Easter Weekend

G’day everybody!

As some of you know, last Sunday Riley, the BF, flew in to visit me in Australia. Unfortunately due to my field trip being in the middle of NOWHERE (10 hours traveling distance to Sydney or Canberra) I couldn’t meet him at the airport. And due to me now knowing that there are two bus companies here Greyhound AND Murray’s, he had to wait at the airport for four to five hours, then take a bust to get to Canberra. Very sad, but then I had Monday off so we were able to see parliament and the national portrait gallery. The parliament building is fairly new, and I love the inside, but on the outside the nicest thing I can say about it is that it is a huge contribution to the growing number of odd modern buildings in the world. My favorite anecdote is that when the bell rings for voting time, every member has 4 minutes to get to the voting room or they can’t get in. They figured out this limit by finding the oldest member, putting him in the far corner of the building, and timing him walking to the room. It took him 3 and a half minutes so they just rounded it to four. The national portrait gallery was also cool because it had paintings of all of the major political figures in Australia over the past few years, and I even sort of recognized some of their names.

Tuesday I was a slacker and skipped class, but I went to crew in the morning and it was very pretty.


We had a good breakfast and cooked our own dinner, (notes for travelers iced coffee and iced chocolate mean coffee and chocolate floats, not coffee poured over ice; aussies share the European aversion to ice apparently) Then we went to play Frisbee with my summer league; it was the last week so we got dominoes pizza (which is actually worse here) and then I added on to one team and riley added on to the other and we played for first place. I think my team won in universe point, no thanks to me (I had no cleats and the sprinklers came on halfway through the game) and I got a chocolate bunny for the prize.

Wednesday and thursday were boring, the only things of note were Riley’s fixing of our wireless internet, YAY! I now can blog comfortably form my bed and nor fro the kitchen counter far from any power outlet, table, or chair. And he showed my how to make my laptop power cable double for our secondhand dvd player, which came sans remote and power cable. Hooray for non art majors that can fix things!

On Thursday, Riley rented a car and we drove down to the southeast coast. It was a nice drive except Australian radio sucks and I forgot my cds, and it started to rain when we got into town and the road google maps told us to take was closed. When we finally made it to the place I had booked, it was storming and we had to drive up this steep dark driveway in the middle of nowhere. (by the way, it was incredibly sunny and hot, nineties, the whole time we were in Canberra, but as soon as we drove to the coast it stormed all over the country)

Imagine driving up this, in the dark, in a storm

The place seemed empty except for the reception guy, an older Austrian man dressed in a flannel shirt and named Herbert. It was a charming spa/ B&B type place in the end, but in the storm, at the time, I thought we were walking into a psycho type situation. Then before he showed us the room we met his granddaughter, who had come for a sleepover and as we walked to the room we saw them playing monopoly, so cute!

It was still rainy and cold but we managed a hike along a cloudy beach and a small trail.

Bingi Bingi Point, very pretty, squishy sand, kind of cold

The trail itself was stressful because we kept almost walking into huge spiderwebs. These spiders were crazy, they weave webs across entire trails above head height. We got lost because the trail ended at the end of the park, on a country road, in a neighborhood. I have no sense of direction, and we hadn't gotten a trail map because it was a small 'walk' like trail that I honestly thought was a loop and we really didn't want to backtrack through the spider trail. To be fair we would have gotten back eventually the way we were walking, but a nice ranger gave us a ride to our car. In the end, it was cold, and there were spiders, so we packed up early and decided to go to dinner.

Herbert got us in to a nice seafood place and our table was on a pier on the water, very nice. When we got back, we asked him if we could borrow a dvd and ended up with choices that ranged from anger management to Black Stallion II. We watched part of Moulin Rouge before I got sleepy, and I hate to say this but I did not get the appeal. Maybe it’s that I don’t like Nicole Kidman but I loved the music, loved the colors, couldn’t make myself love the movie, oh well.

We drove to Sydney on Saturday, at which point it started to get a little sunny, go figure. It was a long drive on a two lane highway, and we ended up being pressed for time and not stopping for lunch and then not being able to find the Hertz in Sydney. When we finally did find it, there were no public bathrooms in it, of course, after driving for three hours. Finally we just went to the bar next door and bought beers and recollected ourselves. The Ladies was, of course, down a steep flight of stairs and had another little surprise step under the door that I tripped on going in AND out. I can’t even imagine what drunk women think of it.

We took a cab to the hotel, which was awesome because it was right next to this old post office building with a clock tower and a short walk to the bay.

The post office building was really pretty, our
hotel was a modern attachment to it

Sydney harbor is just as impressive as they say!

Having missed lunch, we immediately went out for a 4 pm lunch. We ended up getting burgers at a little seafood place and they were AMAZING. They were loosely packed and tender and seasoned like seafood and I am getting hungry just describing them. They are second only to Mervs in my heart as the perfect cheeseburger.

We also did some souvenir shopping and I scoped out the crocodile Dundee hat situation, I am seriously considering one as my field trips are very sunny and my neck is quite burnable.

The main thing we ended up doing in Sydney though, was going to the zoo. I heard that the ferry ride there was scenic, so we went for it.

Poor Riley, I took his picture in the sun. We scrambled to get these choice seats
at the front of the boat, and then the boat went backwards the whole way.

We moved to the side of the boat here, much better on the eyes

It ended up being awesome because the zoo is on a hill and you take cable cars (gondolas in aussie speak) up to the top so we got a great air view of the harbor. We also rode it with a british family and an adorable little boy who kept pointing out all of the significant landmarks and saying he didn't want his sunglasses yet.

Us at the zoo, pictures with koalas were $20 so we settled for a
self-timer and the harbor in the background

We also got to see all of the aussie animals we failed to see on our hike, echidna, kangaroo, platypus (these are as strange in person as ever, but very cute) and we got to see our huge scary spiders again. In case you were curious, they are called Orb spiders and have the strongest webs in the world.

This one was at least the size of my hand, and
we constantly had to walk under them, shudder

We left early and went to the Gallery of New South Wales to see a Portrait contest. The show had some AMAZING portraits but it was really, really, crowded and hung in a very small space for the amount of work. In the end, I got a little claustrophobic and just bought a catalogue so I could look up pieces later.

Looking back, a lot of things were against us and most of what we ended up doing was eating, but it was a good time. The hotels we stayed in both had amazing breakfasts. The B&B had fresh mint tea and a continental European breakfast with ‘fresh milk’ whatever that means, and the second hotel in Sydney had this awesomely extravagant buffet deal with really good juice combinations. My favorite was kiwi pear mint. So usually we had late lunches and I was SO full by dinner…oh well, I suppose I will have to get my American appetite back somehow.

I loved Sydney itself. It had all of these really interesting old buildings on the water and of course the bridge and the opera house were beautiful. It really reminded me of Como and Venice in Italy; I think it would be a fun place to live IF you could live downtown by the water. It is like LA in that the suburbs go on forever.

Very pretty, and pricey, by the water

Anyway, back to reality. My fridge is broken and I am eating pasta for almost every meal at home. Before we left, we shove lots of stuff in the freezer because that was still working, but at some point while we were gone even that shut off so now I just have a smelly freezer and no roommates….sigh. Ironic that I moved here because I didn’t have a fridge in the hostel…

Oh well, I must go work on painting now; I am fairly behind and have a meeting with my professors tomorrow. Cheers!

It's Hot in the Bush

So I know it's been a while but I have been way too busy to blog... I'll go chronologically and tell you about my trip to Tumut first.

I walked to the front of the school of fine art with my entire supply of camping gear because i forgot to ask my roommate for a ride, oh well. Anyway, we packed into a bus that uncomfortably seats 12, fortunately there weren't that many of us, and drove off into the bush. The natural australian landscape is extremely dry and rolling with lots of greyish gum and eucalyptus trees; it looks pretty alien to any american landscape i've seen. It's odd though ebcause apparently there are a LOT of species of plants and animals that have been brought here from other countries that are messing with the ecosytsem. the result is pine trees and willows that look really familiar to me are actually exotic here, and they're messing everything up. Even most of the grass is no longer native.

I fell asleep about half an hour into the ride, as those of you who've ridden buses with me know, they mput me to sleep walmost immediately, which was annoying because later in the trip we would take short 40 minute rides that just made me REALLY tired. Plus it was always hot (hich thirties in celsius, ninties for you imperial system americans, temperature is one of the most difficult culture shock things for me because it is totally foreign AND requires me to do math in my head) and the a/c in the bus was just too wimpy for all of the hot air & people in it.

Anyway, the trip was interesting for me, but it was quite academic and would eb broing to go into detail with you so I'll just give you a list:

Orchard
I had never seen an orchard before, or heard so much about apples, so this was pretty cool. Most of the trees aren't that much taller than me, and those nets protect the trees from hail.

Forest Plantation & Fire Tower (sooo high in the air!)
In this part of the adventure, we saw all of the harvesting equipment at work, thus the hardhats. I got an extra extra large yellow vest, you know, for my broad shoulders. the dude with his hand on his chin was out guide, very Aussie backwoodsman and a real fave with the older ladies in the group...
This was one of my views from the fire tower before it got windy and the tower started to sway....shudder.. The dark green stuff is the plantations, the open land was caused by a fire. (started by some idiot who stole a car and burned it to hide evidence) and the grey forest is natural australian forest, they aren't allowed to cut it down so they grow right up to it. They have a TON of land because this particular buisiness has been around long enough to be sustainable, but it takes 20-30 yrs to grow a tree. The blank land you see used to be worth millions of dollars in wood.

Hike/ four wheel drive through a farm and a national park

So the national park was called Kosciuszko by a Polish explorer, after a Polish saint, but everyone here pronounces it Kozzyosko, so you would never know. To get to it, we drove though a family farm where they were grazing cows. The cows, and people were very friendly.
The park itself was very pretty, this is a spot by the creek, the dude is our project photo documenter guy, Dean.

Snowy mountain scheme (huge dam that generates power)
In order to make this dam they filled up an entire valley with water from a river, this yabby lives in the lake that they've made. It's picturesque, but bizzare to think how monumentally we've changed the land.

These pipes supply water for the power generating turbines from the lake above, each one can fit a bus inside. Wow, I sound like our tour guide, except she kept throwing numbers at me, in metric, in the heat.

We camped every night at a drive in camp site by a creek, which was awesome when it was hot, but not awesome when there were 50 8th graders sharing the site with us. (luckily only for two nights.)

After that whole marshmellow poll myself and one other american girl decided to teach people how to make s'mores, which if people have heard of them it was in movies. It was pretty difficult though, because things I have taken for granted all my life were unavailable. Marshmellows here are mostly small, tough, covered with sweet powder of some kind, and flavored. that's right, flavored, ti is impossible to find plain ones in most stores that aren't in a bag with pink, raspberry flavored ones that taint the whole bag. After searching two small town stores we found some plain ones, but these were mushroom cap shaped and proved to taste better but were difficult to toast evenly. Also, thin chocolate bars like hershey do not exist, and so we had thick, not easily melted chocolate. The toughest obstacle, however, was the graham cracker. People have no idea what it is, and try explaining a slightly sweet but not really cinnamony biscuit to someone. We stood in the biscuit aisle holding up boxes of crackers to the stock guy for forever before we found a replacement (crackers similar to animal crackers in flavor) and he finally looked at us and went, "you're not from around here, are you?" In the end, the aussies were suitably impressed, but also a little shocked, I think, at the extravagant sweet cravings of the American taste palette.

My trip ended with a ride in a ute (pickup truck) with a sculptor who makes dogs, they are really cool looking actually, and she wanted to stop in a town called Gundagai to see the Dog on a Tucker Box. It's apparently part of a well known Australian legend, sort of like Johnny Appleseed or Paul Bunyan I think, you can look it up here if you like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_on_the_Tuckerbox

Well this took longer than I thought it would, mostly because I was watching Sixteen Candles and attempting to clean out our broken fridge while writing it. I will post soon about how I spent my most recent weekend; Riley and I got to got to Sydney--it is a really beautiful city.

Off to the Bush, and Pictures

Before I get started I want to brief you on what I have learned about Australian conversational slang. Take any American who does not actually know spanish, but is trying to speak it, and you have ausssie abbrievs. They stick 'o' on to the end of almost every word that they shorten, avo means both avocado and afternoon, and doco means document; the exceptions to this I have found are brekki (for breakfast) and aircon, for airconditioning, but more on this topic later. Also my new favorite expressions are 'G'day' people actually say this and it makes me really happy, 'I reckon,' 'that's not cricket' (that's not gentlemanly) and 'thank you muchly' (that one's scottish, actually) so if I say any of them , you know who to blame.


Not much to report this week. We had a long weekend because of Australia's Labor Day, which Canberra has renamed Canberra Day. On sunday I had a barbeque in the park with my two scottish artist friends, and my one vegan friend from rowing. We cooked up a huge amount of meat and bananas with chocolate inside, yum. This was only some of the meat actually, but all of it made for good leftovers.

On monday we went to the actual Canberra day Carnival, which was moderately crowded, and none of my friends from Canberra knew about. We saw Rikki Lee, a singer who did not win Australian Idol, for reasons that became fairly obvious. (Actual quote from MC: I love it when she starts losing her voice, it sounds so sexy!) We also watched some mowtown from Australia's aging boyband Human Nature, they were very entertaining, you should definitely look them up. And at the end there was a firework show which was pretty good, and really, how can fireworks be bad?

Nothing much more has happened this week other than I got a new student ID because apparently i was given a defective one at first, and now I can get into and out of my studio whenever I want!

Speaking of my studio, i finally took a few pics of my two living spaces, although not my bedroom cause it was empty.

Entrance to the Canberra YHA: Those tables belong to the bar below the hostel, convenient but loud on karaoke night



My Living Room: If it looks sparse, that's because right now we have one poster + milkcrate tables. The chick that moved out owned EVERYTHING, even stuff like, toaster, tv, washing machine, fridge, kitchen chairs...all hers, and my roommates are less than quick at replcaing more than essentials. Michael actually glowed today when Mani brought in a new kettel (yes, tea is a big a deal as they say it is)


The School of Art: Isn't it Pretty? the top row of windows on the left are the painting studios


My Mobile Unit: Isn't it, ummm, a tribute to the modular living movement? The foremost wire covered window is mine, and the tan box by the door is the card reader, also known as the bane of my existence for a week and a half. We do have 'aircon' though, and as you can see from the box, it is right by my space, pretty choice.


My Studio: See, I get my own space heater and table, and you can't see it in this picture, but i have my very own Anarchy graffiti on the ceiling!


I hope to have some more pictures soon, both from my trip and from rowing practice. (I brought my camera to rowing today but I was saddled with the 'intense
team and coach, and i didn't think they would appreciate it)

Anyway, I am off to the bush to be inspired in the wilderness and camp with a crazy/awesome Scottswoman for a tentmate. If I survive, I'll let you know how it goes...

So, I have ethernet connection but no wireless

So the reason I haven’t posted in a while is that I haven’t had acces to the internet in any consistent fashion for about a week now. In fact, as I type this, I am on hold with the DLINK tech support; I love how they keep telling you to visit the website for tech support when they know that half of the people waiting on hold probably don’t have internet and are getting angrier and angrier every time that the hold music, “you’ll always be my baby” cuts out, and they think someone will answer the call, and then they advise you to go to the website. Why, the one time I go to another country and actually have a legitimate reason to be spending time on the internet does it quit on me? For those of you who were wondering, tech support here is the same as in the states. Except if course, for the fact that periodically it beeps and tells me, thanks for my patience, my call has progressed in the queue. This is brilliant actually, because it happens sporadically enough that you feel as if it actually happens every time someone ahead of you hangs up.

Ok, I’ve just been ‘helped’ by the dlink customer service. Now, if anyone out there works for a tech support hotline, we’re not ALL idiots, I promise. Sometimes people call because things actually do not work. I realize that it has to be the least gratifying job ever and you might have talked to 15 rude people before me, but please bear in mind, I’ve been waiting, listening to bad pop music, for at least half an hour and I will only be rude as well if you treat me like I am stupid!

Enough with the ranting, and on to other things. This week was pretty busy for me as my key card to my studio still does not work, I didn’t even have time to go get a new one today (Friday) although I did end up talking with the art school finance guy, Robbie, a lot and we’re getting pretty tight. No seriously, I have his cell phone number.

Most of the work/stress of my week culminated yesterday (Thursday for you other side of the world-ers) and it began in the morning. Mani had told me rent was due today and it was biweekly, meaning I had to pay $330 by that evening. I was fully prepared to do so, planning on stopping by an atm after checking at the copyquik shop to see if Jerry had faxed my lease yet (he hadn’t, and the shop knows me, even when I call about a fax they don’t even ask my name anymore). As I grabbed my breakfast and lunch for the day, ready to head out the door, I saw a note from my roommate Michael that went along the lines of ‘Our landlord would like the bond (security deposit) finished today, can you have your part sorted?’ Ok, I had been asking about the bond for a week because I needed at least two days to withdraw enough cash from the atm to cover it due to my withdrawal limit and I didn’t want to do it and have $700 cash laying around. To have to come up with what ended up being about $1000 in one day by the time I added in rent. The long and short of it was that Michael, nice guy that he is, covered half of my bond and I owe him a $400 and a huge dinner as he also picked up my queen size bed for me this week.

I also gave my presentation of my idea for the entire semester of painting yesterday, which I think went well but was really daunting. Everyone before me had at least 2 paintings from last year up on the wall to show people ‘where they were coming from’ and after their talks were grilled (really harshly at times) by the teachers. I got up there and used none of my allotted wallspace because I had nothing to hang, and showed a bunch of stuff on my computer. I got pretty nervous so I probably talked a mile a minute through my ideas. At the end of my talk both of the teachers looked at me to see if I was done, said ‘ok, sounds good’ and moved on to the next presentation. Ok, not that I wanted them to be harsh or anything but any sort of question would have been nice! Oh well, I shall go back down to my exiled studio space and do as I like I suppose.

After my presentation I went to a watercolor demo by a guy named Noel. (Pronounced Nol; I need to find his last name to post some work b/c he seems like he is amazing at it. All we did was talk to him about preparing paper for watercolor and what kind of supplies we wanted. He was HA-larious, imagine Bob Ross, but well coiffed, effeminate, and with gold-rimmed glasses with really think lenses. A couple of snippets I wrote down from his talk: about stretched paper ‘isn’t that just seduction on a panel?’ and on his most expensive watercolor brush ($90) ‘bliss on the end of a stick.’

Then I went out to dinner with Deki, Matty, Deki’s girlfriend Hannah, Aaron, and another girl from USC. We went out to Chinese, which was great because it is one of the few restaurants in Canberra where you actually get enough food for your money. It was delicious, being the first time I have eaten in a proper restaurant here, but I still prefer my old LA standby Yang Chow. Although Deki told me he hadn’t been that impressed by that place (blasphemy!) we agreed to disagree.

Today I had coffee with my SIGN mentor. I actually don’t remember what sign stands for, but basically it’s to help us overseas and new kids settle in and have someone to help us out. By the time I got my mentor, however, I had dealt with all of my serious problems, so at this point it is just awkward meetings btw me, Helena, my student mentor in her 50’s very sweet, and the two other mentees Marie and Samuel, who are very, very, quiet.

When I got back I stretched canvas on a frame I made myself! Yay! It was so cool to make my own painting surface, especially since all of the tools were specially set up for just that purpose and our handymandude, Simon, helped me out a lot. There are air pressure nail and staple guns are AWESOME and make everything sooo easy. Now I only have to do two coats of rabbit skin glue (I have no idea if its actually what it sounds like) and several coats of gesso before I can paint!

I came home, tried to fix my internet, and ended up running to the corner store so I could make veggie burgers from this recipe on 101cookbooks.com. They were amazing by the way, and I highly recommend them for even my fellow carnivores. I went out in the rain because I just got my rainjacket in the mail from my parents and lots of other awesome stuff that will be put to great use this weekend!

I have a long weekend as this Monday is Canberra Day and thus a public holiday. Looks like I am going to have the house to myself and I will be cat-sitting Bella, our very cute housecat. My main plans involve a barbeque with the two art school Scottish girls, Elaine and Gaynor, and baking cupcakes on Monday because I can and because it’s Mani’s 25th birthday on Tuesday. Then I leave Wednesday for my field trip into the bush, I will be sure to post pictures of any Kangaroos when I get back!

A little overwhelmed....

"Chastity: I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?
Bianca: I think you can in Europe." Or Australia...

Wow there is so much to tell since the last time I posted; buckle your seatbelts folks this is going to be a long post.

First of all, it seems like there has been a decision made on our poll, people prefer crunchy waffles to pancakes, which is as it should be. Those of you who haven’t been to the Midwest or South, some day you will have to experience the culinary beauty of Waffle House, preferably around 1:30 am.

On to my week, which didn’t really start until Tuesday. Tuesday morning, I went to crew practice and after much debate was assigned to a four-girl sculling boat where the coxswain sits in the bow. I have never liked bow-coxed boats because the rowers sit behind me, and I can’t help them out because if I turn to look at them, I throw off the whole balance of the boat. Also of interest, all terminology in Australia is different. Port and Starboard are Stroke side and Bow side; weigh enough or stop is ‘Easy,’ and on top of all of these differences, I had no microphone so most of the time the girls couldn’t hear me anyway. Needless to say, it was an eventful morning, but I gut to row out onto lake Pauly Griffin and see hot air balloons and a sunrise so it wasn’t too bad of a morning.

After crew, I went to my art theory class, which was uneventful except for me constantly trying to not fall asleep. I was a good class, taught by the head of the art department, but after waking up at 5 in the morning, the last thing I needed was a slideshow.

Wednesday was the first day of painting workshop. All of the students were introduced to faculty and they told us that we had to write and present project proposals (I go next week) and then we were assigned studio spaces. Now, all of you know that my housing was mixed up and has been a source of significant stress for me over the past two weeks. I got through it in the end because I found a place to live, and because I LOVED the art school. They have huge studio spaces with lots of windows that I was very excited to work in, so naturally when I got assigned to a place called the “White House” for my studio I was confused.

This place had not been in our initial tour of the building at orientation, luckily the woman who assigned the spaced, Raquel, took me to it. I’m afraid I was pretty terrible at hiding my shock as I followed her out to the parking lot behind the art building—I had been placed in a detachable mobile unit that required key card entry. It had not been cleaned and had been used as storage over the summer for many students’ artwork. In short, it was terrifying. The place now houses myself, five other girls, and one student in his fifties named Kevin. I picked a little corner with two small windows and we proceeded to sweep, vacuum, and wipe down our new area. The key card swipe had not been activated for any of us, so we all shared one key card to get in AND out (an inconvenience at the least, a huge fire hazard at the most) and Raquel kept looking at me and asking if the space was going to be ok for me and offering to move me (I must have looked pretty bad) but I had decided to not be the spoiled kid who demanded to be moved under any circumstances.

Having been detached from the initial shock, I am now quite pleased with my studio, I have a big table, easel, chair, space heater and two windows. The girls have also decided to play house and have created a kitchen/lounge area with a mini fridge, extra chairs, and a tablecloths (bright pink and teal). Basically, all we have done for three days now is mess around trying to figure out what we want to do; the art school here is ‘self-directed’ in the third year, which as far as I can tell means that they give you a studio space and say ‘go’ we have no supervision which is amplified I am sure by the face that our studio space is in the middle of nowhere. Most of our activities have included morning tea, acrobatics, music, looking at pictures of my work, and gossiping.

Let me tell you, this art school is FULL of drama; mostly centered on one guy who is causing problems. The girls have deemed me the first normal/cool American they have met (apparently the last kid from orange county said that he thought Australian girls were not attractive and bitched about how great California was) and as such I am privy to all. Most of the drama is pretty standard except that this guy seems to make huge assumptions about people and then tell anyone he feels like; for example, he told one of the girls in the studio that I was a lesbian having never even spoken with me! I find this sort of amusing, and obvs I could care less what he thinks of me, but I am not surprised at all at his causing drama.

All of this discussion was highlighted by intense intellectual art discussions, them exclaiming over their love for peanut butter M & M’s which apparently they can’t get in large bags here (yay for Food4Less), and mild acrobatics. Needless to say, I am learning to love my studio space and the people in it.

As far as project proposals, here is what I think I am going to do:

Painting: A portrait series of people I meet in Australia including immigrants and Aboriginals, exploring cultural differences.

Drawing: This is sposed to be somehow connected to my painting project but not really; I want to make a series of postcards referencing Australia and also any other cultures I happen to research that have connections here. At the end, after they have been graded, I am going to mail them so email me your preferred mailing address for sometime in june!

Field Studies: This involves traveling around Australia and addressing some sort of environmental issue in your work. I think I want to do big watercolor landscape paintings at all of the locations I am able to travel and then find out what aspects of civilization might be threatening each one. Then, back in the studio I want to superimpose, in bright acrylic paint, whatever is threatening that area on top of the watercolor landscape.

On Friday I had lunch with my overseas mentor, a mature age developmental studies student named Helena, and her other two mentees Samuel and Marie, from china and Japan respectively. It was a barbeque with actual food besides sausage and was pretty good. They even have chicken, lamb, and Mint jelly. (a british/Aussie condiment that is an interesting flavor addition but waaaay too sweet) I got incredibly lost on my way back to the art building, which is far away from everything, and ended up wandering for about half an hour through the graduate school buildings until I walked past the brew boathouse and figured out where I was. Those of you who believe I have no sense of direction, I figured out what my problem is. It isn’t that I have NO sense of direction, I have a very strong sense of direction in fact, but it is wrong 75% of the time, but I follow it anyway because I feel like it is right in my gut, and it is not. On the upside I found lots of cool leaves and things for my postcards.

In other news, I had an amazing dinner on Thursday night at my new apartment. Micheal, the guy roommate, had been spear-fishing over the weekend and was going to cook his catch. That’s right, spear-fishing, and the craziest part was that each fish was speared with umm, intensely intimidating precision right in the neck. And he is also a very good cook, fast chopping and all. I realized the reason he was excited about me cooking was not so that I could cook for him, but because he is tired of being the only one who cooks. (Mani never cooks) Also, Mani is Buddhist (sort of, she was raised in a Buddhist household) and a semi vegetarian. Actual quote: “I’m vegetarian, but I find myself eating meat” she apparently ate two anchovies the other day because she was wandering around the kitchen wanting to ‘taste things.’ As we were eating Michael’s crème caramel, which had overcooked sadly, the girl who is moving out found out I’m staying in a hostel and offered to let me move in, at least sleep on the couch, earlier. Both of my other roommates looked as if this had never occurred to them, so I was glad that one person had thought of it!

I have now moved in to my new place, Mani picked up my stuff last night and gave me a key. I went back to get my bike, my food, and use up my internet that I had bought thinking I would be there longer. Sadly, the food was gone, and by the time I finished using the internet it was about 11. When I got back to the house it was totally dark inside, I felt really bad about being back late, but I had though on Friday night at least one of my roomies would be up past 11:30. Oh well, I unlocked and relocked the door with only a little difficulty and put new sheets on Bron’s bed, which she said I could use. When I woke up at 9:30, indie music was playing on the radio, the porch door was open, and the whole house was amazingly bright. I love this place already. Oh and they have a cat! I now have a surrogate, incredibly chill pet named Bella.

All in all, I have had an interesting week, but I am excited to start on my projects, I might go watercolor somewhere tomorrow, cheers!