h I wasted on Anki with Russian :cry:


I agree with everything you say actually blaurebell.

Yep, do what's enjoyable. For the most part I do do this. I do actually like reading and watching as well, but probably not as much as I've wanted to simply work through courses. Still I've not wanted to do courses forever and I've anticipated that at some point I would enjoy native content much more. I think I enjoy courses simply because I feel like I am doing something more constructive (not simply entertaining myself) and playing to my analytical nature at the micro level. It took a while for me to 'get it' - that reading is extremely valuable, and then later, that watching series and the like is also very valuable. Once upon a time I thought you only really learned languages well through courses. People on this forum taught me otherwise.

I still have a long list of courses, but I've begun rooting out those that annoy me, are next to pointless are an extremely inefficient use of time. I think I'll get better at culling as I go. Many people tried to convince me of this long ago including Cavesa, Serpent and Iguanamon (there were others too)- it's just been a very slow process (I was hanging on for dear life to all those precious courses). Admittedly, I never thought it would take so long to work my way through them, and the realisation is that I can only do so much and that doing them all is not efficient, particularly given how far I've come with French and where I can go from here.

As for Anki, I've got it working pretty smoothly for me now. In the past SRS was driving me nuts at times, other times I accepted it. I'm still not convinced of it's effectiveness. At the very least I think it goes a little way for me in not forgetting new vocabularly- but it's in a much more passive way than perhaps I originally thought would be the case. For me, it doesn't not work, but it doesn't work as nearly as well as what I thought, it what the general claim 'out there online' in promotional language learning circles seems to be.

Thus, for my 'ideal study régime' which I listed yesterday above in this thread, I came to a further conclusion which concerns Anki to a large degree. I was planning to do (and I still do currently) 15 min of Anki for each hour block of study. However I realised- or more so, slowly have confirmed my suspicions, that there seem to be two modes of study. Those which involve intensive somewhat forceful modes of attempting to input foreign language words and concepts into one's brain via such things as translations, course books, SRS and the like- I have largely favoured this 95% of the time. Then there is the immersive natural way - extensive reading, loads of native content in the form of films, radio, and even some courses attempt to encourage this such as the immersion and non-reliance on English concepts behind French in Action, and Assimil's waves. Even using those courses I've found it particularly difficult (esp. with Assimil) to not analyse all the language. It's been great in some ways, but at no point do I just allow the language to be absorbed- I analyse the sounds, the grammar, the spelling, enter them into Anki, drill them etc etc - all very abstract, unnatural, reliance on English etc.

So, this is what brought me to the decision that if I can't drop my analytical intensive methods, then I ought to introduce an equal amount of immersive/extensive study methods to get the best of both worlds. I think that this is particularly important given my level of French now (not a beginner by quite a long shot now). I need to allow the language to seep in, to find it's way in, to get a higher degree of exposure to the sounds via extensive listening and watching and a higher degree of exposure to vocabularly and grammatical structures via extensive reading. Thus I removed the 15 min of Anki per hour during those hours of extensive activities, as it doesn't make sense to be overly analytical during extensive activities.

Edit re: Anki
What are my cards like? I do cloze cards. I don't make them terribly difficult. Usually it's a word or phrase in a sentence and I often leave the first letter or two uncovered ("clozed"?) to provide hints or clarify so that I won't incorrectly think of a synonym for example. The "hint side" usually contains an English translation, sometimes a French one. Side 3, once answered, appears and shows the type of word (e.g. adjective, adverb, adverbial expression, masc noun/fem noun etc) and IPA phonetics and other notes sometimes. I type my answers. I don't use audio- too slow. I read them out loud as I do them to work my pronunciation.

Re: Time from B2 to C1/C2? (frustrated somewhat- seeking some feedback pls)

Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2017 11:50 pm
by blaurebell
PeterMollenburg wrote:It's been great in some ways, but at no point do I just allow the language to be absorbed- I analyse the sounds, the grammar, the spelling, enter them into Anki, drill them etc etc - all very abstract, unnatural, reliance on English etc.


You know what helps me a lot with Assimil? I shadow the audio without even reading the text first, even if I don't really understand what's going on. Only when I can repeat it at the same speed as the audio do I go into the details of it. I find that it really carves its way into my brain that way and I allow the structure to just sink in before I try to understand why something is said this way or that way. I think it also helps that I do intensive reading from a point when I can barely even decipher difficult sentences. This way I learn to live with lots of gaps and imprecise semi translations that clarify themselves over time. I'm actually just like you with my need to do everything "properly" I can be a little obsessive as well. About 10 years ago my supervisor at uni told me that I need to have the courage to leave gaps. It has kinda become my mantra and still I fail at it badly.

I wonder whether you're maybe at a point where you should just cut yourself off from your training wheels and safety nets completely. I know they're so nice and reassuring, but I don't think you need them anymore. How about doing everything possible just in French? You want to look something up on the internet? Only in French. Watch anything, read anything, do it in French, even if it means that you have to read translations or watch dubs. You need a grammar explanation? Only in French. Try to go through your entire day in French, just like any native speaker would. You can still do your courses, just skip anything in it that isn't French. If there is anything unclear, refer to a French grammar or a monolingual dictionary only. If you need to write something down, write it in French.

Other people probably gave you such advice already, but I think we're often deaf to such voices until we've almost come to such conclusions ourselves. We need to be ready to hear it! People told me not to approach Russian in the grammar drill torture way, I did it anyway. I needed to come to the conclusion myself that it's not going to work for me. I'm much happier with my gaps and incomplete semi understood sentences than I was while I was going over every little grammar detail obsessively.

In any case, I think you're ready to just live your life in French, what do you think? Maybe just try it for a weeklong challenge and perhaps you will be surprised how easy it is. With English this made all the difference for me. By now it's been 10 years and I only speak German about once a week. And this was even the case when I accidentally got stranded in Germany for about 3 years in between. After about 5 years of English only I actually had to start writing a diary in German so that it doesn't get too rusty ...! Living my life mainly in English is actually also the reason why I don't break that C1 barrier with Spanish despite living in Spain. I guess I will have to follow my own advice at some point ;)

Re: Time from B2 to C1/C2? (frustrated somewhat- seeking some feedback pls)

Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2017 1:10 am
by PeterMollenburg
blaurebell wrote:
PeterMollenburg wrote:It's been great in some ways, but at no point do I just allow the language to be absorbed- I analyse the sounds, the grammar, the spelling, enter them into Anki, drill them etc etc - all very abstract, unnatural, reliance on English etc.


You know what helps me a lot with Assimil? I shadow the audio without even reading the text first, even if I don't really understand what's going on. Only when I can repeat it at the same speed as the audio do I go into the details of it. I find that it really carves its way into my brain that way and I allow the structure to just sink in before I try to understand why something is said this way or that way. I think it also helps that I do intensive reading from a point when I can barely even decipher difficult sentences. This way I learn to live with lots of gaps and imprecise semi translations that clarify themselves over time. I'm actually just like you with my need to do everything "properly" I can be a little obsessive as well. About 10 years ago my supervisor at uni told me that I need to have the courage to leave gaps. It has kinda become my mantra and still I fail at it badly.

I wonder whether you're maybe at a point where you should just cut yourself off from your training wheels and safety nets completely. I know they're so nice and reassuring, but I don't think you need them anymore. How about doing everything possible just in French? You want to look something up on the internet? Only in French. Watch anything, read anything, do it in French, even if it means that you have to read translations or watch dubs. You need a grammar explanation? Only in French. Try to go through your entire day in French, just like any native speaker would. You can still do your courses, just skip anything in it that isn't French. If there is anything unclear, refer to a French grammar or a monolingual dictionary only. If you need to write something down, write it in French.

Other people probably gave you such advice already, but I think we're often deaf to such voices until we've almost come to such conclusions ourselves. We need to be ready to hear it! People told me not to approach Russian in the grammar drill torture way, I did it anyway. I needed to come to the conclusion myself that it's not going to work for me. I'm much happier with my gaps and incomplete semi understood sentences than I was while I was going over every little grammar detail obsessively.

In any case, I think you're ready to just live your life in French, what do you think? Maybe just try it for a weeklong challenge and perhaps you will be surprised how easy it is. With English this made all the difference for me. By now it's been 10 years and I only speak German about once a week. And this was even the case when I accidentally got stranded in Germany for about 3 years in between. After about 5 years of English only I actually had to start writing a diary in German so that it doesn't get too rusty ...! Living my life mainly in English is actually also the reason why I don't break that C1 barrier with Spanish despite living in Spain. I guess I will have to follow my own advice at some point ;)


Actually I already do this 95% of the time. There's perhaps some room for improvement, but not loads. Washing dishes this morning I was listening to French podcasts, hanging out the washing, the same (side note: it's common in Australia to hang your washing outside, I know in some countries this isn't done). I'm speaking to my daughter constantly in French. I watched the French news this morning while eating breakfast. On my way to work, more French podcasts. On the way home too. On the way to the shops as well. If we allow my daughter to watch TV, I will advocate for it to be in French. If I search something online, I will first search in French, and will only to resort to English if I cannot find what I'm looking for. My phone is in French, my computer was- until it broke down recently. I downloaded a program only I use on my wife's computer last night and set the default language to French. Although listening to music used to make up a large portion of my life in my 20s, I rarely listen to it now. Not so much because I don't want to, more so because I either don't have the time, or I refuse to listen to English, so when I do it's often French. I have French books on my beside table, French movies I can watch both in old school DVDs or online. I don't watch English speaking movies or series unless I can use French subtitles if my wife is watching or my wife would like to watch an English movie once in a while with me, otherwise it's not something I do. The other day I was searching some information online with regards to kayaking- I did that in French too. Thus, I think Im already doing what you suggest. There's perhaps some tiny gaps I could fill, but not much! :)

As for the courses. Many a person on this forum has attempted to advocate for me dropping them. I've had many discussions on it. Some in agreement, some against. I've discussed it every which way till the cows come home. Best to not pick at that one, as exactly like you say, sometimes you need to come to your own conclusions and make your own mistakes. This is that thing, for me with regards to courses - what works, what doesn't, how many, what level and so on. It is something that works, but the balance is out of balance and has been for a while. I'm getting better. Culling courses is a big deal for me. Today I'm going to get a few more out of my boxes and find out if they are 'worthy' of being on my list. I want to cut it down further, but it will take time for me to come to terms with scrapping them. I want to be sure i'm not missing out on something I really want to do that will help. Still, at this point in time, there's no question that I am not willing to ditch them all. That simply won't happen right now. Thanks for your words blaurebell ! I appreciate it :)

Re: Time from B2 to C1/C2? (frustrated somewhat- seeking some feedback pls)

Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2017 11:49 am
by blaurebell
PeterMollenburg wrote:Actually I already do this 95% of the time. There's perhaps some room for improvement, but not loads.


Perfect! Then just keep going and you will improve automatically with time! One thing I notice is that certain lifestyles encourage certain habits, like watching more or less tv, reading more or less at a high level, speaking more or less about topics of a higher degree of complexity. University degrees encourage lots and lots of high level reading and writing when studying in the humanities - I did that for one year in England and I read more in English that one year than in all of my years of high school taken together. I think we had about 1000 pages of required reading each week and we were all cracking from the strain of just trying to keep up. Amounts to about 25,000 pages of required reading in one year + additional reading for assignments. And I often did additional reading even during non assignment weeks. It was actually insane. Even as a voracious reader doing a humanities PhD I average between 15,000 and 20,000 pages a year these days depending on how much target language reading I do. That year studying humanities in England also really honed my writing skills, because those humanities courses usually bring together a lot of very well-read native speakers and keeping up with them is quite hard.

When I switched to a science degree there was a lot more space for working in groups, so I got a lot more speaking done that way - studying in the humanities was much more of a solitary lifestyle with speaking discouraged in the library and so on. I pretty much only spoke with housemates, neighbours and people I met while dancing tango during my humanities year - only street level English -, but got a lot of technology talk and high level discussions on science / philosophy of science done during my science years. I found it much more difficult to participate in my humanities discussion seminars because I just think too slowly for abstract on the fly discussions in general - I rarely even participated in such discussions in German university classes unless I had a lot of prior knowledge on the subject. So, one has to find the right environment to get the right kind and amounts of reading, writing and speaking done.

For English I never had any goals as to how many hours of listening exposure I would get, but I just started procrastinating a lot as my workload increased. During most of my uni years in England I was doing 50% watching tv 50% uni related studying - lectures, reading papers, coding, writing reports. Basically I spent some 5-8h watching TV + 5-8h studying each day for 4 years and listened to audiobooks on my commutes. This ratio worked really well for me although I'm pretty sure most of my friends were wondering how I got so much done when I was "wasting" so much time! I find 5-8h interrupted study is much more efficient than trying to work consecutive hours though. As for "good" bad habits: Sadly I actually watch much less TV now that I don't have to deal with an insane workload. It's a shame because otherwise I'd get a lot more TL exposure done. I do about 1-3h a day only and most of it with my husband who wants to watch in English.

I've actually considered going back to uni for another degree here in Spain after my PhD just so that I have a bit of a more structured work day, meet some new people, speak more and get more reasons to procrastinate with foreign language tv. A part-time humanities PhD which requires reading in 4-5 languages and where picking up a couple of languages becomes part of the workload doesn't feel like enough of a strain to start procrastinating apparently, I'm having too much fun :lol: All that content in Spanish needed for another degree and the qualification would be a plus of course, but it's not really the main reason. I'd just do it to fill in some of my Spanish gaps and have a less solitary lifestyle. I'll have to see what kind of degree I choose though - it's between a photography or a fine arts / art history master where the latter would mean a lot more reading and the former is more communicative. I'll probably decide after I have my Spanish PhD year in 2018, which will mostly require reading and possibly some writing. I suspect that maybe the communicative degree would fit better in the end to fill the gaps, but it depends on how far I get next year.

So, maybe you could think about trying to identify your most obvious gaps and try to find "a lifestyle" to plug the holes? Maybe there are some online courses for French native speakers that could do the trick? In my experience courses for natives work best because they really increase the pressure to produce perfect output and approach complete comprehension. I haven't really had a look, but maybe there are French universities that put their lectures up online or maybe there is even a French Coursera? Some universities in Spain have open introductory programs for senior citizens and listeners of all education levels, maybe there are similar courses at French universities too? There is really nothing better to get some high level focused reading and writing done while possibly gaining some qualifications and knowledge on the side. Alternatively you could look for some open courses for English natives. Lots of American universities put their lectures online and if you find reading lists and lectures for some French literature or film studies courses you can make your own syllabus. Classic French Cinema, Nouvelle Vague Cinema, French classic literature of if you're really hardcore French existentialism! You might even find some courses on French comics and graphic novels. I'm actually dying to find the time for this course: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/global-stud ... /index.htm The added advantage of this approach is that you get structured course content surrounding native content, so also your native content would get classified as "constructive". Maybe a way to combine your love for courses with high level language engagement?

Re: Time from B2 to C1/C2? (frustrated somewhat- seeking some feedback pls)

Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2017 12:54 pm
by DaveBee
blaurebell wrote:I've actually considered going back to uni for another degree here in Spain after my PhD just so that I have a bit of a more structured work day, meet some new people, speak more and get more reasons to procrastinate with foreign language tv. A part-time humanities PhD which requires reading in 4-5 languages and where picking up a couple of languages becomes part of the workload doesn't feel like enough of a strain to start procrastinating apparently, I'm having too much fun :lol: All that content in Spanish needed for another degree and the qualification would be a plus of course, but it's not really the main reason. I'd just do it to fill in some of my Spanish gaps and have a less solitary lifestyle. I'll have to see what kind of degree I choose though - it's between a photography or a fine arts / art history master where the latter would mean a lot more reading and the former is more communicative. I'll probably decide after I have my Spanish PhD year in 2018, which will mostly require reading and possibly some writing. I suspect that maybe the communicative degree would fit better in the end to fill the gaps, but it depends on how far I get next year.
Have you considered joining a photography club?

Re: Time from B2 to C1/C2? (frustrated somewhat- seeking some feedback pls)

Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2017 2:12 pm
by blaurebell
DaveBee wrote:Have you considered joining a photography club?


Yes, I have indeed! Problem is, with analog documentary photography I'm a bit of an odd bird here, most of the folks here seem to be into photographing surfers, landscapes or fashion and talking about the refresh rate and resolution of their cameras. Not really my type of crowd. There are a few exceptions, but they're not really the meet-up-in-person type, I sometimes chat with them on Facebook though. I wanted to do this workshop on pinhole photography last month, but unsurprisingly they didn't have enough people interested. This place is really too small to find likeminded photographers. Last year we had a surge of protests and demonstrations and I got to running with a bunch of news photographers, that was great! However, they're a busy bunch on tight deadlines, so there is no way of keeping up with them and the ones I got to know don't normally photograph my usual events. That's what happens when you're not in a major city! I might talk my husband into moving to the next bigger town in a couple of years though and there seems to be more relevant stuff happening.