KEEPING TRACK

SNAP SHOT (click me)

2008-11-09T12:08:00.000-08:00

BUILDING 5

BUILDING 5 AND 6

Deraild a bit

2008-11-09T10:10:00.000-08:00

Alight fair enough, I've been a little bit slack happy. Not going to lie it is time for a long over due update.

So much has happen in the past, what where those, 8-9 months it's almost overwhelming, let's see here I've been to Denver Twice, home a hand full of times, saw one of my most nearest and dearest friends get married, saw my middle school sweetheart tie the knot with a best friend from high school (whom i set up - go me!) went on a true first date, went on countless good dates, two bad dates, broke up with a boyfriend, went up to Boston, cried a whole bunch, laughed until my spleen nearly burst, gained/lost weight, moved into the city, received two raises, found a kindred spirit, saw enough red ink on my drawings to make me think that i was going color blind except for the color red, also saw those drawings get signed and sealed allowing my building to go up, called my senior superintendent cup cake, got away with it and now I am being assigned to a new project. Well there is whole lot more but let's not waste time on the details.

Even though so many different things have taken place over those past 9 months one thing has been happily consistent, my involvement with Investment Guru X (i don't like to drop names or anything fancy-schmacy like that) , phase III expansion. Phase 3 expansion consisted of two office buildings (core and shell) done by my firm with the interior design done by another local firm as well as two large garages semi-sunk below ground to prevent any grossly inappropriate obstruction of the view (chuckle).

My involvement started with a simple request to tweak some drawings for a future guard house that X was thinking about installing... however it went off the deep end from there. Soon I found my time being devoured by the project and after about a month of doing odd tasks for the behemoth of a project I was full blown team member! I realized that is was due in part to fact that the original team members were dropping like flies, leaving my firm to join new ones or start their own. Which left the project team a little ... deflated.

From October to April the team pretty much consisted of Elizabeth (in our DC office), my amazing mentor Steve and myself. That's right 3 ( 2 freshly out of college and limited construction knowledge) of us labored constantly; day in and day out- every late-night evening and weekend hour we could scrape together was taken advantage of, all to get the job done. From about the middle of March to present time another (Adam) joined our team as Elizabeth got the opportunity to work on something new. Adam probably has about 5 years of experience and was semi-helpful to me but more so to Steve. He now had someone that had experience out in the field was was comfortable getting the in the face of our contractors.

The site developed week after week into the building I had imagined it to be. It suddenly became so overwhelming to me that what I had spent months putting onto paper was what these guys were using to put it all together. Talk about a yikes/ gulp moment.

First came the site work, digging all the appropriate holes then came the concrete for foundations and column footers and then came the steel, piece by piece it was matched up with their counter parts and popped up, what seemed to be, overnight. After the steel was erected they laid the metal decking and poured the concede floors. Once that was all done lightweight steel framing was installed on all of the exterior walls and topped with exterior sheathing. The interior partitions were next, framing went up along with some duct work and pluming. As all of that was going on the brick work began, each week a new section would be covered with brick and complete with window sills and lintels of cast stone. I do have to say that it did make me a little nervous to be walking around on site watching the construction crew looking at MY drawings, ones that I said were RIGHT. Part of me wanted to rip the drawings out of their hands and just apologize for screwing up this or that, and to remind them that I was green as grass. and really had very little idea of what i was actually doing.. but I didn't; I resisted, it probably wouldn't have done well for my site cred (if you know what I mean) .

Working with the contractors has pretty much been a roller-coaster of emotions, sometimes I hate em, sometimes i love em but all of the time i respect them. I (for unknown reasons) have developed a really good working relationship with our senior superintendent Wayne, which by no means considers himself a nice guy, i suppose you could say "he's as rough as they come" because at about 55 he looks nearly two decades older, got a constant sneer of disapproval on his face and a giant stoggie hanging out of the bottom corner of his mouth were a smile might be on other humans. But somehow i managed to win him over. I'm pretty sure it all started when i went to drop some drawings off at the site, and i naturally ran into Wayne. Now the only real interaction we have is on Thursdays when we have our weekly coordination meeting out on the site. I think I usually stay quite as a church mouse with the occasional "excuse me" and "no thank you". So needless to say he pretty much saw me as innocent pray. We started talking about the project and the difference between now and the old days when Wayne was just starting out as a roof framer. Well then he dropped the bomb. "Thanks for bring those drawings out pumpkin."

... This was not the first time Wayne called me pumpkin, as he did the Thursday before and asked "Do you need a hard hat Pumpkin?" which i laughed off and said i had come prepared and didn't need one of theirs...

But this was the last time. NO ONE CALLS ME PUMPKIN. So I stood my ground and said "You know Wayne, about that Pumpkin business... if you start calling me pumpkin, I'm gonna have to start calling you some thing like... cupcake. How'd-ya like that?" He laughed and was quick to point out that he calls may others pumpkin and I wasn't alone in receiving a pet name from the man. We had a good chuckle about it and I was on my way. I didn't really think about it too much after that however, in the time I had left the site and arrived back at the office a phone call was made from Wayne to Steve. I guess he wanted to clarify that he wasn't trying to make a sexist remark and that he had all the respect in the world of me and he was hoping (and praying) that I wasn't offended. I laughed and promised Steve it was all in good fun and I didn't see anything offensive there.
So needless to say every time I meet Wayne on Thursday mornings he offers up "Good morning pumpkin" to which I respond "Good morning cupcake."

2008-02-16T07:52:00.001-08:00

is there a pause button on this divice?

2008-02-11T19:00:00.000-08:00

The feet are up, the sweets are on and the TV on mute. I finally am making time for myself and relaxing a bit before the week gets as busy as it consistently has been since the beginning of the year.
After the new year coming back to Baltimore only meant one thing, time to get down to business. With a set of construction documents on their way out there door i knew that a life outside of work we fading into the distance. The looming deadline for my project seems to be dangling in front of my face just as a fox tale would taunt a pack of greyhound dogs. Just as it seems to be getting closer and closer the date gets moved or more gets added. Each additional change means that i will be spending a little more of my weekend at the office as opposed to Ikea.
I think the only thing that is happy about making money instead of spending it is my credit card bill.

Somehow i have managed to squeeze a bit of fun in now and again! Most recently I headed out west to visit a most beloved friend in Colorado. I couldn't stand it anymore 9 months without seeing my friend Mackenzie was way to much! I boarded a southwest flight at 6:15 and was in Denver by 10! It didn't take long to realize how much i had missed this lady, life just wasn't the same without her! We had so much fun traipsing through Denver with her little puggle Mia! We saw much of what Denver had to offer by day, museums, shops, great architecture, and partied it up at night, liven the night life with a few of the other K-Staters about town! We ever made it out tot he mountains, and hiked around the red rocks amphitheater! The temperature was in the upper forties but i was sweating! The sun was warm and bright and the air was crisp as clear. Standing at the top of the amphitheater you could look out in the distance and see Denver just pop up out of nowhere. Sunday evening came too soon and it wasn't to long before i had to wave good by and board my non stop back to the charm city.

But now it's monday and i find myself preparing for the week ahead which includes my six month review. I can't belive that six months have come and gone so quickly. So finally i will take the time to reflect on the time that i have been at the firm and give deep tought to what my goals are for this up coming year and hopefully look back at what i have accomplished and be proud of the contributions i have made.... no is time for pen to hit the paper and to think important thinks... as dr. seuss would say

'tis the season

2007-12-13T17:51:00.001-08:00

A Day at the Harbor

2007-11-11T18:40:00.000-08:00

Living near the harbor has it advantages.

This week there were two international boats docked in Harbor. This little beaut was docked at inner harbor and was carrying a boat load of Norwegians! The other was a Korean Ship, however it was a bit more battle-shippy, if that is a word, and was docked at Fells Point.

The Norwegian ship was built in 1914 in Germany, and was carrying students of the Naval Academy of Norway. Most of the crew that was wandering about the boat were young men, and very informative. They seemed eager to tell us all about their beautiful boat, trimmed in weather worn wood and dull brass. It was a great November day to wander the harbor and take in the what now seemed like fall sun.

In these pictures you can see two wonderful gals that I work with Sisi and Sarah!

sunny day in the inner harbor

all aboard the ship from Norway

the rear of the ship with the national aquarium in the background

letting out a little steam

it was a busy day on the Boat

Sarah and Sisi, next to the Viking life jackets... funny huh

we're going to hang out here for a while, maybe catch a ride back to the office,
they could drop us off at out dock.

they made me take this

i wanted to take this.... oh kids...

Love it

Hand made

wonderful day at the harbor!

lost time

2007-10-29T19:07:00.001-07:00

i promise i haven't forgotten about you....

i feel that so much has happened in the past month and a half that is it all has seemed a giant blur.

i can't wait until my deadline is up and that i have some time to sit down and reflect and share what the beginning of fall has brought me.

so stay tuned it's coming soon i promise!

like a pro

2007-09-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

I find myself here again, Sunday afternoon. And after a long week of putting up a semi-professional façade, I am finally able to put on the sweats [which I wish I could wear at work] and lounge lazily in my Ikea sofa with my legs over the arm rest and my head propped up on a pillow, watching nothing other than golf. I can’t, as I sit here, believe that I am willingly watching this slower than molasses, running down a horizontal surface, sport. But it’s true; I have become one of thoooose people, and am getting into this Scottish born game.

I know it all started when I was continually asked if I played golf in various job interviews, in places ranging from Boston to Dallas. Each time I unfortunately responded with a regrettable ‘no.’

But now there is hardly a weekend that goes by that I don’t ‘hit up the range.’ I have stopped putting my Aunts old clubs away in the closet after each trip, but rather making them a permanent fixture in my living room. Where, on a few occasions I pull out the 3 iron and practice my swing in front of the television. Thanks to what little furniture I have in the space, I can swing away without fear that anything will go crashing to the floor, walls, or out the window.

After contributing my $7.50 to the pine ridge driving range, I take my medium bucket of off brand golf balls and head to the most secluded spot I can find on these sunny afternoons. However this seclusion lasts for maybe 30 seconds when some big shot, dressed head to toe in Titleist gear, insists on taking the slot right next to mine. It isn’t until the third ‘warm up’ shot that I take that he realizes that the space next to me isn’t his wisest decision. This mostly is due to the fact that I have consecutively hit the last three balls straight into the knee high partition with as much force as a F5 tornado shoots a 2x4 through the air. This ¾ inch piece of plywood has proven to be the saving grace in separating shear and utter pain and complete and totally humiliation.

But once things get going and the practice shots are over things start to straighten out and I can shoot for the 175 maker. I sometimes make it, sometimes not but if feels great to make solid contact with that small plastic ball. Each time I pull my arms back and raise the club over my head I anticipate the sound that comes out of the club when it hits the ball. It has a certain ‘ping’ to it that I strive for each time. I know it when it happens, but can figure out why, when it doesn’t. I try to remember what my cousin, coach RT, said about a proper swing, and how to fix it when it isn’t. But this, the guessing game, is [at times] more frustrating then not.

Then when I get home and flip on the tube and watch the pros hit the links I carefully observe, I try and figure out how they do it, hit is so far and so straight that it always ends up exactly where they planned it. However the sarcastic side of me usually kicks in and I think to myself... ‘I bet they can only hit it in that ONE direction,’ but me, oh no. I can hit it SO many directions without even trying. Even though I might have the same setup, stance, and swing, the ball can end up either to the left or right of where I was aiming, and on occasion it might even keep on a straight and narrow path. I suppose this shows how much of a versatile player that I can be.

'the office' and 'the view'

2007-09-12T18:22:00.001-07:00

view into the Harbor

this is what i see every day as I walk into my building

my building 901 S. Bond

it is a bit distracting to see these boats cruise the harbor throughout the afternoon

i love Minnesota

2007-09-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

United States Courthouse grounds crew

i felt the same way

the old mill

looking out on the Mississippi.

the guthrie theater

architect: Jean Nouvel..... and some interns (ha-ha)

lake ore-be-gone

to grandpas house we go...Virgina ave.

darn right this is the home of hockey.... and the biggest stick ever

humpty-dumpty sculpture in Minneapolis

coolest sink ever @ the guthrie

work is WORK

2007-08-21T18:30:00.000-07:00

Instead of counting the number of DAYS I have worked, I have graduated to WEEKS, and before long it will turn into months and then possibly a year... or years. But for now I am comfortable sticking with weeks.

For the first week I was thrown into a project where [much like my first architecture job] I was working on building elevations. The drawings were the product of another firm whom I can only guess employed a very coordinated monkey [with skillful apposing thumb]. The Elevations that I was to take on as my own were in dire need of correcting, in ways that I couldn't imagine. Never did I think that a single set of drawings could be this badly drawn. There were so many errors in my four drawings was unbelievable, and when we matched them up to the building plans... forget about it... there were even more there. But as the week went by I clicked my mouse eight hours at a time and the corrections were made. This project extended into the second week where I had my second deadline, which that was more stressful for my co-workers than it was for me, even though I pulled a few hours of overtime.

But this week on my 3rd week I was given something to think about. I was approached by one of my boss men and asked to do a site analysis for a project that they were competing for. He wanted my opinion. After he explained the project, its parameters and pretty much what I was to do, he left my desk. He left me with a roll of trace paper, a site plan, and a clueless look on my face.

Don't get me wrong I have done site analysis before on several projects, but this time it didn't click. I blankly stared at the proposal that another firm had done for the prep-work, but it left me wondering "what was I to do...come up with more?" I sat there flipping though the booklet and thinking, "Whoever did this pamphlet is surely smarter than I am, and has had loads more experience... what ideas can I come up with, that they haven't?" Seriously it felt as if Thomas Edison handed me a light bulb and said, what's next. And in reply I would say: "Lunch?"

But it felt good to get the cogs turning again. The rust slowly was shaken from the rotating parts in my brain and pen hit the paper with the intent of making more than just doodles on the corner of the page. The last site analysis I did was way back in January and February... so it took a bit to shake off the cobwebs, but now I have something on paper and starting to show the way that I think about things. It may not be perfect or even what my boss is looking for but at least I am doing some critical thinking as opposed to just critical mouse clicking.

[click on the title 'work is WORK' to find a helpful link]

Moving-In

2007-08-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

I have been living in my new place for three weeks now and things are falling into place. I now have a few pictures hanging on the wall and all the books I own are crammed into one bookshelf. For the first time ever I have more closets then I can fill. My walk in closet houses all of my real-life clothes (ones that I can wear to work and out in public) and the other two just contain boxes, a vacuum cleaner and my coat. My kitchen is pretty small and the counter space is pretty much non-existent, but it serves me well as I don't really do all that much intense cooking. Everything seems to have its place and always seems to find its way back...believe it or not.

it's a small kitchen but it is great for the one chef in this house.

Small homage to the St.Louis blues, right over my desk where all the bill paying goes down.

Two Weeks In

2007-08-14T19:41:00.000-07:00

It has been two weeks since I packed up my life and moved as much of it as possible to the land of crabs and beer (or at least that is what they tell me).

As I was shoving this and that into boxes here and there, I would stop, flip through photo albums, scrap books, and try on clothes that I haven’t seen in a few years [all which of course no longer fit the way I remember]. This lead to memories rushing back into my mind and conjured feelings of happiness and even at times embarrassment. It felt as if I was watching someone else packing up my belongings and seeing it all fade away in slow motion. Gradually bags began to fill and objects that were once scattered across my room were disappearing, as if into thin air.

Soon Monday morning came with bright crisp light, low in the sky but already warming the saturated humid air. We made our way to highway 40 with all the other rush hour drivers and began our two day migration east. Sooner than I though I was taking the exit ramp bound for Illinois, and the Arch, the symbol of home for so many years was no longer glistening before me, but somehow slipped into my rearview mirror and beginning to fade away. This was real, it wasn’t just another semester, this was the start of my new life.

We drove, drove, drove, and my sister [a.k.a my co-pilot] slept, slept, and slept. We crossed several state lines and stopped a few times in cities that only the locals could ever know about. I had no idea what route I was taking, but I always kept close tabs on the giant white 15-passenger van ahead of me. Just as I had always done growing up, I was following my parents lead.

Early Monday evening we stopped in Pennsylvania for dinner and some well deserved rest. Tuesday morning we were bound For Falling Water, one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpieces. The countryside was amazing! The rolling hills still had some morning fog hovering above the ground in the valleys of the rolling hills. The black pavement stretched out ahead of us and would quickly dart around curves, and then continued to plunge forward into some densely wooded areas. It was so fun to drive on these slender two lane roads. My foot couldn’t help to push the accelerator down and feel the car hug the curvatious road beneath it, [not to mention dad was speeding…imagine that].

After a two hour tour and a quick ‘walk through nature’ we were back on the road and headed straight for Baltimore. Before I knew it, I was at the apartment’s main office, signing my lease and collecting my keys. It started off as a pair of keys to my front door, and then came the mail box keys, and then the key to the trash room and finally the key to the work out room. When I left I had a total of eight keys in my hand and unsure of what to do with them all, I shoved all of them deep into my pocket.

Without wasting anytime we headed for my building, climbed the two flights of stairs that lead to my new front door. I reached in my pocket o’ keys and pulled the dull brass one out and slid it into the narrow slot, turned the knob and pushed. I was home.
It was a blank beige slate. A place that had ‘beginning’ written all over it. It was my new start. Within a few days though, IKEA boxes littered the floor and the contents pulled out, laying askew across the floor. Instructions were carefully followed and screws were tightly adjusted and soon I had furniture. Not only did my family spend a considerable amount of time at this supermarket of furniture, but also Target, the Bed, Bath and Beyond, and even, yes even Walmart. By the end of the week I felt like a regular at Target, able to be on a first name basis with many of the employees. But by Saturday, my place came together and time was quickly running out for the duration of my parents stay.

It was nearly 11:00 by the time my family left. We slowly strolled to the now empty 15 passenger huge white van. Deep down I didn’t really want them to go but I knew it was the right time. As we hugged I thanked them for all their help and their patience. Tears soon welled up in my eyes, so much that I couldn’t really even see anything but a series of blobs and colors. I tired wiping them away but they seemed to come from a un-stoppable source. It wouldn’t be long until it was Monday and that would mean that my mind would be occupied with more than just re-organizing the contents of my closet… but that is anther story.

pictures to follow soon!

2007-06-06T18:23:00.000-07:00

The urge to write has been somewhat vacant for me the past few weeks. But as the reality of real life is beginning to settle in I am beginning to think about the whole college thing more clearly.

I have said this countless times already but here goes, five years went by more quickly that I ever thought it would. Those last five years were filled with some of the most intense moments. The constant pressure of meeting the deadlines was always there, but meeting it with vigor and passion, the drive to out do the competition was more difficult. For the competition I faced wasn’t limited to myself but was also comprised of my best friends. Those friends supported and encouraged me to think, to “get in to it” and to chug. Over those past five years it’s amazing what kind of transformations we went though, from sneaking beer into the dorm rooms (like you didn’t already know) to hitting up the bars at 5:00 in the afternoon to let off some steam with a couple of drinks. It’s funny to think that if I was given eyeliner my freshman year I would have thrown it back to whom ever handed it to me, but now I honestly will not leave the house with out the black lining my lash line.

Driving back to St .Louis from Manhattan was a strange experience. I didn’t feel any older, (sure not any) wiser or smarter, but it was a fact: I wasn’t coming back as a student, as a member of the club, as a kid, but I was leaving as a supposed “adult.” As the music from my car stereo played a series of classic tunes, flashes of the past began to fill my minds eye. The songs on the radio became the soundtrack to the Highlight Reel of memories from the best time of my life.

Things that popped into my head were things like the first time I met Julianna whom I determined at that instant was one girl I never wanted to get in a fight with, verbal or physical, for that mater. This has held true since, but all for different reasons. She became my work-out buddy and person I could always depend on for Strawberry Margarita Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday, and for advice and council.

I thought about the time John showed up at my dorm room door with a bloody fist filled with glass asking to be “fixed.” He got into a fight with the safety glass that protected a fire extinguisher in the boys dorm and escaped to find me. Even today I am still not for sure who won.

I will never forget when Adam feel asleep standing up, drawing a line, in the middle of a sentence, after cutting a gazillion Plexiglas triangles all for a stair case that was to reflect a water fall, which ended up falling to pieces when we moved to a different studio, because ours was condemned.

Moments like the time Troy fell asleep during crits, with his head resting on his fist which in turn was resting on his knee, and with a gaping mouth drooled onto the floor leaving a sizable puddle under his chair. Luke and I were the only ones who saw and therefore are the only two people that still laugh at him for it.

Any time I hear the name Charlie; I will laugh and then immediately think of Yolanda.

I made the best friends I could ever ask for, I felt more at home with these people then I ever did anywhere else. For the first time, I had an honest to God twin. Mackenzie served as my confidant, my encouragement, my reality check, and most significantly my goofy partner in crime. Often times professors would call us Double Trouble, and mistake one of us for the other. We sat across from each other in studio in four different semesters, and lived together for the most amazing semester in Prague. We would plan our futures together while hand drawing floor plans and elevations. These futures often involved marring rich, successful, tragically handsome men, having sweet brownstones in Boston [of course] owing a second house in the mountains, all the while being the most powerful Architects this world has seen. We laughed most days about non senseical things and vented to each other about the weeks most frustrating events, which probably lead to more laughter. We had dance parties, Allison knows, she was there.

I will never laugh has hard as I did in studio with the people that suffered, grew, learned, and survived with me.

I can’t believe that the past five years happened, but I am so glad that they did. It was defiantly surreal to see everyone in their black gowns with mortarboards donning their well rested heads. This last day at KSU was much like the first. Everyone was clean, well rested, wide-eyed and had no idea what to expect from the future. As much as this was the end, it was a beginning, the start of something new, something that isn’t Seaton Hall, something that isn’t Kansas State, but soon will reveal itself as just as exciting and miraculous ways.

2007-05-02T02:15:00.000-07:00

studio is kinda like prison, you eventually get used to it.

2007-04-27T10:05:00.000-07:00

The time has come. I have a made a decision.

I am moving to Baltimore at the end of July and will most likely begin work sometime at the beginning of August.

This was the most difficult decision I think that I have ever made. I spent so much time going over and over pros and cons, needs and wants, the future and the best opportunities for a well rounded experience.

I think I have chosen a great firm for my first post graduation architectural internship. They have nice variety of building types that they work on in their office. And even though they are a whole lot bigger than i wanted to work for, they have a real small community feeling of architects. I have a feeling that i will be thrown right in, busy straight from the get go.

I never thought about Baltimore before I got a phone call from one of the architects at this firm. But I am glad that I got that call and that I had the opportunity to swing by on my way home from Boston.

2007-04-09T21:53:00.000-07:00

Driving back after easter is probably one of the most beautiful drives I have had through Missouri and Kansas yet. This time of year the grass is turning green and farmers begin to burn the ground to revitalize it for the new growth. This seasonal turn of events creates an interesting texture on the rolling hills. Part of the land is green with new growth but soon it is only to be charred by the line of smoldering flames that seem to roll over the hills like a blanket. A thin orange and red line with billowing smoke separates the future from the past, and some times can be a little daunting to drive past at 75 miles per hour when it is creeping to closely to the highway.

My favorite time to drive through is just before sunset when the light begins to change and drastic shadows are cast on the land. It is unexplainable how the landscape looks with bright deep greens and flowering trees dotting the landscape. I can't imagine life without the spring. It inspires everyone who is normally tied to their drafting tables and computers to break way and go as far as to sit on the steps in front of Seaton to soak up as much sun and warmth as possible.

Spring was not made for seniors or anybody graduating from school, it pretty much forces you to drop anything academic and pick up anything that isn't.

33 more days

last spring...was great

2007-04-09T21:25:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it is about the East Coast that makes it feel like home, but it does.

As I told you last time I visited a firm and Baltimore last week. And even from the little time that I spent there I really enjoyed the city. You can see the beginning of some new development happing right on the bay. And the start of something new in the downtown area. I am hoping that my friend Julia..yeah that is you, will reconsider Rohde Isalnd and give Baltimore a second thought. You were the only one I knew there and well now you are the only person I really know in RI.

The firm that I spoke with on Friday was great. I got the opportunity not only to hear from the principal and other leaders in the firm but also some of the younger set, which made the interview a unique experience. This firm does a wide variety of outstanding work, it is obvious that this set works hard to create projects that exceed standards. I think that I could learn a lot from this firm and have no problems getting enough IDP hours to sit for my ARE within 3 years... which is a huge goal for me.

Which makes this even harder.

There are three firms that I am currently struggling between. They all offer wonderful things and do exceptional work. I think that in the end up at any of these three firms I would experience wonderful opportunities and develop my skills even further. These firms are competitive, and it makes my decision even harder. This choice that I am going to make come may 1 is going to be difficult. But I am sure that where ever I end up it will be the start of wonderful things. As I wait for two more firms to tell me what they are interested in I will try and concentrate on my studio project which has unfortunately been on the back burner since, well, before spring break.

It's time to get to work.

2007-04-06T19:33:00.000-07:00

I feel like I am living in the Twilight Zone. This whole graduation thing doesn’t seem to be real and this whole job hunt is really just and out of body experience that I am seeing from far beyond my own self. As of lately have received two offers, both being generous and overall wonderful to have. This week I pretty much took off from school, and headed out to Boston, err excuse me I mean my love Baaaston, with a short stop in Baltimore.

It is kinda funny because Baltimore wasn’t on list until last week, when an architect gave me a ring to see if I could come out. I couldn’t resist, this firm is amazing! They do some really great work and I would be surprised if got anything with them even custodial job. That would pretty much be the equivalent of any of any of the three stooges getting into Harvard.

So my interviews in Boston:
The first firm I visited was the one interview that I had initially set up before hand and to be honest the only ones who would call me back. These guys could virtually offer me nothing, as little as a toothbrush and a dollar and I would be theirs for sure! However at there was no reaching in the pockets and grabbing hold of either of those objects and placing them on the table as bargaining chips. Instead I was told that they were unable to even think about hiring until August, and even then they would need me to come out again.

A little deflated I accepted the news and hoped that if I made the gamble to wait it out for them, it would pay off…thankfully this decision is a bit off in the future.

The man I interviewed with was quite nice and even a K-State Alumni. Having him do the interview was nice and decreased the pressure a little. I think that I did a pretty good job of explaining my portfolio and answering all the questions that he asked. So who knows, he could have seen potential. After our interview he asked who else I was seeing while I was in town. Regrettably I told him the truth. No one, or at least that is who returned my phone calls.

I joking said “It must be the Kansas thing; I know it must be pretty daunting.” After a short chuckle he told me of his experience of his post graduation woes and moving to this delightful city. He had said that he received similar response while he was living in Manhattan. So he packed up his stuff and just moved, just moved to Boston, without a job or a clue. However he spent the next few weeks knocking on doors and bugging the heck out of every HR person in the city. He then told me to sit tight while he had to make a phone call.

I sat there awkwardly in the conference room, unsure of what I was to be doing or even if this was going well. He soon came back with a map, phone number, and a name of another alumnus who made the jump from the little apple to the big city. It was so nice of the one guy to set up another interview with the second guy, I couldn’t believe it.

I trekked across town and met with the other 1985 K-State grad. I expressed my thanks for meeting with me on such short and random notice. I think he was glad to see a K-Stater with the same goals as he had when he was in my position.

I went through the spiel and showed him my portfolio and talked about my experiences on internships and study abroad. In my portfolio I have a few pieces of photography that I took while I was in Berlin, and turned out to be a the subject of good conversation, seeing how he had recently gotten back from a short trip from there. During the tour of the office I was able to see many of the projects they were currently working on and designing. It was a relief to see that not only did they work with the computer (which was expected) but they also did a lot of hand sketches, which I would say is probably my strength.

I also got the opportunity to meet the “important” people if the firm, including the CEO and also the principal. They seemed like a great bunch and did phenomenal work. The man that did my interview said that he would send my name to the HR person and really push for another Kansas State grad to be the next hire to make. Living in Boston would be so exciting and the culmination of any goal that I have had in the past four years.

So keep your fingers crossed! I hope that things will work out in the end. And even if they don't I hear that everything happens for a reason.

2007-03-09T22:44:00.000-08:00

flight to Boston... $300
cost of gas to St. Louis...$45
flight to Dallas...$0
flight and hotel in Phoenix...$0

finding the job that is making this all worthwhile, priceless.

up coming job searches are taking me places I would have never considered before, but it is nice to have firms that are serious about making you apart of their team. During this upcoming spring break I will be hanging out in St. Louis for some interviews and a much needed break, then on Friday I fly down to Dallas for an interview and head back the same day. In April 4-5 I will be hopefully heading to Boston, with a possible quick stop in New York, and then the Following week, Fly down to Phoenix for a tour of the city and job interview, I never thought I would be this busy so quickly. So what about studio, who knows I forgot what I was doing in that class.

2007-02-20T15:24:00.000-08:00

For the past few weeks it pretty much felt like i was living in the tundra. It seemed as though at any point i could have seen a group of polar bears meandering around campus ravaging the trash cans for scraps.
Seriously, all my thoughts about moving to Canada for a year were pretty much put to bed, forget about it, too cold. And when i say to cold i mean that my doors were frozen shut, even the key hole was pretty much locked in position. I had to heat my car key up with a lighter, then insert it in the key hole, wait a second, and then i was able to turn the lock. And after throwing a shoulder to the door frame to loosen the ice formations rendering the door handle useless, i was in. But it didn't stop there oh no, once i was in my car it had some trouble turning over in the 1 degree weather.
When the high of the day is 5 and the wind chill is -5 it makes for a long unhappy walk back to my car in the lot. And chances are that it's going to be frozen shut..again. My next thought is "Maybe tomorrow i will swallow my pride at 9:00 and spray the door seals with WD-40 while all my fellow classmates are walking by in the parking lot, wondering to themselves what i am doing to my grandma-mobile."
But thankfully today was much different than the last few weeks, it has suddenly gotten so much warmer! Today we were in the 40's and 50's, i think i broke out a little sweat while walking back and forth between Hale Library media center and Seaton Hall [204 A].
There was sun shinning into studio work space. Today it felt, actually physically felt like we were getting closer to may, which is kind of the kick in the pants that i needed to focus on my project. Which at current state has been the hardest thing to actually concentrate on. There is always something more entertaining going on, like hiding classmates cars keys in various places (the trash can) so that when they leave (at 6 am) they have to do a little treasure hunt ( and get super mad) which is always fun, who doesn't love a good treasure hunt!

Only like 79 more days until that little piece of paper is mine! 79 woooo whoooooo!

2007-02-10T23:16:00.000-08:00

i know what i was doing exactly one year ago.

Shoving my belongings into and over sized suitcase and a backpack. Carefully considering my carry-ons and packing my laptop into its bag. I was saying good-bye to friends, and crying over what would soon be a devastated broken heart, how that happened i will never know. I have an exceptionally good memory when it comes to remembering certain things. And i can say with total honesty that i can look back at some of those last days and let loose an ear to ear grin. Remembering some of the words that were spoken to me made me feel like a million.
But everything i guess was meant to be.

Prague was on the horizon of my sight line and London was calling. I learned so much in my months of travel and can't think of one thing that i would change. Everything good or bad, planned or not it all led to laughter and experience.
The thing i miss most about Czech Tech is the people. Nothing, and i mean nothing will be more hilarious than Czech surprises and spending time in mac and laura land. I think that the people that i meet there are some of the most wonderful people i know. And one thing is true, Kate, Laura, Laura, Iain, James, Erik, Nick, Matt, Dustin, Ramon, Celeste, Murry, Luke,that Italian guy, and the Australian guy, were SO much fun to be around! I want to go back to the PM bar, the pirate party, the Goat and the club in the basement, more than anything!

One year ago i was scared, sad, excited and probably about to vomit all at the same time, and now as i face this next leap i feel the same. here is to one year ago, the best and worst day of my life. Good luck all you new Czech Tech-ers i wish you all the best...and worst [it makes you stronger.]

2007-02-01T13:05:00.000-08:00

We Built this Philly!

Our project for the semester is a James Turrell and a Mark Rothko Museum, in the heart of Philadelphia! For this project we as a class built two models, I personally worked on the 1"=100'-0" model while another group worked on the 1"=16'-0" scaled model. Here are some photos of the process. I got to cut most of the pieces for our model, which means I got to use a chop saw... a lot, and I got to use the drill bits that Dad gave me for Christmas! SWEET!What was not sweet is when my knuckle got caught on the belt sander and I sanded down my flesh... yikes. Everything is made out of MDF and for the most part gets the job done. The big holes/blanks that you will see are the sites for the Rothko+Turrell Museum. These models to about a week to a week and a half to create, you wouldn't think that it would take that long but boy oh boy does it ever.

completed first: 1:100 model, My team was on top of it

Our site is located on 20th and Market, it's that blank little bit between the two sky scrapers

Partially completed 1:16 model, it was huge
[Can you tell where i sit, check out my blues calender , thanks Monica]

wow Charlie with a saw...
Texas chainsaw massacre, more like Manhattan circular saw massacre

build crew getting down and dirty

there she is the Site Model for Philly, i think it is about a head shorter than i am...can you imagine?

2007-02-01T11:39:00.000-08:00

02.01.07

Let's see here... there are 100 days until graduation and to celebrate, our 5th year class has decided that nothing says celebration like a pub crawl. Tonight bar goers beware the college of architecture, planning and design will be roaming the streets of Aggieville! We've traded in our mouse’s and sketch books for more of the liquid kind of inspiration.

Don't be fooled, it hasn't been all play and no work for us here at CAP+D we have been working pretty diligently thus far... and trust there is more of that coming down the road.

At the beginning of the semester my studio of 12 budding architecture students plus one willing professor made the trek all the way down to Marfa, Texas. Home of modern sculptor Donald Judd and the Chinati Foundation. The Chinati foundation is located on the former Fort D.A. Russell in the small south-south-southwestern city of Marfa. Since the purchase of the old base, back in 1979, it has been transformed into a "museum" of contemporary art, large scale installations of a rather small collection of artist. Here visitors can mill around the various installations with a guide to explain the intentions of the artist and also clarify the no touch policy.

MARFA [CHINATI]

Most of the artwork was designed and created with the intentions of being placed in its current location. This gave new meaning to the art work, as it was speaking of it's context and the artist opinion, rather than what one might normally see in a museum, where the meaning of the art can be lost among various other works of art, which don't so much relate to the context in which they hang. I suppose this suggest that these works of art, the ones in which relate to their specific context, wouldn't communicate the same idea if were moved from gallery to gallery as some framed pieces of art work. Site specific artwork, is what the Chinati foundation is all about. Even the town itself spill at the brim with Judd artifacts, his house, his studios, and the architecture offices in his name, scattered across town.

Donald Jud exhibit, 90 some milled aluminum boxes they were really interesting to see how light would reflect of the sides, each box was different, and had to be looked at in different ways

Marfa isn't what you would picture in your mind if someone started off their description with: small Texas town with a population of 500 people on a good tourist day. Marfa is very... interesting, the people were very welcoming, just as you would expect from the south, but they are all very artsy, trendy and pretty much looked like they could be from a hip little section of New York. So in short it wasn't like being in Texas at all.

Concrete boxes in a field, cooler than it sounds, there were about
10 groups of three scattered along a path in a field

light installation by Dan Flavin

Marfa my have been the reason that we decided to hop in the 15 passenger van and drive an ungodly amount of hours, but it wasn't our only stop. We left Manhattan Kansas at 6 am on Thursday morning the 11th of January. Now, you may be asking your self: “why Laura, wasn't that the first day of classes for the spring semester?" And i would say to you, "why yes it was, and let's face it I was going to skip at least a few [or more times] this semester so why not start the year off right" Not to mention this road trip was for class anyway.

sitting with all the guys, go figure... Some of my classmates and i at dinner with our professor.
I think this was after we were served a free round, because they lost our dinner reservations,
during the hour we were waiting for the table, we were at the bar... good idea

Our first stop in Texas was in Dallas at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Designed by Reno Piano, with landscape architect Peter Walker. It was absolutely beautiful, and I wish that it could have been there in spring, because there are so many trees and flowers that it must look wonderful while everything is in bloom. I highly suggest seeing it if you are ever in Dallas. The building is a very cellular, meaning that the pieces of the buildings are identical, and a modular bay sort of system. The building a series of very thick dense walls covered in travertine and between each of these thick heavy walls is a suspended barrel vault that reflects natural delighting into the space, so there is a soft glow about the ceiling. The landscape looks apart of the building, and extension of sorts. Various trees such as cedar elms and live oaks serve and the extensions of the massively thick walls, by outstretching lengthwise across the sculpture garden. In this exterior space there are some nice water features that drown out the noise of the city beyond the garden walls, a stepped garden with pansies and what may be daffodils in the future is at the back of the exterior space and serve as a great place to reflect and take in the entirety of the garden as well as the building in the background. It was a very serene and comfortable place... where one could really escape the city.

sculpture garden

Nasher Entrance

Next on our list was Fort Worth home of Tadao Ando's Modern and Louis Kahn’s Kimball Museum, and after a series of wrong turns and an impromptu tour through the stock yards we arrived at Andos concrete masterpiece.

Ando, one of my favorite architects, has a style about him. He creates the most beautiful spaces and tricks and temps light into washing the surfaces of his silky smooth concrete walls, bending around corners and creating spatial illusions of depth. Nothing is like it. Every time i have been in an building that Ando has created I can't but help slide my fingers across the grey smooth surface, the feeling is similar to running my hand over smooth clean sheet of vellum. The building was laid out with clarity and sophistication. Little nooks were created, highlighting single pieces of art work, which made it feel more personal than standing in an oversized gallery with many paintings cramped together like Chiclets in a small cellophane wrapper.

Ando: The Modern in Fort Worth

The Kimball [built in 1972] was a project that I did a building analysis on when I was in second year, so I was very excited to see the building that I had done so much research on before hand. Upon entry into the museum the viewer walks through a densely packed grove of trees. After making it through the trees the view of the buildings is spectacular you are faced with a three bays of barrel vaulted spaces. In the uppermost top part of the barrel vault there is a narrow slit cut straight down the center lengthwise. Light is reflected off a mounted device, allowing the light to be reflected onto the ceiling and illuminated the space indirectly. Kahn created a wonderfully daylight space, however there was some much artwork crammed into the space that it was overwhelming.

Entrance of Kimbal

After five days on the road, driving through and ice/snow storm that blanketed most of the Midwest, and doing donuts in the parking lot of What-a-burger, it was good to be back in Manhattan and… ehhem… start classes

Oh yeah did i forget to mention that we almost ended up in Mexico after driving 2 hours in the wrong direction.... it only took us three hours and a dead white owl to find Marfa at 1:00 AM.

2007-01-02T15:32:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah and how could I forget… this wouldn’t be a blog post unless I mentioned the blues in some way….so here we go

Best night of my life December 23, 2006…I had been bugging my dad for a while to get some blues tickets while I was going to be in town. Even though I went to the game with some friends earlier in the week, once was not enough! I begged and begged my pops to get some really great seats for the game against Buffalo, which I thought was a lost cause since well it’s my dad. But man oh man did that nagging ever payoff. My Dad, Sister and I arrived at the game about a half hour early only to wait in line for a chicken basket, hot dog, a burger, and some drinks. With our arms filled with over priced food we made our way to a small table and began to nibble away, when it happened. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a sharp dressed man walking towards me. I couldn’t help but to turn and look at the man wearing the silvery gray suit, which was more than slightly wrinkled. It was weird, my eyes slowly came into focus and my brain went into over drive. It was Blues forward Dallas Drake, a toothless, tough-guy, strolling through the arena clasping the hands of his two children. All I could do was blankly stare. I could hear my brain not telling, but yelling in my skull… “Dallas Drake that is DALLAS DRAKE!” I was frozen, just watching him walk away. I wish I could have come up with something good to say to him, but I am pretty sure that a mixture of fumbling words would have been the only thing that I could have produced. After he had past I resumed my consumption of my half of the chicken basket, wishing I had said something cool to “Dally.” Not to long after that my sister became wide-eyed and started to indicate something behind me was interesting. I turned and looked and there he was again striding across the floor, in a rush to meet up with a man with a mic in his ear…I didn’t want to try anything. I might have gotten roughed up by the man in the black suit.
After this encounter we headed to our seats. We went down, down, down to the fourth row, right behind the blues bench. Oh my good lord I could see and smell everything. I took the seat closest to the tunnel, and without hesitation I wrapped my hand around the cold railing and peered down the tunnel and into the Blues staging area. My heart was floating on cloud nine, this was an amazing moment. Soon those giant, skillful, rough, tough, toothless men would be making their way down the tunnel all geared up and ready to go. That night the blues were to face the Buffalo Sabers, one of the better teams in the league and a heck of a lot better than the Blues.
After warm ups the trainer collected all the stray pucks and made his way back into the staging area, but not before tossing a few pucks up to some of the little kids that surrounded the tunnel. I have to admit I felt a little childish stretching my hand out and begging for one of those practice used pucks. Who knows my favorite player probably took a shot on goal with that thing. So as the trained walked past me I out stretched my arm over the rail and yelled after him “how about a puck?” He turned round, looked me straight in the eye and probably noticed my old school throw back 1998 blues sweatshirt, (my 1.99 value village prize possession.) reached in his crate and pulled out a puck. In the blink of an eye it was in the air and heading straight at me. With gaping hands I felt the cold rubber meet my skin, my fingers curled around the edges and I held on for dear life, slightly with disbelief, I felt incredibly lucky.
At every intermission I stretched out my hand and reached for each player as they walked past. As I high-fived each of them my hand looked so minuscule to their glove clad hand, it was kind of funny. When the players made contact with my hand I couldn’t help but to show my further support, “way to go Weight, nice job out there Stemp, keep the hits coming Wideman, way to block those shots Legace.” I was proud to say that I knew every name of each of the guys out there and couldn’t have been more thrilled to watch them dominate the Buffalo Sabers. With an overtime win of 3-2, I left the Scottrade center elated, so incredibly happy that my Blues were getting back on tack and I got to high-five each of the guys I have been following ever since forever. Being in the arena was a thousand times better than listing to the games on my computer in studio. This one game made my December. I don’t know what it is in me but I just love St. Louis BLUUUUUUUUUUUES HOCKEY.

in Prague showing nothing but love for my home team, that sweatshirt has seen a lot.

2007-01-02T14:44:00.000-08:00

An update of sorts.

It has been far to long since my last post and I intended to fill you in.

The end of the semester went along pretty smoothly and final critiques were probably the most surprising event of the last five years. I can’t say that I was all that cool calm and collected or even that confident in the work that I produced for this semester end project. I gathered my thoughts and began to present my project in front of a panel of three outstanding professors, one of which had been my studio professor in the past…which cranked up the pressure. I slowly went through my design scheme and explained my architectural metaphor the best that I could without sounding too full of it. After I had gone through my spiel, there was a pause. It was one of those pauses that every architecture student is deathly afraid of. It is the kind of pause that leaves students thinking, oh dear lord I’m going to get slaughtered, followed by a string of foul words. But soon after that long silence, I heard my past professor say the most amazing thing ever. “I have to commend you on your presentation Laura…” ….HUH? WHAT? Were my exact thoughts, and I am pretty sure you could have read these phrases scroll across my forehead as they were crossing my brain. The others soon jumped in and further complemented me on the job that I had done, “This looks like a 5th year project.” “you are right where you should be” “You really have created a building that unravels” Holy-moley this crit was going along perfectly, I couldn’t have scripted it better my self in the most self absorbed dream. The professors added some great advice and pointers on how I could make the project sing a bit more. The suggestions they had were right on the money, and I agreed with most of what they had said. But, overall they liked it just the way it was.
I stood there after my crit wondering if it were a dream, if it really happened. Thank go it was real, this was the boost I needed after that semester full of doubt.

I didn’t have many other finals; I had one test in history, a watercolor rendering and a short paper for my project programming. It was a good finals week, seeing how I didn’t feel like I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

My Christmas break was a bit shorter than normal because of a class that I am taking over winter intersession. This class isn’t offered during the normal school year and is one I have been thinking about taking for a while. It is called LEED for accreditation. Basically I am learning how to create a sustainable building and with that learning how to study for the test that one must take to be LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] certified.

What is LEED®?
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings. LEED gives building owners and operators the tools they need to have an immediate and measurable impact on their buildings’ performance. LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.

So now I am spending my days 12-5 in a classroom and taking notes and after that I am working on some little homework assignments and surfing the Internet.

2006-11-29T00:22:00.000-08:00

my instructor is trying to kill me....
this last two weeks seemingly keeps to be getting worse.

For the first time in FIVE YEARS i don't have a final on Friday, my last final is on Wednesday, that means i could in theory high tail it outta here on Thursday morning, and enjoy the beginning of winter break before everyone else....

turns out the joke is on me

My INSTRUCTOR has once again changed a deadline, pushed it back till FRIDAY OF FINALS WEEK. And there is no escaping this deadline, because there is a reception that follows it on Friday afternoon..... which makes me wonder....is she nuts? NO ONE IS GOING TO BE ON CAMPUS WHO ALREADY DOESN'T HAVE TO BE. And why would they come to a reception for a project that everyone in the class already hates?

does she honestly think that we choose to spend our "free-time" inside of Seaton Hall...... the madness must stop and when it does on Friday the 15th of December i will be the happiest person you know. And that is a fact...a fact.

Next Semester will be filled with great work and truly amazing learning...nothing of which i had this semester, probably a good sign that new professors should not teach 5th year students....

this sketch has nothing to do with anything ....

or this one

2006-11-19T10:23:00.000-08:00

this movie = so cute

2006-11-16T16:48:00.000-08:00

Growing older somehow snuck up on me the other day. It all started on Monday afternoon. Shauni was doing crits for a random studio, so our studio was left to be productive on our own. As i was working on my water coloring [ doesn't sound too productive does it..no worries it wasn't] Professor McNamara visited me at my drafting desk.

Now i had professor McNamara for one semester last year during our big construction document phase, so naturally i thought he was stopping by to say hello. However he instead asked me to serve as a critic for his second year students who working on designing a home for Ms. Uruguay.

With a little hesitation i agreed to crit for the second half of the studio. Luckily it wasn't just me, but also a friend of mine in studio was asked to do crits as well. After McNamara left, Troy and I began to talk about how weird it was to be on the other side of the fence. To have to listen to a student talk about their work and try to follow long as they explain.

When Wednesday arrived i found my way to the crit room and stood their awkwardly in front of the class as McNamara introduced me to what seemed to be a sea of youngsters. Suddenly my interpretation of people only three-four years younger became this amazement at how IT bitty they looked. So young, bright eyed and little. It was amazing to see how much energy they had how much excitement and enthusiasm they had for their designs.
I soon flashed back to when i was a second year and how i was the same way. Everything was exciting and everything was brilliant, i thought i was clever.... my how things have changed. I had so much energy for school, i couldn't wait for the upcoming years. Now i think to myself do i have the energy to go through that again? Hardly. Don't get me wrong school is ok and i enjoy architecture, i love to draw, to think and create, i love the challenge but i am ready to get paid for it.

Troy and i did our best to give our advice and show our design skills by offering up some great advice. Despite the fact we ran a little dry on some of the projects,but hey it happens. I think overall those kids did a great job on their presentations, and i am so glad that they didn't seem intimidated by either troy or me. i guess that means that we don't seem all that old or full of great and powerful wisdom.

2006-11-11T15:47:00.000-08:00

i am a nerd...

the current history class i am taking is an in depth look at modern European architecture, which means that i pretty much am kicking myself for not taking this class BEFORE i went to Europe. For this class we were all assigned architects to research and give oral presentations covering some of their most important works of Architecture. While i was researching one of Hans Holleins buildings i came across some really great images of that particular structure. As i looked closer i saw there in the background a very familiar looking structure, a cathedral in the heart of Vienna [Wein as Austrians say]. I hurriedly went straight to my study abroad photos and the file folder labeled "Vienna". Racing through images of baroque and Weinner Werkstatte buildings led to my discovery. My clicking stopped right on the images of the cathedral and not one image after the cathedral was the modern architecture created by the same guy who i am currently researching. Without knowing it i had snapped some photos of what i thought was just some interesting modern architecture, but as it turns out a famous piece of architecture. I can't say that i am a huge fan of holleins work, however this piece is pretty neat in its intentions to be a physical hinge of the city. Now i am kicking myself for not going in and not taking more pictures i could have used for this presentation. i have to say i was pretty excited, not gonna lie.

Guess that means i am going back to Vienna.

[mine]

[theirs]

[mine]

2006-10-30T22:54:00.000-08:00

Fall is probably the most wonderful time of the year [with the exception to hockey season ;) ].

I was walking on campus today, pretty much unhappily since I was “blessed” with the worst spot on campus [if you can still call that part of school campus] when it hit me… I love fall. The color of the leaves were brilliant reds, stunning burnt oranges and golden yellows, all dancing in the wind, some wildly blowing around on the ground, and some still attached to the limbs that would soon shed them along with the others. I couldn’t help but to stop and just breathe deep, as deep as we did in yoga class. I sucked in as much of that fall air as my lungs would allow. I felt completely satisfied, at peace with every aspect of everything, even Seaton hall.
Things have seemingly gotten better in recent days. My design for studio is making progress and I am actually feeling the urge to scribble on paper more and cut bits of chipboard and assembling them to represent an idea that might, just might be a good one. For our second project this semester we have “been given the opportunity” to design a temporary structure that is to house the International Textile Exhibition. Basically we are creating and exhibition area and gallery to house the fashion trend setters of the world, and showcasing how textiles are progressing into the future. This might be kind of interesting, but how does this link to architecture? Good question and maybe in my next post I will have a more developed answer. But so far my link deals with unraveling and the urban fabric that exists in Kansas City, Missouri.

[Warning architectural theory approaching]

Think of it as this way, a woven piece of fabric has warp and weft, horizontal and vertical members, infill and structure. These are all ways in which to describe the nature of the piece of fabric. Not unlike a piece of fabric the city has a natural pattern of buildings and streets i.e. infill and circulation. The way that I am arguing it, the circulation of the city is the structure of the city while the buildings represent the infill the meat of the city. [this point is supported by various architectural theory essays of past civilizations and the way they structured their citied based on temples, dwellings and business…i.e. ports.] The buildings rely on the circulation paths to support the function of the city not unlike the warp to the weft of a woven piece of fabric. While the city is the strongest at its center where both infill and structure are heavily integrated it doesn’t behave like this consistently. A city, like fabric, becomes unraveled and frayed at the ends. Circulation still exists but the density of the city changes as it becomes more spread out and less dense. The city is no longer tight knit; it becomes pieces and elements, not one cohesive unit. This is most noticeable upon entry and exiting the city, where you can see the build up, or the weaving of the city take place right before your eyes. One can experience several roads coming together and can watch the landscape transform from low lying planes to towering structures soaring over head. In a dualistic relationship the exact opposite will happen when leaving the city. The structures that once were reaching for the sky begin to come back to earth, they begin to spread out, circulation paths begin to diverge into several different directions and soon one finds themselves out in the middle of the rolling hills dotted here and there with farm structures, completely unlike the tight knit fabric that was the urban context. Now the trick is, turning this idea into a building…. Yeah about that.

Ok that is enough architectural metaphor for now, and knowing me that will probably change 100 times before Friday. So how does that relate to fall, it doesn’t but I think that is ok. Oh an before I forget the image bellow was taken from a friend of a friend on facebook who recently traveled to Minneapolis for some Landscape architecture conference…I guess that is part of a sculpture somewhere in the city.

2006-10-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

[feet]

2006-10-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

[this is long over due]

Remembering.

Memories of my childhood are scarcely recounted without mentioning two wonderful people in my life. Two people, whom knew me since before my birth, saw me off to school until I was in second grade, taught me how to spell [didn’t stick to well], eat oat bran, and sat me on the steps for the one or more occasions I broke the rules [wink wink].

Bunty and Popsie were more than just babysitters they were family, a third set of grandparents and an integral part of my childhood. Every morning I would ride with my sister over to their house and sit at the round oak table for breakfast and sing blessings like Johnny Apple seed. Every weekday was filled with different actives like climbing trees, fishing, coloring and stretching our imaginations to its furthest. We learned so much and received so much love and joy from them that it is impossible to convey with any in depth description or explanation just how much they changed and influenced my life.

Two years ago we lost Bunty after a long hard battle against cancer. She was a strong woman and gave me the only idea I had of what a grandmother was all about. It was then that I realized that despite seeming as if they could go on for ever, that they were mortal and that life was not eternal.

Not to long ago, about the same time I was finishing my first project, I heard that Popsie was diagnosed with bone cancer. At 81, he had faced many heath problems before but always seemed to overcome them with great strength. However this time was different. Not even a week had past when I heard the news and planned a trip to home to attend the funeral with my family.

As we drove the two hours to Columbia, MO memories filled my head, and a feeling of loss filled my heart. Soon my family was recounting stories of times spent with Popsie. Most of which sounded like this… “Remember when we…. And then Laura was sent to sit on the steps.”

Kenneth “Chick” Hartwig one of the most caring, gentle spirit I know. I am incredibly happy that I had him in my life. He taught me to try, try, try again, to use my imagination to its fullest, to fish, to love nature, and to always play fair. These and many more lessons I carry with me today.

I miss you and love you.

2006-10-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

My project is finished! After four days of three hour sleep-filled nights and countless times of watching the sun rise for the second time in one day, my model is complete and my drawings are printed, bring on the grading!
So for this short four week design project, we were given the opportunity of create a park pavilion in City park, downtown Manhattan. Our instructor placed a few restrictions on our design scheme. For one, and most importantly, we could only use one of the following structural systems: lattice, cable structure, fabric/masted, and pneumatic. And out of these choices I picked to exploit the nature of a fabric structure.
Basically through numerous study models and sketches, I settled upon a wishbone shaped steel tube arch system and positioned them in opposite directions of each other to create a artificial canopy. The artificial canopy reflects the context of the park, by creating an overhead plane and boundary that springs from the ground. Under the fabric clad arches there is seating for 3,800 people, a stage, storage, restrooms, an ice rink and small administration building. To further the metaphor even more, buildings wave themselves in and out of the sprawling fabric structure.

how do i feel about this project... rushed not really all that happy with it, but given more time i think i could discover it more and develop it further, possibly making a better stronger design project.

on and entirely different note... we have a new cat at the Knoxberry house! Deeply saddened by the departure of Milo [he went to go live with my sister :( ] my roommate brought her brothers pet cat up to the Knoxberry house [I guess the brother can't have the cat where he is living]. But so far so gooooooooooooooooooooood! I love this little guy, Sam. He is completely black with a few white hairs on his tummy. He is the most snuggly cat ever. I was sitting on our couch last night and all of a sudden Sam jumped in my lap and asked for a lot of attention. He is Milo’s polar opposite, he wants attention all of the time and follows everyone around everywhere. After dinner Monica headed back to studio and I was the only one in the house. I headed to the bathroom to brush my teeth and soon enough there was Sam sitting in the bathroom watching me clean the ol' pearly whites. He is adorable!

Oh yeah hockey season starts today! And the blues play tomorrow, get ready it's going to be a good year [hopefully]!

2006-09-24T20:41:00.000-07:00

when i get frustated with designing my project i do things like this...
i took some time out to visit www.audiusa.com andbuilt my own audi. I spent about 10 minuets making the car of my dreams, A sleek A4 2.0 TFSI quattro, in phantom black, with the s line sport package, not to mention butt warmers! how could life get any better...i dunno maybe having one in my garage? But after spending an imaginary 38,230, i relized that it is going to take fooooorevver to have this sweet ride in my driveway, who even knows about the driveway part, i don't think i could ever trust the steets of boston with this beaut!

2006-09-24T17:12:00.000-07:00

today is sunday, and i once again find myself wondering how long the week will last. Every week seems to be flying by at break neck pace almost evaporating at the onset of monday. And some how i am able to keep up, but it feels like there is hardly enough time to fit in all that needs to be done, but it happens, more or less.

This week will be nothing but production for me as i prepare for my first "deadline" for the park pavilion project. Due next tuesday, i will be spending the up coming days drawing lines in auto cad and fabricating a model that will consist of some wire and a pair of ladies knee highs.

I am very much looking forward to getting that week over, because i plan on coming home the following week... so in two weeks i will be able to have my dad do my laundry, eat too many oreos out of the cookie jar, and snuggle with milo, who won't like it.

But before then i have to squeeze in some meetings for Mock Interview preparation, calling different firms 'round the country. After that i have to drive to topeka, find the nearest verizon wireless store and find out why my phone isn't working at all. After that it is back to the 'hap to finish a project that will never be done... because design never stops. Hopefully on saturday phil and janelle will make good on their promise to stop by on their way out to colorado. It will be great to see some of the oldest, greatest friends i have at the start of thier entirely new life. [nothing but the best for them]

so things are good and life is moving along. soon enough it will blues season and i will be the happiest person alive, or the most heartbroken depending on how the season goes...we'll hope for the best].

2006-09-14T10:50:00.000-07:00

Lately i have been working, slowly but surely on some studio work. Our first project of the semester is a pavilion and concert stage for the Manhattan City Park. Consisting of seating for 3,800 people, a moveable ice rink, picnic benches galore, and an administration building. The main constringent for the project is that it must MUST consist of a fabric, woven, masted, or cable networked structure. So pretty much there is nothing usual about this project. So far i have come up with a concept, but it is really weak, so weak i don't even want to tell you since it will most likely change along with my design. I am not finding much guidance form my professor, or much help from any of the discussions that we have had concerning my project. I can't say that she has provided significant input to help me understand what steps to take next. It is pretty frustrating right now considering that in years past i have unbelievably talented professors that have offered me some of the best guidance and suggestions for not just my one project but for all ideas concerning architecture, helping me to see what the true possibilities for design can hold.

But for now i am putting that aside and trying to catch up with all the reading that has been assigned to me over the past few weeks. All of the readings for studio, project programming, and history are becoming a bit overdone. For project programming we have been assigned a few articles that are so abstract that i can't even begin to tell you what the main point is. This week the article discussed displacement and how architecture is related to food, frontinality, and infra-thin. I think by the end of this 15 page adventure i kind of got the gist of what the author was trying to communicate but overall i think i would have faired better if i had some great abstract thinker by my side explaining what each paragraph was trying to portray.

2006-09-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

ponder this....

Our Cartesian intellectual inheritance imposes an ultimately paradoxical demission between mind and body, observer, and observed, sign and referent. This puts architecture at a distinct disadvantage. Its practical objects will forever remain alien to our theoretical process of dichotomous division, to provide commentary and captions. Under such conditions architecture as inquiry is impossible.

taken from:
"Architecture as Site Reception, Part I cuisine, fromtality, and infra-thin"
written by Donald Kunze

2006-09-07T19:11:00.000-07:00

2006-09-04T21:09:00.000-07:00

i came home this weekend... and i lack any sort of real courage.
i wish i had the power to say what i have wanted to say for the longest time.
where does anyone get the courage or the strength to express their deepest most private thoughts, that is what i want to know.

2006-08-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

Some interesting things I have seen over the course of the week

1. My neighbor's had set out their trash for pick up. However, on top of the green canister there was a red and white table cloth with a stuffed cloth turkey and a can of coke, it looked as if someone could just pull up to the trash receptacle and have lunch.

2. I saw a TRUCK with a bike hitch, with bikes on it.... What? My thought was "You have a truck, that's the point."

3. I am now on a first name bases with my trash man. His name is Darrell.

4. and this, courtesy of Phil. A cookie stealing bunny. If I had a thief for a pet rabbit I would be pretty amazed that a rabbit could be that stealth.

2006-08-28T20:17:00.000-07:00

Kansas [home]

2006-08-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

it is definitely that time of year again... the smell of sharpened pencils is in the air, the sound of perforated note book pages being ripped from their spiral bindings and nothing but assignments and to do lists... school has started. Without internet in studio and a broken laptop still in St. Louis, I have been..... out of touch.
The first week of school went by pretty smoothly. We were introduced to our studio project, which for now consists of mostly research and case studies, but will soon enough deal with tensile and fabric structures, something which I have never really dealt with before. I am a little nervous about not knowing what I am doing but I guess I will learn in time...hopefully.
I have two night classes [7:00-9:30 p.m.] which I am very excited about, watercolor and history of modern European Architecture. Watercolor seems really relaxing but I have a feeling that I will find a way to get stressed out over a bunch of paints, paper, and water. In history I pretty much take notes, read and soon will have an oral report to give over one of Europe's better modern architects. This history class is taught by one of my favorite professors. He has a way of making his lectures feel more like a story time, as opposed to a long winded lecture based on boring facts. I can easily sit and listen to him spill little secrets about architectural masterpieces and try to keep up with note taking.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I am taking yoga/palliates course at a local gym for one credit hour. After two classes I love it! It is very relaxing and at the end of class we get to do a pose called the dead man... just laying on the floor all sprawled out, which reminds me of sleeping! I have to say the first class when the lights were turned off and the music was turned on, I felt a bit cheesy. The music had inspirational voice saying things like "relax", "let the mind open", and then our teacher prompted the relaxation with her own sayings..."let your stress fall to the floor." I couldn’t help but smirk a little, suppressing my laughter as much as I possibly could. It all seemed a bit too much, but I tried to embrace this yoga mentality and let the weight on my shoulders fall to the floor. The funny thing is, the instructor is married to one of my previous architecture professors. As I walked in the first day and told her my name, she looked me straight in the eye and said "Oh so you are my architecture student." With a smile I said yes. And she soon asked me what year I was in, and after telling her that I was in my fifth year she said with a big grin on her face "Oh you are going to really enjoy this class, and you are really going to need it too." Upon hearing this, my inner monologue said ..."grrrrrreat, another year."
By Friday I had received schedules for each of my classes, and with this brought on a swelling feeling of anxiety. The increasing amount of deadlines, dues dates and other college activities made the semester seem shorter than it ever had been before. Despite the fact that I am taking fewer credit hours than I have in previous semesters, there seems to be very little down times. I was looking forward to making a few visits home to the Lou this semester, but the way things look right now, it’s gonna be tough.
So here is to the rest of the semester [undoubtedly a good one], I am sure it will be full of all things educational and all things not.

2006-08-10T22:52:00.000-07:00

Well it is safe to say that i am half way packed! I make the first trip back to Manhattan in a few short hours, [9 if you want to get technical.] So far I have mostly just school stuff, studio and computer stuff... not so much actual room, clothing or other can't-live-withouts, those will have to wait till next Friday.

This weekend I head to Manhattan for a night, then bust a move down to Wichita for Jon and Sam’s wedding. Then I head back to the little apple to pay for my education and choose my studio professor for the up coming year.

I am so excited to see my house again; it has been far too long. I have to say that being in my room is one of the most amazing feelings in the world. Everything about it makes me feel so comfy. The light green walls, the old dresser from Grandpa Indihar’s house, the borrowed bed from my aunt Joyce, and even the fiberboard desk from Wal-Mart. It is a little strange to be going back for my last year. it doesn't seem right that four years can come and go this fast. And maybe this last year will drag, seem to go on for eternity, but we all know that this, the last year will fly by faster than any other one has before.

It didn't seem all to long ago that I was sitting on the wooden benches on the third floor of the west wing of Seaton [freshman zone] hearing dean law say "this is 1 out of 10, and the rest will be more work, longer hours and pass by in a blink of an eye." But i just couldn’t wait to be on the east side with all the rest of the architecture students, not stuck on the west side with engi-nerds. Now I am working on 9 out of 10 and I will sit in the best studios on the east side...its' good to be king!

There have been so many upper class man that I have looked up to over the years, hoped that I could be like them one day. With clever designs, articulate descriptions and just all around awesomeness. I of course never told those people how I saw them or their work, or just how I wanted to be them, but now I am in their position. As I approach this year I wonder if there are any youngsters out there that see me the way that I saw so many others.

2006-08-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

2006-08-05T11:04:00.000-07:00

Maaaadrrrrrrid! Madrid was amazing! The city was so much different than Barcelona, it was cleaner, more open and I felt it was way less touristy.

We arrived at Madrid airport on the morning of June 30th. And I am pretty sure I slept through the entire forty-five minute fight, including take off and landing [my two favorite parts] … needless to say I missed the in flight snack but woke up in time for the plane taxing to our gate. Soon we were exiting the aircraft and headed for our baggage in the new terminal four.
Terminal four didn’t sound like a bad place to be, up to date, state of the art technology and no lines in sight. But the confusion pretty much started when we had no idea how to get from terminal four to the metro station located somewhere in the Madrid airport. It didn’t take long of poor Chris lugging his bags around before I asked how to get to the Metro stop. We had learned that we needed to catch a bus from terminal number four to terminal numbers one and two. After a short seven minute bus ride from the middle of what seemed to be the largest construction site I have ever seen, off in the horizon, like a mirage, appeared the rest of the Madrid airport. Ok so it wasn’t all that bad but after weaving our way through the labyrinth like halls of terminals one and two we found the escalators that would take us to the metro. Once we were there from the map I could tell that we only had to transfer trains twice, which was more than good enough for me.

After our two transfers we emerged form the metro station and immediately could see out hostel. It was such a relief to see that we weren’t going to have to navigate our way through mid-day traffic with our bags and a crumpled map. In the heart of the city we arrived at Hostel Metropool with bags strapped to every inch of our bodies and sweet running down our faces, backs, arms, legs, toes, fingers, finger nails and necks. This hostel was pretty cool; it was an older building right in the heart of the city, practically near everything in walking distance. Despite the amazing location there were a few draw backs, like no air condition and everlasting noise from the street.
It didn’t take long before Chris and I were out and about walking the streets of this beautiful city. In our three glorious days, Chris and I explored the Madrid Palace, the local cathedral and many of the hottest tourist [trap] shops in town! Also during stay we were able to take in some great Picasso art, the royal gardens and a variety of beautifully crafted churches. One of the highlights to the stay happened on the last night to our great adventure. We attended a real live bull fight, full on no stops. Call out the cavalry and sound the horns, the bulls were selected and the matadors were dressed and we had front row seats to see it all go down.
I have never really known much about bullfighting, only a wee bit thanks to the MTV reality TV show “Road Rules.” Where season six cast members took on baby bulls with red capes and paint to mark where they would have potentially stabbed the bull, had they been real matadors.
We purchased our amazing tickets a day before the event and only paid five euros to sit in the front row just to the left main rings exit. This turned out to be the place where all of the action would ultimately end up taking place. The matadors were decked out in head to toe in vibrant colors and intricately embroidered jackets and pants. Glittering pieces of intertwining embroidering cascaded down the sides of the skin tight knee length pants and across the shoulders, arms and backs of the cropped jackets. These outfits were part of the bull fighting legacy and the image was nothing short of tradition and awesomeness.
As the fight began trumpet players indicated the start of the show and all at once the huge wooden doors across the stadium opened wide to reveal 5 bull fighters and their numerous assistance, six men riding horses. The horses just happened to be heavily armored and not to mention masked, and two other old guys on horse back with feathers in their hats.
When the first bull was released it bolted from the wooden doors and straight into the center of the stadium. As the bull darted across the arena’s dirt floor bits flew into the air leaving a trail in the wake of its path. The four “helpers” coaxed the already tagged [stabbed with some ribbon trough the hole] bull from one side of the stadium to the other. After receiving the bull’s full attention and it’s head on charge the men would dart behind the wooden partitions, safeguarding them from the bull’s fierce and intense anger. The bull’s fiery temper was worn down by these men darting in front of and behind these wooden barricades. After several passes the trumpets sounded again, the larger oversized wooden door opened to reveal two men on horseback. The horses were covered with thick “armor” and blindfolded. The armor pretty much consisted of a thick yellowy orange blanket and the man that rode the horse was carrying a large pole with a sharp pyramid shaped tip of metal at the end. After parading around the edges of the arena the men came to a stand still and one took aim, raising the pole above his head and briskly jammed it into the bull’s backbone in the same location that the tag was strung from.
The bull reacted by ramming into the horse with the intent of pushing his horns into the horses body. At one point in the match the bull was able to overturn the horse and rider. The bullfighters quickly came to the horseman’s rescue and were able to draw the bull away from the struggling man and his horse.
After the men on horseback left the ring the bullfighter’s helpers took center stage again. This time they were no longer armed with capes/ponchos but rather poles that they held with the tips of their fingers and once again took turns sticking them into the bulls back while avoiding the two horns coming straight at them. After the three men stabbed the bull it was time for the most familiar part of the fight to begin.
The matador emerged form the side of the ring and slowly walked to the center of the ring took off his hat and placed it on the ground. Soon he was taunting the bull getting it to chase after his bright red poncho. The matador would slowly inch toward the bull and with no fear at all get the bull to follow the poncho back and fourth in a rhythmical almost dance. After several passes the matador removed the silver sword which he had been hiding beneath the red poncho, squared up with the bull and took aim. The same spot that everyone else had been aiming for [just above the bulls shoulder blades on the top of the bulls back] was the matadors mark. With one sweeping move he stepped forward and shoved the sword into the wounded bull, and with in seconds the bull struggled for steps and fell to the ground. It wasn’t long before a team of horses came into the ring and drug the dead bull away.
During our bull fighting show we saw six bulls beaten by the matadors and two bulls be saved by the crowd.
The very next morning we boarded the plane at 11:30 bound for Atlanta. I was looking forward to this 9 hour flight, strange but true. Looking at my watch I kept flicking it back and fourth between St. Louis time and Prague time, whishing I could be in both places at once. My Timex iron man had been strapped to my arm for only a short while, since my other one broke. But it still felt like it have been there for and eternity. Now it wouldn’t be long before I was resting in my own bed with my own sheets in my own house. However, even when I did arrive safe and sound in my home everything felt strange everything felt unfamiliar. But the most comforting thing was that Milo remembered me, like I had never been away. I dropped my stuff off in the basement and was ready to unpack for the last time. Ah it felt good to be home. This had been a great end to a great adventure, meeting wonderful people, seeing and experiencing wonderful things.

2006-07-26T22:21:00.000-07:00

can't sleep [ so much on my mind ... not even funny]... so here goes some Spain action

By 9:00 on the 27^th I was sitting on the Air plane headed to Barcelona. As the landing gear pulled away from the ground and headed back into their cubby holes, the view of the city filled my tiny oval window. At that point my heart sank; this amazing city was no longer going to part of my daily life, but now just a memory.

On the plane I was seated next to two Canadian guys. One was Arabic and was taking up my entire arm rest, the other guy was an Asian wearing a Compton hat, and I kind of found that funny. His voice reminded me of that of a radio announcer for monster truck rallies. It was deep but at the same time, cheesy.

By the time the plane landed in, and our luggage was picked up, I was so excited to get out of the airport and to our hostel. After one bus ride, three metro stops, and three blocks of narrow sidewalk, we hade made it to Barcelona Dream Hostel, great name if a say so myself. Shortly after getting settled we managed to make our way to the Gran Via, a long mostly pedestrian street with shops, street performers, restaurants, and little kiosks selling every postcard known to man and random souvenirs ranging from giant pencils to stuffed cows. We found a place to eat and after chowing down and wandering some more we headed back to our hostel via the shadiest street ever. For the two and a half blocks Chris and I witnessed, prostitutes looking for their next pay check, drug dealers making their sales and the users reeling from their merciless high. I held close to my purse and kept my eyes from wandering too far from my feet hitting the pavement. Upon reaching our place I headed down to the lounge and while waiting for a computer, I watched the daily football highlights. It was then I met a man named Robert who was traveling with his daughter, both from Australia, however Robert seemed to have more of a Polish accent rather than one form the down under. I spent about 15 minutes talking to the pair and was glad to get some Barcelona tourist suggestions from them.

Upon recommendation from Robert and Clair, we visited the Andy Warhol exhibit next to the main Cathedral in the city Center. The exposition was pretty good with some of Warhol’s most famous works including the Marilyn Monroe, the Campbell’s soup dress, and Liza Minnelli.

The Barcelona cathedral was pretty nice it had horrible lighting so all of my pictures turned out kind of orangey yellow. However the pictures that I took while meandering through the cloister turned out beautiful. The clear blue sky and the green palm trees really gave me this feeling of paradise and peacefulness despite the crazy bustling world that lay just beyond the stone walls.

Another favorite museum of mine was the Picasso Museum. The pieces ranged from the beginning of his education to the completion of his life’s work. They had many of his sketch books and practice paintings. It was great to see that even the masters such as Picasso try their out ideas out more than just once and master pieces are made from hard work and practice, not just luck.

for the next few days we discovered what the city had to offer. One of the sites was the church of the sacred family. As it turns out the church was still under construction and had been for the last 100 some odd years. But I have to say it was most impressive to see the construction workers put this massive truly authentic cathedral together, block by block a piece by piece, as opposed to steel beams and dry wall like most of the new churches are build today. It was a new world church with the craftsmanship of the old world.

seriously what have they been doing for the last 100 years?

Next we hit up the beach, only after spending all day in a museum and in mies van der rohe’s Barcelona pavilion [which was pretty cool.] The beach, though nice, was packed! Every square inch filled with flesh. While we didn’t really spend all that much time at the beach we dipped our toes in the water and dodged sun bathers littering the hot sandy coast line.

Soon we made our way back to the hostel to get our selves sorted for our meeting with Luke and Mackenzie. Tonight would be our last night [Chris and I] in Barcelona, but the first night for the dynamic duo from Wichita. We meet up near the Grand Via and scouted out some good locations to have our last meal together. After finally settling for one of the outdoor venues we partook in some sangria and Spanish delicacies. Except for me, I choose to have what turned out to be the horrible, horrible cannelloni…I am a sucker for cannelloni. After we finished our meal together we walked back to our hostel and continued to have drinks on our roof top overlooking the beautiful city. It wouldn’t be too long before Chris and I had to get up at 6 in the morning to get to the airport for our early flight to Madrid, the last and final stop.

2006-07-24T19:57:00.000-07:00

mmmmmmmmmmk I swear I will write about Spain, I swear! But for now I have some catching up to do here at home. I am currently working on my portfolio for an AIA St. Louis scholarship interview on Friday. And I think I might have actually started it before Sunday had God not decided to drop a tornado on St.Louis and cause our power to be out for three horrible miserable days. But it's all good cause when the lights came back I stood in shock for three seconds before running around the house turning all the lights on off, just cause i could! So long story short, by Friday Spain will be inducted in to the blog-o-fame.

As you can tell I am taking a break from my computer on my parents computer (at least this one has internet). Wow is that wrong. I have been for the past two days, finding drawings, finding photos, altering them in various ways, linking them into a spread in adobe in design and hoping that when I print them out for the first and only time on Wednesday that it will look great. I guess I could print it off more than once to safe guard against an ugly looking stack of papers, but when it's 11X17 color and Kinko’s is printing,[ ha ha can you say rip-off-ville?] needless to say once is enough.

But it is looking ok I have just a few minor alterations that will enviably take 10 hours but at least I can then say that I have completed some thing in which I have set out to do. Which reminds me, I gotta get back and re-link all of my Islamic mosque project drawings, whoo-hoo!

2006-07-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

I am back: back home, back to reality, back to work, back to normal [?]. My boxes came today, and guess that is a sign from the powers above that it is time that I stop procrastination on this blog and finish the tale of this amazing journey.

[Funny that now that I am writing about Prague the music on my I-pod just switched to one of Czech Republics most famous composers, Bedřich Smetana. Even weirder the song name is “My Country: Vltava.” It is the wonderful musical tale of the Czech River the Vltava and winding journey it takes through the country sides and cityscapes of the Czech Republic.]

Here we go…

After taking the 6:50 am train from Budapest to Prague. My bones were tired and nothing but excitement filled my entire body. I was so happy to be back at home where I knew I have a “comfy” bed to sleep in and all the other creature comforts of home.

Although I had only two days to get all my belongings sorted and all the little arrangements to get into order, I knew I had to enjoy the last hours in my beloved city. The first order of Business was to buy all the last, minute souvenirs, not for friends or family, that was already done, but for the hardest person to shop for, me. I walked all over old town and went into all the souvenir shops I had passed by a thousand times before now. Ultimately dreading the moment when I had to cross the threshold of their doors and loose my credit as a resident and become nothing but a lowly tourist. I picked out a couple of shirts, trinkets, and a bottle of Becheroka. After returning to the door I gathered my previously packed boxes of odds and ends and headed to the post office to pick up a box and to mail two others.
Now, to pick up a box at the Ceska Posta, it’s not as simple as picking up a box off of a display on the wall, like here at the U.S. post office. HECK NO! They do it the Czech way! I had to walk up stairs to the secret second level. Find the 4”X 4” white buzzer on the wall and soon after pressing the button had to wait for a responding buzzzz of acceptance. When I entered the next room, my immediate assessment was that this space felt like a secret compartment. Almost as if I was a spy getting my next assignment [which is what the room probably doubles as anyway.] But the room was about the size of a bathroom stall and contained a glass wall with a counter at one end and the door I just walked through on the other. There behind the glass wall was series of assembled boxes of various boxes, different sized envelopes, and a very large scary Czech woman with no trace of a smile on her face.
Trying to making things simple as possible, I pointed at the on the far right and slid nine crowns into the metal tray linking to two sides of the glass wall. And without delay they woman reproduced a large flat sheet of cardboard. As the woman made here way back to the counter she began to fold the box up like a clown twists a balloon to horse, bunny or any other assortment of animals. The lady soon had created my particular box, and before I knew it, a secret panel on the lower half of the glass wall spun around to revel my box in it’s entirety. I grabbed my box and left the windowless postage jail cell.
I spent the rest of the day meandering through the city soaking up all that I could, trying to preserve the memory of all the Czech culture that surrounded me. I wanted all the sights, smells and feelings to be burned on my mind. So that when I reached my house I could still close my eyes and step into Wenceslaus square, just as if I had gotten off at Mustek subway stop and stepped into the large over crowed square.

Soon after seeing the city for one last time all of the K-Staters got together for one last Czech Meal. We all boarded the tram and rode it to the National Concert Hall and picked a restaurant in true Czech Fashion. The menu was mostly filled with goulashes and beer. Two thins that I couldn’t resist getting for one last go around. Bread dumplings, Beef goulash and an ice cold Krusovice made for a perfect good bye dinner. We sat around the table reliving stories of the past semester, laughing uncontrollably and wishing we could all do it again.
After dinner we meandered around the city a bit, but soon headed back. I finished off the evening with making sure I had packed every thing that I needed, and made sure everything was in order to my 9:00 flight to Barcelona. It wouldn’t bee long until we were flying over the city. Saying good bye for the last time.

2006-06-21T12:45:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! I am in Wien and it is hot and humid, kinda like St.Louis...which makes hiking around the city super fun......psssssssh!
Munich was really fun and really hot, and filled to the brim with football fans! It was a great time to be there, surrounded by tons of fun people and things to do! We walked the streets of Munich all day, taking in Museums, Churches, and a palace. We also trekked over to the BMW plant but we unfortunate to get a tour. Later that night we were able to find a few Americans at the hoffbrauhaus watching the England game. Turns out that one of the girls had actually studied in Prague not to long ago. We had a great time talking about all the wonderful things in Praha. After a few liters and a shot of Jaeger bought for us my a rich Aussie, we headed back to our hostel for an early morning wake up call and train ride to Vienna.

Today we ventured around the city and came to a place in the southern part of the city. We meandered the wonderful gardens for a few hours and by them time we were done with our tour, out flip flops were covered in dust and out bodies covered in sweat. Now we are back at the hostel and watching the football match between the Netherlands and Argentina. I am personally not supporting anyone but looking forward to a good match. Next stop Budapest.

2006-06-16T15:10:00.000-07:00

The time has come for me to say good-bye, or Na shledanou. My parents are whisking away my computer and leaving me with nothing but my Zadie Smith book and sketchbook...a good thing, a very good thing. During my parents stay we got to see some really interesting and beautiful things and were able to explore some parts of the city that I have been holding off on. In short I lead them on a city walking tour that took us to some of the biggest sights in Prague, made them walk up a steep and long path up to the castle as opposed to taking the tram to the main entrance of the castle (woops…who knew the 22 went up there), and meandered through some great museums. And in return they took me out to dinner at some of the most mouthwatering restaurants in the hottest spots in town, and forced me to go on senior citizens [not really] boat cruise + bus tour, which when it was all said and done it was pretty cool. In our small group of 10, including the guide) there were some interesting characters on the boat. An ancient Canadian couple who were kicking butt and taking names, a couple that I am sure had an interesting but mysterious background (one from New York, and one from Norway, whom meet on a cruise ship…apparently) and a mother and daughter team, from Australia. The mother of this duo was so cute and little, and had to be at least 68-75 and was from Hong Kong. We had a really nice conversation about the different travels she had been on throughout her life. She seriously has been everywhere, and had some really great stories that I enjoyed immensely! She made me want to explore the world so much more! She said that while her friends spent much money on nice cars and big homes, she spent it on travel and seeing as many different places as possible. And I couldn’t agree more; memories and experience is priceless and will always retain their value. Different cultures are fascinating to me and I hope that this is the beginning of a lifetime learning and discovery.

Yup those are the heads of my parents climbing to the top of the Prague Castle; it was a nice WARM day for such a climb. [Who needs a tram when you have two legs and two feet?]

Jewish cemetery, people are stacked 12 deep in some spots others 8.

Mom got blessed by the birds of Prague; it is good luck I swear! [I bet she is going to loooove this being up on here]

I had to carry this old man and his walker up to the top of that tower [grin]

I was so happy to have my parents come to Praha and visit me, see this wonderful city that I have been so lucky to live in for the past four some-odd months. It was really fun to be able to share all that I had learned here with them, including trying to teach my dad how to say a few basic phrases like Dekuji [thanks] and pivo prosim [beer please]. I just wanted to thank them for all their support and love; it means more to me than anything else in the entire world. I really hope that they had a great time and that this young little whippersnapper didn't tucker them out too badly, [wink].

Despite not having a computer for the next two and a half weeks I will try my hardest to keep some info up to date! Hope everyone is doing well and will be happy to see everyone back in the STL when I get home in July! Miss you guys! And gals!

2006-06-14T01:25:00.000-07:00

It is here, my Parents arrive today! At 2:00 I will be on a bus to meet them at the airport! I am so excited to see them I seriously can't wait! Until then I guess I will stroll about town, retrieve some grades and print off some hostel and flight reservation information, just to kill some time. Pretty much the same things I have been doing since Friday.
I was finished with my project Friday afternoon, all printed out and rendered, but I had to wait ‘till Monday until I could display my work in my studio. At noon, June 12th we posted our drawings and had a small crit at 3:00. However around 5:00 the Americans left early to go to old town square, where they had enormous TV screens set up to watch the Czech Republic take on the Americans in some World Cup Soccer action. Without much surprise I watched, along with a small group from the states, as the Czechs blasted 3 unanswered goals past our keeper. WE GOT KILLED. As we made our way through the crowd of Czech soccer fans, it felt like the biggest walk of shame anyone could take. I kept my head down and just wanted to make it out of there without being hassled.

Mack left for Amsterdam on Tuesday and it has been too quite without her here, and it is only been a day. But Carl and I will meet Mack, her two brothers, and Luke in Munich on the 19th and then we will head to Austria where we will meet Annie and Allison in Vienna while Mack's bros head back to the states. From there we will travel to Budapest and through Slovakia. On the 25th and 26th I will spend my last two days in Prague and soak as much of it into my skin as possible. On the 27 I head to Spain, first in Barcelona and then Madrid, for three days a piece. And that brings me to the 3rd of July when I board a plane at 11:20 and arrive in St. Louis around 7:10, 30 minutes to my house brings us to 7:40...so I will be in my door at about 7:45-7:50...I am calling it now.

2006-06-07T07:39:00.000-07:00

So can you tell that I am willing to do anything that doesn't involve working on my project? Well just to keep everyone up to speed, I have completed most of my drawings, the only one left is the dreaded wall section. Let's face it since I have little to no actual construction experience it makes it really difficult to know how to draw how a high-rise building is put together!
I might be going crazy.
On the upside I have finished my model! That took a few days and not up to my usual standards, but since there is no bass wood here in the Czech Republic, I guess the chipboard that was used will have to do.

Also today is Kate's [my British flat mate] birthday! Wooo-whooo! On Friday we are having a BBQ to celebrate the 23rd year the of life and times of Kate Jones! But tonight we are having a surprise party for her, it will be fun!
Tonight a friend from KSU leaves for home, bummer I bet he wishes he were here for longer, booo leaving early Brian! But tonight we bid him adieu, and dine in the pub across the street which is so good it will knock your Czech made socks off your feet.

Also here are some sites I have been gendering at, while putting off being productive, or any near the definition of productivity. Common' how fun would life be if we didn't procrastinate?

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/
This site has inspired me to cook a plethora of delicious meals upon my return to the states! [There is nothing wrong with cooking with a computer in the kitchen...is there?]

http://www.everestcoatings.com/details/er/
This site might help me pass my design studio, thank GOD for Google!

http://www.richardmeier.com/
Inspiration

http://www.time.com/time/quotes
You’ll never know what you will find, or read

http://www.nbc.com/Late_Night_with_Conan_O
Conan is my hero

this is what I feel like....round

2006-06-04T04:54:00.000-07:00

This morning while I was doing some Sunday morning supermarket shopping, I saw a very grandpa-esque Czech man wearing a Wayne’s world black baseball hat. While he was loading up his groceries I wondered to myself, "I wonder if he has ever seen the movie, or ever sung the 'Wayne’s world, party time, excellent woo woo woo' song?"

[he might have had a pair of garths glasses, in his pocket protector]

2006-06-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

Today was the first beautiful sunny day here in Prague in a long time, and what was I doing? Oh I was inside working on my model for studio. It wasn't too bad cutting chipboard with rays of sunlight streaming through my oversized west facing windows. It actually was quite nice. Since Thursday, studio work is all I have left to work on. I turned in my final projects for sculpture and art in architecture. Making the number of complete [as in ended] classes come to five while leaving only one incomplete, but that will be taken care of on the 12th when we have final presentations for studio.

For my final art in architecture project I took images that reminded me of home and abstracted them to create a visual answer to a rhetorical question I had asked myself just after arriving here in Prague. The different media that I used included water color, tin foil, ink pen, pencil, trace paper, and carefully crafted words.

Thusday afternoon, after tuning in my project i retuned to my dorm room, and set out to red line my drawings, [i.e find and correct errors]. I looked down at my right wrist , looking at my watch, to see the time when I saw that my usually dependable Timex ironman watch was blank, dead, void of any information. I hardly can remember a time when my wrist was without it. The blue face was now worn to gray blue matt finish, the silver top coat was worn to the plastic underneath. Lately my watch had been acting funny and unfortunately was beginning to get water logged. So to say the least it was time for a new one. I headed to Tessco and found a replacement for my wrists companion, and on my way home from this excursion I stumbled across some interesting activity in the city center. Tents were set up throughout the squares and each had their own band playing different genres of music. I stood with the other tourist and on lookers and watched these music men play some lovely songs.

After returning home I continued work on my drawings for studio. As the night carried on my phone rang, it was time to leave the dorm and enjoy a bar other than the one in our basement.
Somewhere near the city center we found a pretty cool music bar, kind of hole in the wall, relaxed and cheep. There were brown tables stretching from one end to the other. Names of previous visitors were scratched and craved into the tops of each table, a reminder of the patrons visit to the music themed bar. After a few beers and meeting a group from Syracuse University, we headed home via the 56 tram and crawled into bed around 4:00 just early enough to see the sun begin to peek over the horizon.

Today, the state of my desk showed that some progress had been made my model, bits of chipboard and shreds of scraps lay strewn over the top of my desk. My progress maybe slow, but it is moving along and that is the good news. As I was sitting, gazing at my computer screen, reading various blogs and searching the internet for random information, I noticed the beautiful blue sky just beyond my window. Just when my focus changed from the great outdoors to the glowing screen before me, fireworks started to appear. Flashes of light shot through the air; gold and silvery flares of light exploded; danced across the dusk sky, leaving behind trails of smoke, flashed of dying sparks. Mack and I stopped and watched for the entire show and were disappointed when it ended. Back to work I suppose, at least for another few days.

2006-05-31T08:25:00.000-07:00

Ok so I guess I am "it", thanks Allison. And just to brief everyone else this little info game is just a few short lists of some of our current surroundings and top picks for the city of Prague, so I guess in a way this is me in a nut shell.

My closet/cubby holes

1_winter coat I refuse to wear again
2_ the number of St. Louis Blues sweatshirts I brought with me
3_blue shirt with sparkly thing/pattern on it Allison made me buy at H&M
4_enough Febreze to rid Prague of stinky-ness, or at least mine
5_ [hold onto your hats for this one] a SKIRT

My pathetic purse

1_wallet (complete with permit & license)
2_camera (I have vowed to take more pictures)
3_my I pod with only 500 songs
4_clinique glosswear for lips in Ginger Blossom
5_wine cork from our first bottle of wine in Castiglione Italy [when we went to visit friends]

My desk

1_water color brushes and paint, bad paintings too
2_mounds of trace paper roughly depicting wall section details
3_floor plans, elevations, and building sections, from mid-crits [haven't touched since]
4_small plastic replica heart [I got from a cheerios box] almost the same size as my miniature mouse
5_A+U [architectural magazine]

Things at home I miss

1_family including Mr. Milo
2_friends I couldn't bring with me
3_my hammock [even though it was a father’s day gift, hahaha dad]
4_the sounds of crickets/cicadas chirping on the summer nights
5_mom's beef stew… so good you don't even understand, that or the meatloaf, call me crazy I don't care, oh yeah real corn on the cob, none of that mini corn business

Things I love in Prague

1_everyday that it isn't raining
2_the goat bar
3_the unforgettable people [yeah for new faces and friends]
4_czech surprises because there is always a good laugh after
5_everything on Allison’s Prague list

oh yeah i also tag the saucy brit James

2006-05-28T02:34:00.000-07:00

YEAH WE HAVE INTERNET BACK!!! It is good to have some internet connection again! Not that is was out long, just long enough. I guess it was out on Friday morning just before we left to visit the small picturesque Czech town of Cesky Krumlov!

view of the castle

It took about four hours to get there by bus, which wasn't bad seeing how I passed out pretty easily and without much delay. And for the times that I did spring to life, the Czech country side was filled with rolling hills and yellow flowered fields, possibly growing mustered seeds. The country side of southern Czech Republic reminded me much of the country side of Missouri when I drive back to school. The fields are green and lush and small towns pop up out of nowhere.

view from the castle

But Cesky Krumlov is a living example of what I imagine any small European village to be like. Cobble stone streets, so narrow it's impossible to imagine how a car can find it's way through, an extremely organic city plan, an elaborate castle complete with Bear mote, all surrounded by wooded areas [which made it feel more isolated than it really was].

when in doubt a bear mote will do the trick.

When we arrived it was Friday and kind of rainy. Without hesitation we checked into our hostel and hit the street aided by a cartoon map with circles and scribbles drawn on it by our host, indicating the "hot" spots in town. As afternoon turned into evening the rain picked up and we decided there was only one thing really to do. Pub crawl.

The whopping five bar tour started with a bar called the horor bar [spelled in Czech no worries] it was located in the basement of an old church. Barrel vaults sprang from the ground and spanned the length of the room giving us just enough space to walk without ducking. Furthermore the atmosphere was made complete with spider webs and skeletons hanging from the ceiling, not to mention the staff was...how do I put this...Goth, real Goth. An interesting experience but I was looking forward to the more traditional pubs, such as the gorilla, gypsy bar and a few more.
horor bar...scary

Saturday we were out of our hostel at 7:45 to discover what we missed because of the rain the previous day. We once again walked up to the castle and meandered through the precisely manicured gardens. After which we climbed to the top of the castles single clock tower and took in a wonderful view of the entire city.

a top the clock tower

garden garden fountain

wooded area in the castle garden

After winding our way through the streets, getting lost and then realizing that we ended up in the same place we were in the first place, we decided to take in an art exhibit by the contemporary Czech photographer and another exhibit of the Czech art Nuevo master mind Mucha. Both were interesting to see but I greatly preferred Mucha over Jan … somebody. After the art exhibit we headed for the museum of torture, and it was SUPER creepy. I seriously think that we were the only people in the entire dungeon like display of metal clamps and torture devices. It was the most uncomfortable 20 minutes of my life. While the museum wasn't all that big, it had numerous dark shadowy corners and a few ominous looking nooks. The fact that there were howling and moaning sound effects coming from some of the displays didn't help me much. I think I grabbed poor Luke’s arm a hundred times. I was so thankful when the torture tour was over.

popular bus stop if i do say so myself

fields of green and yellow

It wasn't too long before we grabbed some lunch and boarded the bus back home, and three hours later we arrived in Prague, in the rain, imagine that.

2006-05-25T06:17:00.000-07:00

I counted all the days left I have here in Prague, and there just weren’t enough. Now that the semester seems to be rapidly approaching I am just not even close to being ready to go home. I have had so much fun here, it is truly unbelievable. But thankfully there are some awesome days ahead. mack and i pre pirate party

Last night we had our farewell International Student Club party on a boat cursing the Vltava River. Everyone was decked out in Pirate costumes and ready for a good time. Everyone had costumes consisting of striped shirts and torn pants, black was par for the course. It must have been humorous to see a huge crowd of pirates stumble through the subway station en route to our docked boat. After riding a couple of metros to the other side of the city we boarded our vessel and made our way up the river. On board fun was flowing out of every nook and cranny, dancing on the deck, a buffet in the galley, and alcohol pretty much everywhere. At around 11:00 there was a small fireworks display that illuminated the night’s sky, well the night’s sky that was right in front of us. Something about that boat ride made me realize how badly I didn’t want to leave Prague or the friends I have made since being here. The night was capped off with streaking down the Charles Bridge, yeah right I would never do that, but some of the guys did. And it was pretty humorous to watch as they all scrambled to find missing wallets and cell phone after getting fully clothed again. It was a pretty fun night and a good way to end two stressful weeks at school.

the boat

I had a presentation on Monday [which started at 3:00 and ended at 8:00]; I was the last person to present my project to the review board. Let me tell you it was agony to sit through not only presentations in English but as well as ones in Czech. At least the ones that were given in Czech gave me an excuse for not paying attention. But by the time hey reached me, I was happy and the reviewers were tired, so they gave me the thumbs up and told me I had made a wonderful building. I can’t say I was entirely convinced, but I accepted it and was thankful that this meant little to no changes to my drawings had to be made. Sweet! So now I am going to start work on my final model and my final presentation drawings and hopefully get done before the actuall due date, so i can enjoy some beautiful spring days in Prague!

kate and carl on de boat

2006-05-15T15:49:00.000-07:00

It is offical I have hit a wall, preverbal wall that is. It all started when I brought my level of procrastination to a new level. Higher than it has ever been before, it is now starting to catch up with me, but let’s face it we all work harder when the heat is on. Famous last words “It will get done, it hast to, it always does.” Lately I have been drawing like mad in CAD [computer aided drafting] which, let’s face it STINKS….
While it has been sunny outside the past couple of days I have been sitting in front of my laptop using my tiny mouse drawing floor plans and building sections. Basking in the glow of my computer screen might not give me skin cancer but being out in the sun is a lot more relaxing. Seriously who has ever said “wow I need to relax, you can find me in front of my computer,”….I can think of no one.
I guess I could explain what is going on so you aren’t completely lost. Well I have one more studio presentation before the big, final, scary one. In this one we display our building scheme as in reality with drafted floor plans, sections, elevations, and site plans, etc. Then after giving a short speech about my building I get told how much they love my building [ha-ha] or how much they despise it and how my triangle and scale are being confiscated. Also while I prepare for this presentation I have a paper due, so somewhere in this little brain of mine I have to find 2000-4000 words to write about Czech culture. Not too bad but I think that makes it a 5-8 page paper? After that I have to turn in three drawings I have been working on somewhat, and today I turned in my lovely computer graphics poster [one down].
Also a few friends are coming this week to visit, and boy oh boy would I love to spend some time with them. So a very tricky and complicated situation ahead of me but since I am a high school grad I’m sure I can make it work.
But lets get to the real story….Venice
I think we were in Venice from the 3rd-5th of May

a palladian building there in the background, San Giorgio Maggigore

We arrive on the train from Venice on the afternoon of the 3rd and headed straight to our hostel to once again drop our bags and start to explore the island city. We didn’t stay on the islands instead we stayed on the main land, since it is way cheaper! We took the train to the small northwestern island and began to walk. We quickly found that the map, and I think any map for that matter, was completely useless. The city was literally a living labyrinth. Some of the streets weren’t marked and narrow enough to fit two persons through. But eventually we found our way through the maze like streets to Piazza San Marco. We wasted no time in jumping an elevator to the top of the campanile where we got a spectacular view of the city just before sunset. During our couple of days in Venice we were able to see St. Marks, San Giorgio Maggiore, Palazzo Ducal and Santa Maria della Salute amongst many other historical and beautiful buildings.

st. marks

Also during my stay I picked up a few interesting tid-bits about the city. During the 800’s some Venetians went to Egypt and stole the body of St. Mark and the Basilica was built in honor of St. Mark (the new patron saint of the city). And since the symbol associated with St. Mark is the lion, it too became a symbol for the city.

Santa Maria della Salute [somewhere back there]

Among the city streets were tons of shops and carts selling anything from elaborate carnival masks that were beyond description, to Venetian glass [murano]. The beautiful hand blown glass sparkled in every window and the only thin holding me back was the fact there would be no way to bring it home in one piece.

view of Doges palace and the bell tower (which fell down in the 1900's and rebuilt with an elevator)
After our sort stay in Venice we headed back to Rome where we spent the night and took it easy ready to board out plane back to Prague. After 10 days of travel I was ready to get back to home base, where I could take all my stuff out of my bag and leave it strewn all across my room (if I wanted) and not worry about packing it all up the next day.

bells in the bell tower

2006-05-13T09:20:00.000-07:00

Well it’s been a while since I started my Italy story, so let me continue.
Florence April 30th May 2- 3
We started our tour through Florence by first getting lost on the bus system. We were heading the complete opposite direction in which we needed to go. Mack ultimately asked the bus driver where the stop what that we need to get off at. He kind of laughed a little and told us to get off and get on the bus going the opposite way. We soon found the bus we needed to be on and climbed aboard with luggage strapped to our back. Luckily the bus wasn’t that full and we were able to comfortably stand at the back of the bus. But soon that all changes and the bus became packed to the brim and space to breath was getting scarce. The hostel that we were staying in was close by a bus stop, so when the time came we pushed and shoved our way through and practically ran to our hostel. We tore off our bags and were off to discover the city.

the Duomo front facade

the duomo apse end

ceiling of the dome

birds eye view from the top of the dome

Boboli garden fountian

more boboli garden

palazzo pitti

In the three days that we were there we saw so many buildings and architectural wonders. Some of the biggest things that we were the Duomo, San Lerenzo, The Accademia (where the famous David is)Santa Croce, the Ponte Vecchio, Pitti palace, the Boboli gardens, Santo Spirtio, Santa Maria Novella, the Uffizi and the Palazzo Vecchio with one of the reproductions of the statue of David. We were brave enough to climb atop of Brunelleschi’s famous double shelled dome enabling us to see the entire city of Florence.

ponte vecchio

Florence was very different from Rome, in that it was a bit slower paced and felt more leisurely. We were able to go to the all the sites that we wanted to without killing ourselves like we did in Rome. The streets weren’t filled with honking cars; they were filled with vendors selling everything from leather goods to scarves. IF you sopped even for a second glance of a second the booth owners were on their feet trying to cut you a deal. At one point one of the booth men was trying to sucker me into buying something that I didn’t need, and in his desperation to win me over he asked if I was Italian and said that I looked like an Italian. Of course I was not charmed and left with no purchase in hand.

the uffizi

The same evening we choose to eat at a popular restaurant in Florence called Yellow. We were seated in a small room just off the main dinning room somewhere in the front but at the same time next to the kitchen. Our view allowed us to see the cooks in the kitchen slaving away at customer’s dinners and creating some not only dishes that picture perfect but all gave off aromas that made my mouth water. Also in the Kitchen was a little old lady who was making past by hand. First she was cranking noodles through some sort of noodle maker and then she was carefully folding dough over cheese making ravioli and tortellini. This lady folded the dough with such ease and speed that is was clear that she had been doing this for decades. That meal was oh so good and probably the best we had in Florence, well maybe even in Italy!

palazzo vecchio

inside the palazzo vehccio

On May 1st we left Florence to travel to Castiglion Florentino to visit some friends from K-State that have been studying there since the end of January. We were picked up from the train station by our friend Corey and proceeded to hike to the top of the hill where the Study Center is located. The city itself is an old castle town and most of the city center is still located within the original stone castle wall atop a Tuscan hill. While our friends were finishing up some school work we grabbed a few bottles of wine and parked it where we could find a patch of grass and some sun. After our wine was drunk and our arms and legs tanned we meet with the entire group of 35 and caught up on all the happenings of the past few months. Soon we sat down to a family style dinner with pasta, salads, and pork and of course vino. After dinner we continued our reunion filled with humorous/ humiliating stories, laughing until our sides hurt, hugs and 1000 I missed you guys.
Luckily we were able to be covert enough to scam a free night at the study center. By hiding out and sleeping on the floor we saved 27 Euro and an amazing time with some of our closest friends. In the morning we snuck out and began to plan out our day. It was then that we learned that one of us had been spotted. Carl, one of the three I was traveling with, was seen by one of the study center staff and was made to pay for his night at Castiglion. After he made his payment we hugged our friends goodbye and headed off to the train station. We arrived back in Florence around 2:00 and continued our sightseeing.

On our last day in Florence we decided to take a short trip to Pisa. Pisa is located only an hour train ride outside of Florence. At about 3 in the afternoon we boarded a train and soon found ourselves in this small little Italian town famous for about one thing. We walked from the train station to the site of the Basilica, baptistery, and of course the tower. We stood on the lawns inform of the three white structures. We stood there admiring how crooked everything was. Every building on the site has been sinking and shifting since the foundation had been created. On the Basilica the entire west façade was slanted, and at one point it looked like they tried to correct it during construction or something but only made the crooked part stick out more.

the big three, baptistery, basilica, and tower all in one shot

yeah yeah yeah

but it is more funny when other people do it

Even though there were signs all over the green lawns telling tourist to stay off, they of course were full of people posing with the tower in the background. People were pushing the tower over, keeping it up with their hands and or feet and even teaming up with a partner for back up. It was really funny to watch some of the fellow tourist create these types of scenarios with the tower.
After climbing to the top and meandering around to the other buildings on the site, we headed back to the train station for a short ride back to Florence. I think the total amount of time we spend in Pisa was three hours and that includes the 40 minute walk to and from the train station.

crooked as it gets

All in all the four day stay in Tuscany was absolutely wonderful. It seemed as though the sun was shinning continuously and there was warmth all around. Making everything we saw seemed to shine.

2006-05-09T01:59:00.000-07:00

April 27th – 29th Rome—we arrived in Rome in the afternoon of the 27th, with our back packs strapped to our backs we hiked from the train station to our hostel, freed ourselves from our luggage and headed straight to the nearest Italian restaurant. This small family style restaurant was the beginning of out amazing journey through Italy. The atmosphere was perfect; brick arched vaults over our head, wine flowing from bottles at every table, typical loud wildly gesturing Italians surrounded us, and the food, oh the food. I could feel neck craning over the tops of heads to find out what the wonderful smell coming from the next table was. It was so had to choose between the many tasty dishes available. It was here at our small table that we planned the next few days in Rome. The plan pretty much consisted of us getting up at 5 so we could be out the door at 6 in order to go see the big stuff before the crowds came.
The next day we started with St. Peter’s Basilica, wandering through the most immaculate space ever, larger that life and gleaming at 6:30 on a Friday morning. Beautiful, just beautiful the work of some of the most noted architects, sculptors, painters, crafters, of all time, all there right in front of my eyes, all just an arms length in front of me. I was floored, soaking up every inch (well, when in Rome…millimeter) of this amazing space. Thank goodness I hade the most amazing history professor in the work my first and second years of college. Because facts I though I had forgotten came spilling from my memory. Stories of the architects struggle to design the most perfect church, different behind the scene stories and specifically imbedded symbols and what they meant. It was all there. We hiked up to the top of the dome and gazed upon the city and stared in amazement that we were here, here in Rome. Charney (my history professor) always said when you see… and it was finally here we were seeing all that we had dedicated so much time learning about and from.

st. peter's squarest. peters nave (sorry it is blurry)

more of st. peter's nave looking out to st. peter's square from the room of the cupola

We climbed down from the cupola and mapped out the rest of our day, the Trevi fountain, the Spanish steps, the pantheon, piazza Navona and may other churches and monuments. From about 10:00 till abut 6:00 we spent this time sightseeing getting lost, getting frustrated by the crappy public transportation system and snapping pictures. I would have like to see an aril diagram of our path that day because I am sure at some point we were just going around in circles. After several wrong turns and what seemed to be a such for a mirage we finally came to the Pantheon. With it very simple geometric geometry it was one of the most beautiful buildings I have seem in my life. We walked in side and the space was overwhelming. Even though there were wall to wall people I didn’t feel cramped or claustrophobic. I looked to the coffered ceiling and saw light pouring through the oculus overhead. It was just like all the pictures I have ever seen. It was a pretty cool feeling being in a space that has throughout time been such a landmark. I mean common it was even in the Di Vinci Code! But soon we found ourselves being over taken my tour groups of elderly German, so we felt it was time to head out. We continued out journey to the Trevi fountain which Mack and I but our backs to, reached in our pockets found the lowest nomination of coin we could find, made a wish and tossed the coin behind us in the fountain. And with that we turned to each other and commented “So I guess that means I will be back.”

pantheon

pantheon ray of light trevi fountain

Next stop was the Spanish steps, and well that is what they are, steps. We walked up them and then we walked down them, and that was pretty much it. No one really knew much about the steps and we couldn’t fine much written about them in our tour book so we moved on. We walked from the Spanish steps back to our hostel across the city, stopping at a few various places to take pictures, gander at and try and relocate ourselves on the oversized map. By then it was time to call it a day.

spanish steps filled with flowers

roman forum, "it wouldn't matter if i stepped on the grass, i mean i'm not going to ruin anything, they are already ruinins"

thee guessessIn our second day in Rome, after a brief (five hours) visit to the Vatican to see the Sistine chapel and about a million other things, we ventured to the other side of the city where the coliseum, the roman forum, the capitol, the tomb of the unknown solider, and San Maria Maggiore. It was really awesome to be able to walk through the ruins of the Roman forum. It was just unbelievable the scale of some of the columns and the reaming structures. All built before the time of steel and modern technology.

um covert picture cool modern religious art, by...by...i have no idea

Ok back to the Sistine chapel, we waited in a line that wrapped around, what seemed to be the entire 10- sq. mile Vatican city. I felt like I was at Disney world, every time you thought you were nearing the end of a line, nope. The line would turn a corner and there again would be standing like 4000 more people in front of you again. But after close to two hours of standing in a line we finally gained entry into the Vatican museum. We were wove our way through the exhibits of the Vatican, different pieces of art work from Raphael time to Salvador Dali’s time. After about two hours of following signs to the chapel we made it, and it was amazing. The paintings were much different then I was expecting. I can’t even tell you what I was expecting but it just seemed different then I had always imagined. People were packed in like sardines and the guards were on a strenuous alert mode watching for people trying to take pictures, talking or behaving out of order. And I admit it; I broke the rules and took a picture very or the ceiling, woops my bad. The painting we pretty large but full of detail. I can’t imagine looking up for that long, painting the ceiling of what would become possibly one of the most famous rooms in the world, my neck was starting to hurt after 30 minutes. But it was beautiful, and after that we descended the stairs and turned and went out the door.

sweet stair way out of the sistine chapel

Aside from walking though a bunch of Roman ruins we stopped by San Maria Maggiore on the way back to our hostel. We mush have arrived just before it was closing time because you could see the stress that entering visitors caused on the door man. We walked in anyway and admired the golden ceiling made from gold leaf mosaic and took pictures of all that looked familiar from class. Soon we were shuffled out as they were preparing for mass at 5:00. It was a beautiful church but the plastic chairs (the kind you see at a banquet hall) looked a bit out of place in the marble and gold clad interior.

san maria maggioreinside of san maria look at all that gold!

On Sunday we packed our bags up and headed to Florence by train. From there we would stay one night then head to Castiglion Florentino for just one night. But that was the most anticipated night of this whole trip. I couldn’t wait to see my friends from school, who had been studying in Italy since January. It was going to be exciting to see these kids, especially since I hadn’t see them since December.

2006-05-08T05:37:00.000-07:00

After taking like a gazillion pictures, riding countless trains, shrugging my shoulders to the sound of numerous Italian speaking to me like I know what they are saying, I am home, back in Prague and all I can say is that Italy was nothing short than amazing. During out 10 day excursion we traveled to Rome, Florence, Pisa, Castiglion Florentino, and Venice. Italy was a great country filled with € 2.80 diet coke cans, pizza and calzones at every street corner and yummy gelato heaped on top of a small waffle cone.
It was a wonderful trip that I can’t wait to share with everyone, but how do you summarize the entire wonderful things that happened in 10 days into a blog blurb… I don’t think it is possible. So for the next few days I’m going to break it down by city for you, but for mostly for me. So sit back and enjoy Italy at my leisurely pace.

2006-04-27T01:28:00.000-07:00

Finally, it is here at last! I will soon be leaving Prague to head to Italy for the next 10 days! I am really excited to be traveling to Rome, Florence and Venice, maybe even Pisa! I can't wait to see all my friends studying in Italy for a night as we are able to crash at their place for one night! I am really excited to see them and how their life is in Italy. In other news, my roommate from back home in Manhattan, Monica, came to visit these past few days! When I walked out of my dormitory I saw Monica standing on the sidewalk and I couldn't help but give her a huge hug! I was so happy to see my good old' roommie! Wither her she brought Carrie, and they will be traveling through Italy about the same time we are! I was so happy to have Monica here for the couple of days that she was! We went to dinner at some pretty cool places, a beer garden and club architecktu! Bother were very good and filled with wonderful conversation! I can't wait to get back to Manhattan to start the next college year but not the next school year - a Monica quote. Well that is about it so I hope everyone is doing well and I guess I will post in about a week and a half so until then ...ciao

2006-04-24T01:51:00.000-07:00

Friday.... Prague adventures
On Friday Mack and I walked around little quarter to discover some hidden gems. We stumbled upon Wellington palace and meandered through it's gardens and soaked up as much sun as possible.
I guess it was build by a general of some sort during Ferdinand's reign, 1600's. He soon sought the crown and was eventually killed by Ferdinand for his greed. I think Wellington wanted his grounds also to surpass the beauty of the Prague castle (which looks more like a palace then castle).

this is limestone carved to look like a cave wall covered in stalactites

Also on Friday we visited the church of Nicholas. This church is considered to be one of the best examples of High Baroque in Prague. It was built be a father son team, completed in 1761, roughly 60 years after the project began sadly neither father or son saw the building completed.

the dome reflects the celebration of the holy trinity.

We got our window back!! At 9:00 am on Monday morning the same old man who took our mysteriously broken window away returned with it patched, reconstructed and placed it back in it's original spot. We have no idea how our window was broken in the first place, but we are sure glad to see the cardboard makeshift window gone and our glass back.

now that the window is back we definitely get more light in the room.

look at the cute little flower my mom sent me! (I think it's from christopher's)

nothing says classy like cardboard over your window,

it's great for keeping out noise and rain!

2006-04-20T04:07:00.000-07:00

photoshop creation

the entire alter

longest stretch of the original Berlin wall

attempts at sculpting I

there is the scene in the background that I am trying to recreate

attempts at sculpting II (not yet completed)
aka school work

2006-04-17T09:30:00.000-07:00

what most of the train stations all over the city looked like

Berlin. WOW. Pretty much the coolest city ever, it’s about 3.5 million people big and more tram, train, s-bahns, u-bahns, and other public transpiration systems then I have ever seen in my life. The city was full of new, modern, daring, original architecture that not only excited but illuminated my imagination. I haven’t seen modern architecture like this since I left London, and no offence to London. But it has to be said: London doesn’t have much on Berlin when it comes to the good stuff, Architecture.

Brandenburger Tor

MMM German street vendor pretzel

awesome architecture in berlin

a portion of the wall

We arrived in Berlin about 9 or 10 and suffered through figuring out how to get form the train station to the hostel. Turns out it was a short s-bahn (s train line) ride and literally the train stop was just to the left of our hostel. We crashed needles to say, seeing how we were going to get up at the butt crack of dawn (as my cousin Ryan would say) and visit Berlin’s famous Parliament building.

The Reichstag

looking down from the second platform

The Reichstag Building offers one of the most beautiful views of the city, however on the morning we choose to go it was drizzling and a bit brisk outside. We arrived at 9:30 to avoid the ridiculously long line it is known for having. And by the time we had reached the glass entry way (we waited about 15 min tops) the line had stretched down the stairs on to the plaza and made a left handed turn and continued to the adjacent sidewalk. We reached the first level of the observation deck and admired the mirrored funnel thing and then made our way up the spiraling ramps to the second observation deck where we could see much of the rainy city. We had learned about this building in a previous Environmental Building Systems class and we were impressed to see the building first hand.

super cool church

looking up from inside

For the rest of the day we toured much of the city, navigating our way to an art museum were we took in an art exhibit called melanchlie, which when translated into English sounds pretty much the same as it does in German, Melancholy. It wasn’t nearly as depressing as it sounded, we got to see some works of art by Picasso, Warhol, Hopper and many other great artist. After which we spend the day dogging small rain storms and taking loads of pictures.

Jewish museum

Jewish Memorial

At one point Allison, Mack and myself were tired and wet but were reluctant to head back to our hostel so we decided to grab a movie. Many of the titles that were available at home were sure enough available at this particular theater as well. We noticed that some of the titles were in German and a few in English. Being the level headed girls that we are we choose a movie who’s title was still in English because clearly that signified the film itself would be in English as well. We found our seats in the theater (because here in Europe they are assigned) and hunkered down for a relaxing time. Sure enough the first preview was in German, and the second and the third and so on….soon we became nervous that the film it too would be in German. After about 400 more previews the actual movie came on, the music’s started and images on New York filled the screen. Clive Owen’s face appeared larger than life on the big screen and when he opened his mouth, drew his first breath, he began speaking. I understood what he had been saying, only because I had taken German for a while growing up, but Allison and Mack were pretty much clueless. Then the uncontrollable laughter came. We were laughing so hard I think we all were tearing up. One by one we exited the theater and approached the box office and received a refund for our unfortunate misunderstanding.

fussball!!!!

Saturday was wonderful, it was bright warm and quite the opposite of Friday and boy did we take advantage of it. A few of us started at the Daniel Libeskind building, The Jewish Museum Berlin, and moved to Alexanderplatz seeing various historic building and different instillation art works. Also that afternoon in the city of Berlin there was a soccer gaming going on, a huge match between two archrivals. We HAD to go. We boarded a train headed toward the Olympic stadium where the 1936 games were held. We arrived made our way to the ticket booth and proceed to fin the cheapest ones available, purchased them and made our way to the upper most ring of the stands. It was a pretty good game of back and forth soccer, however the most disappointed part was that neither team scored. I was so looking forward to seeing a bunch of European soccer nuts go absolutely crazy over a goal. These were some intense fans; there was such a tension in the air you could cut with a plastic picnic knife. We made our way to the train station and it was packed. Guards in riot gear over looked the crowd and made sure no one idiot did anything ... well idiotic. It was kind of scary, I’m not going to lie, there were way too many people there, and standing on the platform and when the train came, you went where the crowd pushed you. I finally understood how someone could die from getting trampled on in a large crowd. Our group stayed close and came up with a strategy to get the girls on first and then make room for the boys, it worked like a charm and we were off. The car was full to the brim and was extremely uncomfortable. But as we got further away for the stadium fans began to dwindle and breathing room was once again restored.

Sunday was once again both rainy and partly sunny. We made our way around to Berlin wall memorials and the Pergamonmuseum which showcases the Ishtar gate of Babylon and the Alter of Zeus.

Ishtar gate

dunno know, but it's old and greek

Out of all the side trips I have taken this semester I have to say that the trip to Berlin has been my favorite. I think I was most excited to use my German that I had learned over 11 years ago, I started in 6th grade and ended it in grade 11). And the thing was, it wasn’t all that bad, I was able to say many different things and was able to help our group out a few times. My face must have lit up a thousand times when I could understand what was being said around me, even if it was about our group, it was really exciting. The Germans even looked impressed and a little relived, after serving my friends in English, and then being able to talk to me in German. To tell you the truth it was awesome. It made me want to kick myself in the shin for dropping out of German, especially when I was struggling to get my point across, I kept thinking to myself “this would be easier if you had stuck with it.” But I guess for a weekend stay it was just fine.
So now that I am back I am going to hunker down and get some school work done. So look forward to my next posting of all SCHOOL WORK! Yeah I bet my dad is super excited about that one!

sony center

2006-04-11T01:19:00.000-07:00

You know those once in a life time opportunities...
Like getting awesome box seats to a hockey game for free.... well that happened to me! Monday night play-off hockey Sparta-Praha vs. Slavia-Praha. Game two of a seven game series! Wow it was awesome!

So how were the tickets obtained? Alex [my friend from KSU, with whom I go to the same church with] knows a lady through St. Thomas [our church] who asked Alex if he'd like to go. Alex, knowing that I am a fan of hockey, asked me if I wanted to go too. Me thinking that theses were just regular seats, was all about checking out some play-off hockey.

Well when we got there we meet Alex's friends and collected our tickets. We were soon ushered into a small waiting area where we were scanned for weapons and searched for other things no one should bring to a hockey game. Soon we boarded an elevator that took us three stories up and delivered us to a long corridor filled with wooden doors. By this time I knew these weren’t just any seats there were BOX SEATS!!!

We found our room and proceeded to mix and mingle with the other guests who all were 35+ so it was a little awk, but who cares there was a buffet of delicious food. This was looking like a message from GOD! It was truly amazing. We sat through the first period, cheering and holding our breath that the home team would keep their two nothing lead against Sparta-Praha, which they did for two periods thank goodness!
During the first intermission we loaded out plates with chicken breast, Spinach Lasagna, Mashed Potatoes, cooked veggies, and mini-potato pancakes. And for desert there was a multitude of mini chocolate cakes with various fillings, and a platter of fruit. Oh my goodness it was absolutely delicious!

For the second intermission we visited the Czech Hockey hall of fame, which was no bigger then a conference room. Each of the walls consisted of glass display cases filled with hockey jerseys from the beginning of time to more recent Olympic and NHL jerseys, all of course belonging to Czechs who have made it "big."

The end of the game drew near, and the final score was 2-1 with Slavia-Praha tying up the series 1-1. Game three will be in the other Arena, home to Sparta-Praha. Let's hope that Slavia will win this next match up, and hopefully win the play-offs

alex in the hall looking for our SKY BOX!

much closer this time

it cleared out fast

2006-04-09T11:31:00.000-07:00

Once again I find myself sitting here on a Sunday afternoon, getting ready to do some work for Monday’s studio. And once again I find myself procrastinating to the eth-degree. But hey they always say "it's the thought that counts."

This weekend was all about wandering around the city and trying to do new things...
We tried to visit the old Jewish cemetery, however since it was Saturday... it was closed...way to remember the Jewish Sabbath is Saturday. But we made up for that small mistake by visiting the Easter festival that is held here in Prague every year [kind of ironic]. Tons of small wooden booths are set up in the main squares. Selling anything from small beer steins decorated with images of Prague to glass encased single cigarettes with a small hammer, proclaiming in Czech “Break in case of emergency.” Mackenzie and I came to the conclusion that these booths sell mainly three things, painted eggs, food, or souvenirs. But wanting to make sure we didn't miss anything we walked down every row and left no booth un-observed. The smells of the festival were amazing; they reminded me of the Green tree festival at home. Where the scent of roasting hot dogs and slow cooking ribs fill the air with their savory temptation. Here it is the sweet smells of all the pastries that fill you lungs and make your mouth water like some Pavlovian Dog. And with almost no thought you could find yourself standing in line for some baked goodie rolled in cinnamon and sugar or for a sweet little ball of gelato which is available in a multitude of fresh fruit flavors all of which look irresistible. But constringent is the name of the game, I just try to remember, smells are always free.

easter fest 2006...

p.s there is someone always making out in my pictures,

the czechs can't keep thier hands off each other, uuuggggh!!

Also this weekend the flat mates and I visited Petřín hill. We set off thinking that the climb to the top of this hill wouldn’t be so bad; after all it’s only a hill. Ha Ha. The walk started off as a meandering path through a nice green park. Then out of nowhere the incline of the hill became intense, with a path no longer made of gently sloping concrete paths but rather steps, and loads of steps. When we finally reached the top of the hill we headed toward the tower, paid our 40 ck and started the vertical climb. This tower is a small replica of the Eiffel tower and while it might be only 60 meters high, because of the naturally high elevation, the observation deck of the Czech version matches the exact height of the French version. Interesting. So, 299 steps later, which felt more like 2,999 steps, we had reached the second observation platform.

From here we could see the entire city, even our dorm and the architecture building. It was a crisp clear day that allowed us to see the outer edges of the city we are calling home. From up here I could understand why they call Prague the city of 1000 spires. Every where I looked i could see hundereds of timy spires reaching for the sky.

After the walk up and down the tower, my legs were a little shaky, not for sure if it was because they were tired or scared of the drop to bellow, but they were sure glad to be at the bottom of the hill again.

[view looking down]

the tower!

stairs going down...all the way down

book sculpture we found in the Prague Lib.

looking inside the book tower

Next week I will be in Berlin on Easter Sunday, so I will do my best to post before I leave and then again when I come back. I hope all is well with all of you, and thanks for reading my blog, my mom relays me messages all the time, so thank very much!

2006-04-03T16:36:00.000-07:00

senior pictures at the Praha Zoo

no worries there was glass

look at these animals

do you think he was fooled...nice desert.

this guy was a stud, all he needs is a tux.

polar bears!!! they were hungry.

While my roommate was off exploring the Greece, I stayed home and worked on homework. Boring I know, but sadly the truth. However since it was the weekend and all work and no play makes people really unhappy, the remaining KSU girls and I headed out to the Praha Zoo.
I think the idea originally came while Laura Torres and I were sitting at Bohemian Bagel, overlooking the damage we had just done to a colossal stack of pancakes, bacon, hash browns and, for Laura, eggs. Our bellies were full and out belt buckles were bulging, but pancakes, or even breakfast for that matter on a Saturday morning was a rarity and a treat. It was a really pretty Saturday, the sun was shining and it was slightly warmer than the day before. As we were making our way back to the tram stopped we were surrounded in men and women in spandex shorts and sharp looking running shoes. Apparently we had stumbled across the starting line for the Praha 10 K. GREAT. That was all I needed at that point, after stuffing myself silly and seeing these dedicates athletes, I decided I need to move around walk more before I headed back to the dorm room to work on school work.
After convincing Laura, Allison, and Annie [which wasn't hard] we headed to the metro station and jumped on the green line, transferred to the red line and took it all the way to Nádraží Holešovice where we caught bus 112, which delivered us right to the zoo's door step. The entire trip took us abominutesinuets to get to the zoo, a little long considering that it takes 20 min to get to the zoo at home, but I guess we didn't have to worry about parking! At any rate we strolled through the park and looked at all the strange new animals and were pretty happy when we could identify the ones we recognized from back home.
The zoo is kind of a small one with little habitats for the animals to live in. Sometimes the animals looked really cramped in their fenced off areas. One interesting thing about the zoo was that people were allowed to bring in their dogs. No joke it was weird, to see people and there dogs just looking at other animals, I kind of felt like I was living in the twilight zone. At one point we stacross acorss the German wolf display, in front of it there was a couple watching along with their bull dog. Once the wolf caught a glimpse of the bull dog, it was on. The dog was taunting the poor wolf by growling and kind of charging at the fenced in area. The wolf, not happy about his new spectator, got up from where it was resting and cautiously made his way near the front where the dog was. Pacing back and forth the wolf gave the dog some pretty intense glares, but soon must have realized there was no point to even reacting to the dog, since he [the wolf] was the one behind the fence.
We continued on and saw all the typical zoo animals, zebras, elephants, penguins and leopards, not to mention many many more. We spend four point five hours at the zoo I think. But it was time well spent in the sunny warm weather.

After our excursion I wish i could say that I went right home and worked on my presenuntil untill i was satisfied, however once again not so much the case. But in the end it got done and presentations went well...but that is another story.

2006-04-02T05:50:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

2006-03-26T07:05:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday to the Best Grandpa in the World!

2006-03-23T14:54:00.000-08:00

Olny 90 plepoe can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.
The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at
Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a
wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be
in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed
it whotuit a pboerlm. T! ihs is b cuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed
ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I
awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.

My sister sent me this e-mail; it gave me hope that people will understand my poorly spelled and edited blog. Never have been too good with English, maybe Czech will be better.

and dad, I have been doing school work you will be seeing the fruits of my labor very soon, architecture is my life. I promise to spend less money [wink] ... and work as diligently as possible when in Europe.

2006-03-21T13:32:00.000-08:00

Return from the East

old city gate

After boarding the train at 10:00 on Thursday night, I hunkered down and settled in for a long ride. During this excursion we were we going to experience the city of Krakow, the Wieliczka Salt Mines and the city of Oswiecim, mostly commonly known as Auschwitz [Nazis changed the name of the city to Auschwitz, which consequently became the name of the camp.]
The train ride was long and uncomfortable. It was 10 hours of sitting and trying to sleep upright. On the way there a tall, round albino, Canadian choose to sit next to me, however soon the action of sitting next to was replaced by sitting on. I was squished in between to guys who like to use their room to the fullest, the Canadian by far the most.

old town hall clock tower

fire breathing dragon [not breathing fire @ time of picture, but it did I swear!]

After suffering through 10 hours of on-again-off-again sleeping we arrived in Krakow and headed to our hostel at 7:00 am. After a brief nap and breakfast we headed out into the cold and wet snow to see the sights of the city. We saw numerous old churches built in Gothic and Renaissance styles, the city's Castle, Jewish Synagogues, and even a fire breathing dragon. Our tour guide led us to a vegetarian restaurant for lunch, for a quick Lenten lunch where we defrosted from the brisk morning tour. On the afternoon tour we were able to see more of the town square and the main cathedral [St. Mary's] located on the perimeter of the main square. Upon entry of the space the colors hit you with force and grandeur. I have never in my short sheltered life seen a church that looked quite like this. The color pallet was bold. Strong red and grene bands stretched across the ribs of the side aisle archways. The main nave had elegant archways that were painted a deep blue, not a navy blue but a rich mix of almost Caribbean blue and navy blue, the cling detail was finished off with gold stars covering the archways like the night sky. Every square inch was covered with decorative pattern, gold leaf, or a painting depicting a saint. It was truly a beautiful sight, I wish I could have been allowed to take pictures, however there were no pictures allowed. After taking in all the sights on the square we headed toward the hostel for dinner, a shower and a good nights rest. However the idea of rest was short lived, as many of us went out on the town celebrate St. Patrick's Day, green beers and all, I guess even in Poland on St. Patty's day everybody is Irish.

St. Mary's is the church in the background with the two towers

some random club in the city, Luke and I were the coolest people there!

The next morning started early at 8:00 am. We walked across town back to the train station and boarded a train bound for Oswiecim. An hour later we found ourselves walking about a mile in the cold wet sloppy streets to the most notorious concentration camp of all time. I think the name of Auschwitz is synonymous with unbelievable; unimaginable pain, suffering and horrific death. I think that the weather of the day fit the mood most appropriately. It was a cold, gray, slushy day. It didn't look quite night and didn't look quite day, it was just all around pretty depressing. It's hard to say that I enjoyed the tour, because I don't think that anyone can enjoy that sort of thing, I did however get a lot of information out of it, the situation became more than just a series of pictures and lecture notes taken from history classes of the past. The places became real and the faces came into focus. I think the most striking part of the tour for me was when the group was walking down a corridor in single file line [because of the narrowness of the hall]. Lining these walls from about shoulder level up were 8x10 mug shots of people who were kept within these walls. The building that we were in was the camp's jail. People were imprisoned here for various reasons such as tying a shoe, smoking, or going to the bathroom. These pictures were also accompanied by some dates, names, and identification numbers. The expressions on the faces were nothing less than hunting. You could see that all the life had been drained out of their faces, the sparks of their eyes had faded and replaced with a siring glare of despair and heart ache. The dates below the picture indicated the date of arrival and the date of death, in many cases the dates were less than a few months apart, and some a few days. Seriously this was one of the most sobering days of my life. I thought about how these people got cheated from a life of happiness, filled with family friends and growing old. It blows my mind that this event only took place 60 years ago, in the scheme of things, 60 years isn't a very long time at all. What makes it even harder to comprehend is how it's happing today in various forms and in various places. When we left the camp I came back to 2006 and had a much greater appreciation of the life and luxuries that I have. The train ride back was a quite one, I mostly reflected on the days experiences and looked forward to Sunday when the tone would be a lighter one.

"Arbeit Macht Fri" [Work sets you free] main gate

Auschwitz I

Auschwitz II

[ you can see the chimney stacks in the background where more shelters once stood]

A lighter day indeed Sunday was. It was sunny outside and warmer than it had been all week! The sun felt warm and bright on my cheek as we stood outside the visitors center for the salt mine just outside Krakow. We toured the pure rock salt mine for a few hours seeing various sculptures carved from salt. Some of the rooms were amazingly huge and some were uncomfortably cramped. We also learned interesting historical facts about the mine, none of which I can remember. After the salt mine we returned to Krakow and had some free time to wander the city and eat Kebabs. After a few hours of shopping and wandering we boarded the train for another miserable ride back to Prague. After the ten hour return trip I practicably ran from the train station to my bed to sleep a few hours before I had to show up for my morning ornamentation class.

room in salt mine, carved from rock salt

woring hard in the mines

city market place

inside market place

sweet music!

I had a great time in Krakow and would highly recommend it, it was a lively city where there was plenty of English speaking individuals to get around!

2006-03-16T07:45:00.000-08:00

randim pics

2006-03-16T07:43:00.000-08:00

Keeping very busy lately I think is the theme of this one. We have finally started actual classes where I am responsible for doing actual work. Yesterday we began our first sculpture class, which for me was my first time ever dealing with real sculpture, as opposed to ceramics where you can just about make anything look good. We started the lesson by making hands. Our teacher came in, mumbled some random works and walked into the next room where we all followed him nervously. Soon he handed us all wooden pallets and shoved a bucket of tangled and mangled wires at our feet. Each of us grabbed a wire and nailed it to our boards; I guess this was to serve as the structure for the clay replicas of our hands. Throughout the class period my instructor destroyed my clay hand three times. The first time I had left the molded hand on my pallet as I left the room to retrieve a carving tool. When I came back my hand now was apart of the base for my friend Chris’ hand. Ok no problem, deep breath, I hadn’t gotten that far with my hand even tough all the fingers were in place and it looked slightly more human than ball of clay, it was going to be ok, I would just start over. Second hand, apparently it didn’t have enough arm supporting it, so it became a squished pile of clay to be sculpted into a base for my third hand. This next hand was destroyed because the wire supporting it wasn’t long enough. After my teacher removed the clay from my pallet and ripped off my metal wire, he replaced it with a longer more dynamic piece of wire. My fourth hand was the winner I guess, because it survived the last hour of class. Even though I had sculpted at least four hands, I wasn’t too far behind the rest of the class [thank God]. I was able to shape my wrist and all my fingers. Now I guess the next four weeks will be spent refining and making this thing look like the thing attached to my arm.

In other news we will be off to Poland for the weekend! Will be visiting Krakow and a few other places that I will be happy to tell you all about upon my return to Prague! We depart from Praha train station tonight at 8:41 and will arrive in Poland sometime tomorrow morning. I have a feeling that this trio will test my sleep deprivation endurance as I’m sure we won’t waste any time with sleeping, but will rather start right away with sightseeing and meandering.

2006-03-14T03:03:00.000-08:00

The weekend update:

This weekend was full of snowy fun! We traveled nearly three hours by bus to the Krkonoše Mountains, located in northeast Bohemia between the Czech Republic and Poland. As we approached the area it was a pretty flat landscape, and suddenly appearing out of nowhere the mountains came into view. There seemed to be maybe four to six feet of snow already on the ground and throughout the weekend there was a constant sprinkling of flurries. Sometimes these flurries turned into a down pour of massive snow flakes, creating a fresh few inches of powder on top of the already massive amounts of snow. On Friday we were equipped with skis and let loose on the hillside for the “night ski” session. I, having never skied before, opted not to risk my life trying to learn how to ski in the dark. On Saturday morning we suited up after breakfast and headed off to the slopes. I soon found my self on the ski lift being carried over the heads of skilled skiers below. At this point I asked myself “What in God’s name have you gotten yourself into this time?!” With panic in my heart and in my mind I decided it was do or die trying. After exiting the lift I made my way to the first blue run available. My skis slid over the snow with ease and my legs quickly became aware of the motions they would have to master if I wanted to steer my body away from any obstacles, like trees or small children. On that first run I fell, I’m not going to lie; I fell more than a few times. As I would be hurtling down the mountain I would just bail out, for fear that I would loose control and possibly get hurt even worse. All in all I don’t think I did too bad even a few people I was with, who had been skiing quite a bit before, said that I was doing great for a first timer. Apparently I had my turning down pretty quickly. This reassurance gave me some confidence and the mental strength to go again down a longer, maybe more complicated run. I gained more confidence with each run I took; even if%2

2006-03-12T15:47:00.000-08:00

Ok so here we go...

went skiing this weekend, important thing is..... I am still alive and have little physical damage to my body, just kidding... I had a blast and soon will have full update and pictures soon!

just a quick shout out to my uncle Lou, Thanks! I thought the card was hilarious! I got it this Sunday when I came back from the frozen tundra of who knows where.

2006-03-06T10:56:00.000-08:00

More Pictures!
hahaha

the home team fan zone

high sticking

birthday Czech Hot Dog. No game is complete without one,

sorry guys no chicken basket here in the CZ

2006-03-05T14:43:00.000-08:00

March 5th, 2006
warm-ups

hey i'm 22!!

Today was an awesome day! It stated of with me turning off my alarm clack and continued to sleep for another 30 min, great! After realizing that I had already committed to not missing church again I decided it was a good time as any to pull myself from my warm bed and get myself ready for the day. After pulling myself together I soon found myself sitting in the hard wooden pews at St. Thomas, this time it was right behind a class coffin, holding a real-live dead body of some guy dressed in old rotting clothes. I think the sign said that he was “buried” in the 15th century. I’ll read the sign next Sunday and let you know. But anyway I received my ashes, because I missed Ash Wednesday [woops]. However this ashes Wednesday had a little Czech surprise element to it; I guess here the European style of receiving ashes is to get them sprinkled on top of your head, not smeared on your forehead. After that we sat and listened to the priest read the reading and talk his talk. The reading today was probably my favorite, just because I think it is neat, it explains the rainbow as God’s promise to Moses not to flood the earth again. I don’t know why I think it’s kinda neat, I just do.
Anyway the rest of the day was filled with warm birthday wishes, a huge bottle of cherry vodka (thanks to the brits), Hello! Magazine, and yummy cookies! After a small nap [i.e. me=passed out while trying to read new Hello! Magazine, not from drinking] we headed to the hockey arena to watch Praha take on Pardubice. It was awesome to be able to watch a real hockey game on my birthday! It’s something that I have wanted to do since forever and it always works out that I am at school, and can’t see a proper hockey game. But since I had no idea who to cheer for, it didn’t really matter. Mack and I did our best to choose but looking at the roster for each team and picking our favorite based on who had the best good looking guy on the team. It was a wash. So we rooted for the home team and turns out it was a tie game, so no hurt feelings on either end. I t was interesting to see their jersey in comparison to the ones I am used to seeing at home. Here every square inch is covered with a logo for a company, a miniature advertisement, and the ice is just the same. Everyone had scarves with the teams name and logo embroidered on it. At a drop of a hat members of the audience would take the scarf from their neck clasp the two fringed ends together and twirl the fabric in the air, as if they were trying to take off. The fans were so into this game is was great, even way up in the nosebleed seats, you could feel the beat of the drums bellow in your chest. You could see and feel the energy in the air. All in all it was a great day. And I just wanted to thank everyone who sent me a Facebook message, sent me and e-mail, or e-card, or just told me happy birthday. It really made me feel quite special and loved. It also was good to be able to speak and see my family on the computer via video cams and microphones. I miss you guys and thanks again, you really made my day.

2006-03-04T03:22:00.000-08:00

KSU group standing proudly with out $1 beers
flat mates: Mack, Me, Kate, Laura

2006-03-04T03:14:00.000-08:00

this morning about 10:00 lastnight (20:15) looking out my window on to the beautiful parking lot below, I think mack's exact words were, don't fall out the window, because i don't know how to say "i need to ship a dead body to the states" in Czech.
Well the weekend has finally made it here, it’s about noon here in Prague and only about 5 am in the states so I guess it has made it there too. The week started off a bit shaky but as the week progressed it got better. So in short finding classes are getting easier, my ipod still only has 387 songs on it and my throat feels normal again. I guess everyone is bound to have a bad day now and again, but as they say life goes on.
So I think I have made my final decisions which classes to take! It has been hard picking and choosing between all the different art courses they offer here but I think the ones I have committed to will be a lot of fun and help me to become a better visual communicator, [right]. But so far they include: Studio, History of Architecture II a study of 14th and 15th century architecture, Art in Architecture, Czech culture, Computer Graphics, Sculpture and possibly Photography. So it will be a busy semester full of different and exciting projects.
Today I think some of the girls and I will venture out into the snow and get some of our laundry done at “Laundry King.” I know I am ready to have a pair of jeans that isn’t caked in mud from the ankle to the knee. For some reason I have mud smeared on the inside pant leg starting at the ankle that goes all the way to where my knee is, how I have no idea. And it’s not one pair of jeans its all of my jeans all four pairs. So long story short it’s time to clean those suckers. According to the map it isn’t too far, only two train stops and a switch...maybe we will have to look again just to make sure.Also many of us are preparing our slides for our presentation to the entire International Student Club about the United States. Last week the Czech Students game a 30 minute presentation about the Czech Republic, and now it is our turn to share all the wonder and splendor that is the United States. We plan on even distributing some American goodies, like Mac and Cheese, s’mores, jell-o, Pb and J and some other stuff. It was difficult to think of classic American foods that foreigners might not know or didn’t come from other cultures, not to mention the availability of the ingredients…so that is the best we could come up with. Hopefully it will run smoothly and won’t put people to sleep

2006-02-28T15:39:00.000-08:00

A rough start

Monday was full of last straws for me if you know what I mean. I think that my first day of school was the worst day I have had here in the Czech Republic thus far. If you don’t want to hear about the bad stuff then this would be a good opportunity to stop reading. I mean most of what happened didn’t even really have to do with being here, just a crappy sequence of events.
Early morning (for me at least) I awoke with a soar throat and a stuffed up nose. It was unbearable. I couldn’t hardly begin to think how I was to make it through this day feeling like this, dizziness, hunger pain/ the feeling having to puke my guts out, having to blow my nose every three seconds (which never seemed to help) and the inside of my throat felt like I had been trying to swallow sandpaper all night. I made my way to the bathroom and AGAIN the entire bathroom floor was covered in water. It drives me nuts, that our shower is this bad! Nothing seems to drain, except to on the tile floor. After wading trough the bathroom floor water, I headed to breakfast and started my day.
Despite the rough start I made my way to the first studio presentation, which by the indication on the course selection sheet said it was presented in English. HAHA, not the case. After sitting through thirty minutes of Czech; the professor finally looks around and asks if there were any foreigners in the class. About half the room is full of confused faces that slowly raise their arms (thank God I was not alone.) The professor gave a two second synopsis about the topics she had discussed in Czech with the CTU students and continued her presentation in Czech. In all honestly she did try very hard to inform the non-Czech-speaking group of students the various projects available for the semester, and they did seem quite challenging and interesting. However the overwhelming feeling of being cast aside and left out, almost as secondary students was more than I wanted to deal with for an entire semester.
After lunch many of us made our way to another studio presentation. [Here at CTU the studio professors give small presentations on the various studio projects they will be teaching over the course of the semester, the students visit these small/short presentations and decide from there who they want to stick with for the rest of the semester] This room was located in room Z-587. Now one might infer from this room designation that the room would be located in the Zikova building on the 5th floor somewhere, maybe towards the end, who knows. Once again, not the case. Upon entering the building and walking up one flight of stairs I was faced with rooms labeled in the 400’s, naturally and logically, one would think that the next flight up would be home to the class rooms in the 500’s,[never mind the fact that you are on the third floor by this point.] Still no sign of rooms labeled in the 500’s just rooms beginning with 600’s. This is where my frustration level began to raise from the green to the mustard. Feeling a bit nervous that the next studio presentation started in the next five minuets and I still had no idea where the room, I (and a couple of friends) asked for directions.
After being informed of how to get through the labyrinth like corridor, we B lined it to our class room. Up a flight of stairs to the 400’s made a left at the end of the hall where there are 200’s, through a circular room that connected to a secret set of stairs and finally into the hall which housed the 500’s. THANK GOD WE MADE IT ON TIME! Not like it mattered much, the professor was late by 15 minutes; maybe he couldn’t find the room as well.
After dinner I was looking forward to a quiet evening in my dorm room, listening to my ipod, writing, and sketching my journal. I unwound my head phones from around my ipod, plopped down face first on to my bed and shook of my shoes and pressed play. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I frantically made sure my head phones were properly inserted into the electronic device, yeah that was ok. So I turned it off and restarted it, still nothing, looked at the data that was stored on it, yup pictures still there, music not so much. Apparently the heavens broke apart and decided that it would be a good idea to wipe all the music I had stored safely and soundly (and legally) on my ipod, leaving me music-less. I wanted to scream, throw that good for nothing piece of plastic out the 5th story window and watch it break into a thousand pieces. How all my music left me I will never know; all I do know is that I spent the next four hours trying to figure out what went wrong and reformatting it so I could put what littlie music I had on laptop on to my ipod. Well at any rate I received some music from friends hare and downloaded some music from lime wire, and now I have an astounding collection of 387 songs only down about oh 2,700 songs. Ugh! It has been a rough day hopefully the rest of the week will be better.
the devil

2006-02-27T01:48:00.000-08:00

27.2.06

part two....Kuntá Hora

On Saturday we took a day trip to this sleepy city just an hour outside of Prague. Most of the city was closed due to the fact that this is the off season for tourists. However we were able so see some of the sights the city had to offer. Probably the most well known attraction is the chapel that is decorated with bones, human bones. The Chandelier hanging in the middle of the chapel is said to have one of each bone from the human body. Even though there were more than the bones of 40,000 people surrounding me, I didn’t feel creeped out or even mildly disturbed. The way that the pieces were put together were carefully and skillfully created, over all it possessed a unique beauty.
After spending quite a bit of time at the chapel we walked through the almost dead town and trekked to St. Barbara’s. Unfortunately the building was partly covered in scaffolding and the same was true for the interior of the church. After meandering around this church for an hour or so we found an ice patch outside and began to slide and “skate” across the bumpy solid surface. It’s funny how you can find entertainment in the simplest things.

bone chapel

heads up

bone chandelier

After returning home from Kuntá Hora, we were able to take the tube to old town square and watch the fight for the bronze metal in men’s ice hockey. The Czechs were set to battle the Russians in the consolation game. The square was set up with two huge jumbo screens and a random stage for random performances during the intermissions. The buildings surrounding the square were all a light, looking awesome in the cold February air. Despite the nearly freezing temperatures there were quite a lot of people crowded around the screens waving Czech flags, wearing Czech jerseys and showing their Czech pride in various ways. Chris and I were the most into the game doing all the cheers the locals were doing, however we had no idea what they were chanting, we just followed along. After watching the Czechs skate to victory, we headed to a bar nearby, where drinks were 65 kc for one beer, after one we headed back to the dorms and only spent 24 kc on our victory drinks.

GO CZECH!!

2006-02-26T13:43:00.000-08:00

27.2.06
School starts tomorrow, and what can I say but bring it on! We have had a very busy weekend to cap off a busy first week. So what have I been up to since the last time I updated? That is a good question.

Plzen- beer tour, it was pretty cool to see the way that European brewer creates their beer as compared to an American brewery say,...I dunno Budweiser. Just before I left the states I went on the Budweiser tour and was pretty impressed at how much of a craft creating the golden beverage was. However when I came to Plzen and saw their process and the history behind the process I was even more impressed. We toured the different tanks that held varying stages of the brewing process and then toured the corridors bellow the earth that in the past held hand crafted barrels of beer that could hold a small nation. After walking throughout the many cellars like corridors we can to the most anticipated part of the tour. The Tasting. The sampling at Pilsner-Urquell is very different from Budweiser in that, we got unfiltered, unpastuerized, straight from a wooden barrels keg beer. A man stood at the end of a long arched corridor with his hand on a spout that was puncturing the wooden barrel. We all marched down the corridor with our cups in hand ready to sample the raw brew. It tasted pretty much the same as the bottled version, but then again IÂm no expert, just a mere admirer. After the tour we headed to the beer garden for lunch, and it was wonderful. I had a Czech goulush, with 3 different kinds of Czech dumplings. It was grrrrrrrreat! I was stuffed! We continued our tour of Plzen by walking to the Cathedral there Of St. Bartholomew. It had a large bell tower which was open for people to climb to the top. Not a single one of us hesitated to journey to the top, but as the stone steps turned to steep, almost vertical steps, the crowd began to slow and the burn in the legs started to set in. Thank goodness I ran like crazy over break, my legs were in good shape to take the climb. I made it to the top and my legs didn't feel like Jell-O, I think that was the real victory. Once at the top we took out scenic pictures and climbed back down. Soon we were on the bus headed for home.

copper brew tanks

what heaven must look like for homer simpson

yeah climbed to the top of that sucker

a view from the top

stained glass window

2006-02-24T11:36:00.000-08:00

This is the best dorm room ever, killer accommodations and a stunning view!

our room!!!
my bed, oh so...Cozy
there is our grand entry way on the right and the toilet room ahead, shower to the left down the hall, my room is the near door on the right
the kitchen, if you can call a sink mini-fridge and two burners a kitchen
Hello Mack, woring hard, or hardly working?

2006-02-24T09:35:00.000-08:00

me!
Masarykova Kolej H535
Thákurova 1
160 41 Praha 6
Czech Republic

2006-02-23T23:15:00.000-08:00

nazdravi! (cheers)

yuck!!!

Kate and Laura (my british flatmates) standing next to a barrel of Becherovka.

it was snowing all day!

natural spring stop

lady filling her mug from the spring, you will see people all over the city carrying these mugs and stopping at each spring for a drink.

Well today is Friday Feb. 24 today we take a bus to Plzeň where we will take a tour of the Pilsner Urquell brewery, yeah more beer! On Tuesday we visited Karlovy Vary, and toured the natural springs located throughout the city but also visited the Jan Becker Muzeum home of Becherovka bitter sweet herbal liqueur. Wow all I have to say is that stuff will put some hair on your chest. I'm sure by the pictures above you can tell how yummy it was!
Things are going great, it's is very cold here, yesterday it snowed all day, but today is looking pretty good, bright and sunny, maybe a bit brisk outside but I guess I will find out when I get there.
Hope everyone is doing well -Na shledanou

2006-02-21T22:51:00.000-08:00

best band in the world

Jan Hus

our lady...

Feb 19th

Sunday morning was a beautiful sunny day, slightly warmer than the past few days. Feeling ambitious Luke, Chris, Mandy, Mackenzie and I sought out a catholic church with a service in English. Thanks to Mandy’s research we had found St. Thomas’s which is near The Charles Bridge in Malá Strana (little quarter). Built in the 13th century the church was truly of another time. It has a narrow nave and archways that soar to the heavens. The pews were the original wooded high back benches with a wooded kneeler that served as a place to put my feet, and when it was time to kneel the plain unpadded plank of wood felt hard and stiff on my knee caps. I could see my breath in the cold air as I said the various prayers and responses. As my eyes wondered across the church and settled on the faces of the regulars I could see the white foggy breath coming from their lips as they sang the different hymns and worship songs. The church was dedicated to St. Thomas and was filled with different images of this patron saint. Every inch of the church as covered with ornate carvings of cherubs, garland, and statues of different saints and religious figures. Being able to keep up with the catholic choreography made me feel more at home in this new place of worship. It was amazing to me that despite being hundreds of miles from home things were pretty much the same, even down to the same songs that they sing at St. Peters (I don’t sing I like to be able to listen). As the priest rambled on in the homily I began to reflect on how I was sitting in a church that was not only older than country but hundreds of years older. It stunned me to think of all the Catholics that had come to this very place, sat in the same pew I was sitting in for century’s seeking the same salvation and spiritual fulfillment I was seeking. I found inspiration and saw the presence of God in this church, all just by observing the amazing architecture and the dedicated faithful surrounding me, it was a great start to a wonderful day.
We left the church after mass and made our way down to Charles Bridge and began to wander around with all the other tourists. We meandered down to The square where there is the astronomical clock, the Jan Hus monument, and the Church of Our Lady Before Týn. The square was full of people enjoying the beautiful weather and the warm sunshine. There was even a group of men (about 5) providing the people with uplifting and energetic music. The man that was singing had a voice that reminded me of sandpaper caught in a garbage disposal, but for some reason it ft perfectly, and was easy to listen to. The other men were playing their various instruments such as a clarinet, a bass cello, a banjo and drum set. A crowd surrounded them watching and bopping along with the festive, polka-like music. After watching the group of performers for a few songs we wandered away and ended up in the Melantria Passage (famous for being in a painting by Václav Jansa.) Taking this route led us to the open air market area. Each of the bins of fruit and vegetables spilled over, the various greens, yellows, reds, and oranges made the market feel alive and vibrant. Mackenzie and I wandered through the space looking at the various foods and souvenirs. We found the coolest wooden carved) tulip bouquets. Badly needing some color in our dorm room we constipated if the 700 kc was worth it. We decided against it seeing how it would be barely impossible to ship home. Walking away empty handed we headed to Tessco to finish our errands,[getting a bucket to hand wash some of our clothes] and then proceeded to head back to the dorm, where we wrapped up the day watching the Czech team beat the Italian hockey team in “thrilling” game.

2006-02-21T22:44:00.000-08:00

kind of a rainy day in praha

longest german word i have ever seen
at tesco, yeah that is a list of the departments

praha!

2006-02-21T22:38:00.000-08:00

this one is for the boys...yeah

st. viteus (sp?)

praha castle

mack, chirs, and luke at school!

2006-02-21T22:18:00.000-08:00

cheers! first beer in the Czech Republic

2006-02-19T23:06:00.000-08:00

February 18th 2006

After arriving yesterday morning it was non stop hustle and bustle getting paperwork filled out, deposits paid, clothes unpacked and meeting new faces However we were able to sit down with our Czech buddies and partake in a Czech meal and a couple of Czech’s finest beer. Mack and I split a platter that had a little bit of everything on it, pork, beef, and chicken with fries, rice, and cooked potatoes. It was absolutely wonderful! It was a nice introduction to Czech food. Later that evening Mack and I unpacked our massive suitcases and enormous a started to fill the shelves and cupboard in our room. It wasn’t until that evening when we were able to catch up wit all the other k-Staters and head out to dinner. We choose a small Italian restaurant/pizzeria. The menu was lucky in both Czech and in English so picking out a dish wasn’t hard to do, just making a decision was the though part. After dinner we retreated back to our room and chatted with our English flat mates Kate and Laura. They are both really awesome and very friendly; they both are here to study civil engineering.
However today was chalk full of adventure and learning more about the inner city of Prague or Praha as the Czechs say it. At about 10 Mack and I set out with adventurous sprits and our walking shoes. We had maps stuffed in our shoulder bags and money in our pockets we were on a mission to find the Tesco and a cute café that we could call our own. We set our walking towards the main roundabout in our area and decided to take the third spoke from the right not knowing where it was going to lead us. We stumbled on to a min street that took us over the river and towards the Prague castle. Without knowing it we had found our way to one of the largest ancient castles in Europe home to St. Vitus’ cathedral. We walked past the guards decked out in full uniform and standing with such strength and decorum, it was almost intimidating until Mack and I got close enough to see that they guards were young and very attractive. We made our way into the cathedral and admired the wonderful gothic architecture with incredibly detailed spires and soaring columns holding delicate spring like arches above. It was stunning to say the least. It is easy to say that we will be coming back in the future to sketch and take pictures of the interior (you have to buy the right to take pictures, a great scam.) we continued our jounry around random streets and neighborhoods. We finally made it into the inner city where most of the real touristy things take place. We crossed Charles bridge slowly, careful to admire the various statues lining both sides of the bridge. While we didn’t know most of the saints that we portrayed we were able to recognize St. Patrick, the patron saint of architects. After reaching the other side we meandered further into the city, and saw various tourist shops, cafes and restaurants all selling virtually the same things however with different atmospheres. After about and hour of wandering we decided that we need to get back on track and find what we had originally set out for, Tesco. In order to save time and our legs, we found the information center and asked for directions. When getting directions on how to get somewhere in this city sounds a little like this, go down this street for a ways and the go left for about a hundred meters and then go around this bend and you should be fine. But what they don’t tell you is that the street winds in and out of other streets, which leads to other windy street and soon you find your self on a street that is in the opposite direction that you wanted to go in the first place. And they certainly don’t use North South East West, because you get so turned around that they wouldn’t help you at all. But in all that we found it, making Mack and I feel like we had accomplished the most prestigious task in the world, and it was just as rewarding. For those of you who don’t know what Tesco is, it basically is a 5 story Wal-Mart that makes you pay before you leave each of the department. We stocked up on the essentials such as pink toilet paper (it was a tough choice between the pink and the orange) miniature paper towel rolls and air freshener for our room. While we were trying to decipher the instruction on a bottle of drain-o (our shower turns into a bath in min and lasts for hours) Chris tapped on our shoulder and asked if we knew were to get the hand soap. Turns out that the entire crew was there as well. Mack and I concluded our shopping trip and rode the tube back to the dorms with the rest of the gang.

For dinner Mack and I decided to try the sandwich shop that is about three blocks from our dorm, people are always in there so we decided it had to be delicious. Here in that shop I came to the realization that all Czech food as an element of surprise to it. Even if you think you have chosen the most typical most familiar meal you will inevitably thrown off guard by and extra surprise ingredient. For example I went with the safe bet, the roast beef sandwich, it was the only thing I could read on the menu and the meat didn’t look raw, safe bet right , meat cheese and bread, how in the world can this be any different from what I would get back home? Ha! As I took my first it and looked at the sandwich I notice some brownish green shreds, some mysterious topping. I couldn’t quite tell if it was onion or lettuce. I was so hungry by this point of the day that I didn’t relly care, after walking for about five hours and who knows how many miles all I cared about was where and how I could get more fuel for my fire. All in all it was a good tasting sandwich and at some point will return for another, however next time I will ask for no mystery toppings.

To top off the evening we headed to the pub in the basement of our dormitory, which serves big mugs (about 24 oz. maybe, they are way bigger than the pints we had in England) of beer for 24 Czech crowns (ck). This price is pretty typical across Prague, which equates to about 1.20 in US dollars for about 2 American bottled beers. Down in the pub we mingled among the other foreign students, meeting Canadians, Spaniards, Scottish people and others. But it was the K-Staters along with the Birts (Kate and Laura) who had the most fun talking loud, telling jokes, stories, and also discussing American television shows. As the night went on I hung out and talked mostly with the Scotts and even busted out my impression of their Scottish accents. They were rolling on the floor and astounded and how accurate the impression was, I continued to next with my English accent and Kate and Laura were quite impressed too as to the accuracy of the dialect, even after a few beers. It was quite funny to talk to them all night about random stupid things that made everyone crack up, all in all it was a great evening filled with fantastic drinks and even better company!

2006-02-17T16:23:00.000-08:00

view of st. paul's from the thames

westminster abby

tower bridge

eye of london

February 16, 2006

Today was a full day in London. It was full of sightseeing and discovery. We started the day with brisk walk to the subway finding our way to Buckingham palace. We thought he had arrived just in time to see the changing of the guard. Of course with our luck, today was not a day in which the held the ceremony. Talk about bummer. We took our snapshots and watch the men on horse back make their way to the palace and proceed to the stables behind the massive gates, not very exciting but at least it was something. Making our way to Westminster Abby we passed St. James park, in desperate search of a trash can to get rid of various breakfast wrappers and bags. For some reason England is against having rubbish bins anywhere in the tube station or out on the streets, it’s a conspiracy! At Westminster Abby we were finally able to find a trash receptacle and make our way into the massive church. After we spent 6.00 pounds to get in we made our way through the various chapels and cloisters. The church was absolutely stunning! The spider web like fanned ribs overhead spread across the ceiling so elegantly. The ribs of the vaulted ceiling looked graceful and elegant. It looked as though these thin strips of carved stone were not enough to hold the ceiling above. The light that reflected off the ceilings captured the amazing detail of the arches above. After walking through the Abby for over an hour we made our way to Big Ben and the houses of parlemnt, we took the usual tourist pictures and made our way back to the subway to catch the tube to the tower of London. Upon reaching the tower, we say that the price of admissions was 14.50 pounds which is roughly equal to 30 u.s. dollars. Not wanting to spend nearly 30 bucks we took pictures and admired tower bridge. It wasn’t too long until we went back to central London and got in the tremendous line for the eye of London. Line reminded me of the type you would find in Disney land, just short of the signs that claim “ if you are reading this sign your wait will be approximately 2 hours.” Thank God we had made reservations, because they meant absolutely nothing, we sat in line with our tickets that we saved 10% on and waited with everyone else. The line went fast and soon we found ourselves boarding the capsule like “ships.” The capsules did not stop for the exiting passengers or the people boarding. Taking care to time my steps I boarded the ship and began to rise into the air. We watched the sky line rise and fall, giving us the best view of London I have ever seen. It was breath taking.
We made our way back to the hotel shortly after departing the London eye, only to have dinner at the Fountains Abby where we had a pint and a had a game of miniature pool. This was a great ending to our time in London, relaxed and fun.
Tomorrow we say good bye to this awesome city and board a plane bound for the Czech Republic to meet out buddies and begin our semester of unquantifiable. I’m a little nervous but that is over shadowed by my excitement. Homesickness hasn’t hit me yet but that is not to say that it won’t or I don’t miss my friends and family. However when I do have internet access I have to say that getting those e-mails makes my heart swell even more, so keep ‘em coming guys I love them!

2006-02-14T15:01:00.000-08:00

Lacock village

roman bath and bath cathedral

christ church

the rocks

I have made it! I am currently in England, just 30 min. outside of Oxford! It is amazing! After landing in London we boarded a bus bound of Oxford. We were slamed right way with British culture, including roundabouts and kebabs. We toured different colleges at Oxford University and meandered through Christ church, which was beautiful. Adding to the atmosphere were the sounds of someone practicing hymns on the organ, a truly spiritual moment. After which we made the journey to Cally and Lee Wingfield's home just outside of Oxford, we were greeted by a home cooked meal and the most comfortable beds I have ever slept in, especially after that never ending day, it was great.

Today our group journeyed through three cities, Salisbury, Lacock and Bath. We saw as my sister would say "the pile of rocks" Stonehenge. In Lacock we toured and old time village and Abby St. Cyriacs. In Bath we walked trough the high street, saw the Cathedral, and the Roman baths.

Tomorrow we make our way to London, to take the train to Brighton to see my old roommate Kristin! I can’t wait to see al the wonderful sight the city by the channel has to offer! Until then I hope you all are doing well and shoot me an e-mail sometime at lmi8899@ksu.edu.

2006-02-08T17:42:00.000-08:00

Jon, me and Phil @ the red sea, just before Jon was to take to the stage..er...Persian rugged playing area... Yeah, Persian rugged playing area.

Well today was the first day that I didn't have to drag myself out of my warm bed at 6:30 in a long while, and it was WONDERFUL! However the day was full of running errands and doing miscellaneous tasks. I have to say that despite my complaining about working in general, I found myself restless to be busy with something. I think that the time I spent working at Architectural Design Guild in addition to the time I worked at Chrisopher's was good for me, helped to keep my brain busy and ultimately from fretting too much over my departure. But now that I have nothing to do but pack up my belongings, things have gotten a little more stressful. It's amazing how hard I have to think when packing for the upcoming 6 months. I suppose that the truly important things that I bring are my passport and a sense of humor. Both of which are on a list among other random objects and articles of clothing.
I find myself looking forward to the upcoming days before I leave thinking to myself "I can't wait until Friday when I go on the beer tour with everyone" or "I can't wait 'till Saturday to see my family" but as the words "I can't wait..." Cross my mind I think them over again. I should consume and embrace every second, not wishing them away. I have really enjoyed being at home with my good friends and my great family, and I wouldn't want to spend my remaining time at home wishing to be anywhere else but with the people I love. So while I am excited to embark on my journey, I can wait, I will enjoy taking it slow and steady.(I hope they the next four days are the longest of my life.)

2006-01-28T15:39:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone, I would like to take this time to openly admit that I am an idiot. Yup I said it I am. My first blog was a bust seeing how I couldn't remember what my user name and such were, eh oh well this one is the one I can feel it.
OK here we go [the second time] I leave for Prague 15 short days. And these days will be filled with auto cad drawing, merchandise selling and constant worry about what the hell I am going to pack to sustain myself for 6 months. I know... No big deal, I get it.

you know what I think is funny, the fact that the blogger spell check doesn't have the word blog in it...hahaha