resurrection.

i feel like resuscitating this blog. being graduated with a lot of free time makes me want to just do art all the time. and i will post it hurrrrrrr. beginning with some art i already have on mah computer. and some new paintins that i just finished. 

just finished this one yesterday-i am most certainly burning eternally. until then yukyukyuk.

grant

cat lady

self-portrait

there's more, but alas they must remain a secret as they are gifts. i've been really into painting onto this huge roll of loose canvas recently- fatty paintings that you can just roll up and take with you where ever you might end up.

Overload

I've been having a lot of problems with my internets recently. It gives out just as I'm almost though uploading photos onto this thing. So I've been neglecting it pretty hard. 

So I managed to upload these ones from Sweden and Finland. Once I uploaded all my photos onto my computer from my trips it totaled over 1000 photos, apparently I got a little trigger happy. This is the beginning of them....

Woodland Cemetery

Keyhole to Chapel

Crematorium

Stockholm Art Center

Sustainable Community in Stockholm

Swimmin Hole in Sustainable Community

Finland is amazing

In other news, Carlsberg released its Christmas beer on Friday night at 9 o' clock and the entire city of Copenhagen freaked out. There were countdowns like it was new years, horse-drawn sleighs full of the beer, free christmas hats with lights being thrown into the crowds, and snow being brought in trashbags to make snowmen in front of bars. Tis the season apparently. Some people had a little to much Christmas spirit and there were multiple arrests. The best part of the whole thing though, was the people dressed as elves that would burst into bars bringing cases of the beer with them, singing carols and handing it out for free. Madness. Its good timing though, I think all the Christmas joy helps to battle the fact that its around three pm here and already looking like dusk. and its rainy. and cold. 

election day

and I'm not sleeping until we know who's the prez. Which means I will be up until 5 in the morning with my fellow american study abroaders, but it should be fun and feels pretty necessary. In fact, I'm insanely excited. I've never seen anyone my age care so much about politics as right now. We are gonna rock this thing. 

delayed-

I'm currently sitting on my dear old friend Julia's couch in Zürich watching a dubbed version of a James Bond movie. Sean Connery has lost a significant amount of his star power without that accent, but it's still entertaining. I havn't updated this in a while because I havn't really been spending any lengthy amount of time on the computer since Prague. So let me pick up where I left off, or at least try to...

Barcelona is unreal. People there are wild. They are loud and stay up late and give you no personal bubble on the street. Even though Barcelona easily had as many tourists as Prague (if not more), the city seemed to just swallow them up with it's madness so that it wasn't so obvious. Within the first couple of hours of Alyssa and I checking into our hostel right in the center of the city, we heard a bunch of screaming outside our room (which was the size of a closet and smelled like one too). We leaned out over the balcony to look down and see an old man yelling curse words at a bunch of police men on the street. The best part was that all of the surrounding neighbors were also leaning out over thier balconies, some on the phone, some in their underwear-all curious and all with something fresh to gossip about.

Alyssa and I walked along Las Ramblas, the main pedestrian street and went to the market. There was abosolutely everything in the booths - from candy to fish to pig's heads. We walked around the back stalls and came across a kid sitting on the ground, surrounded by a bunch of butchers. It looked like he had been working in one of the stalls and had cut his hand pretty badly. It was pretty unnerving, very unnerving actually, but very real.

Alyssa and I soaked up Barcelona's amazing architecture, particularly Gaudi, seeing as much as possible. It was aahhhmazing. I think that sometimes when you see the works of famous architects, it's a tad anticlimatic in some way. But not Gaudi! It exceeded my expectations! I think I had a religious experiance at the Guell Park. haha. So beautiful! He must have been insane.

The afternoon that we had been in the park, Alyssa and I decided to take a break with some churros and chocolate sauce, when I happened to see my friend from UT, Natalia walk by the cafe. It was awesome! It turned out that her and a few other people from UT that are currently studying in Italy were also in Barcelona for their fall break. We met up later that night for Tapas and ended the evening at the clubbing district on the beach. The clubs ended up being really pretentious and instead of dancing to bad techno, we just sat next to the water and talked. At one point this guy ran by looking as though he was being chased by his friend, leading us to comment 'Barcelona is so free, everyones just running wild and happy,' when we realized the guy's 'friend' was actually a cop, who quickly caught up, overtook his prey and proceeded to serve out a heavy beating with his club. We left. and made it home safe and sound.

Dispite all the drama that we came across though, Barcelona is fantastic! Definately one of my favorite places. I guess the things that really are sticking out in my mind are these dramatic moments that were a bit shocking. Its like everything that happens in Barcelona happens right out on the street, in public view, as opposed to behind closed doors like in Copenhagen or the US. I took a ton of pictures, and which I'll post when I get back to Denmark.


.....Alright, so I'm still not caught up to my current situation in Zürich, but at least it's a start....

Bohemia.

Prague '08 continues gloriously. Yesterday Alyssa and I rented a paddle boat and cruised around the canal through the city- it was seriously the best weather we could've had and we were eating persimmons, which are delicious and everywhere here. magical. We watercolored ON THE WATER. and got to see Gehry's Fred and Ginger building, which didn't dissapoint except that it looked like it needed a window wash pretty badly. In the afternoon we went to a Mucha exhibit which was really nice and then called it an early night out of exhaustion.
Today was mellow, Prague is so touristy and we felt like we had already exhausted a lot of the free or obvious things to do, so we just cruised around the pedestrian street and poked around in some of the shops. In the afternoon we drank some hot wine, which is also everywhere here, and were trying to figure out where the day should go next. We landed on the fact that we both needed haircuts and that it's generally a very expensive think to do back in Copenhagen. So we found an internet cafe, printed out photos of haircuts we wanted and went to HAIR CITY. hahaha. The last time I cut my hair in Copenhagen was at a beauty school and the girl gave me some heavy emo bangs- I could no longer see out of my right eye and they were a little too intense for me. I brought in a picture of Jean Seberg today - very short hair. VERY SHORT HAIR- SHE USED A CLIPPER. but I kinda like it, and it will definately be as low manitenance as it could possibly be.
Alyssa and I bought some cheap pasta to cook for dinner and my stomache tells me its time. Barcelona awaits tomorrow.

czech yoself before you wreck yoself.

praha-first full day here.

magical!

My travel buddy Alyssa and I went to the city center and wandered around. all the buildings look like layered cakes. we went up to the top of the tower fortress for the original old city and saw everything from above. there's a lot of flavor here - so different from scandinavia - like if Russia met France, got married settled down and pumped out a baby, it would be Praha. more ornate in general and famous for sweet things like marionette puppets and juniper liquor that's supposed to be good for your health.
We were sooo lucky with the weather today-perfect! We stumbled across this art store and went in because my pen that i had been using to sketch had dried out. the store was really special. the building was really small and cramped and art supplies were shoved in every possible place and hanging over your head. it reminded me of the wand shop in Harry Potter. Alyssa needed to buy some watercolors for when she goes to Mallorca next week with school, and i decided to buy some as well, because they were relatively cheap (like everything here) and I had forgot mine. So we spent the afternoon perched on a bench sitting in the sunshine, facing the Charles Bridge and sketching/watercoloring. It was fantastic. Then we came home and cooked dinner in our hostel which is pretty nice. and full of Australians. Tonight I think we may try out a bar that is apparently the exact replica of the hangout in Beverley Hills 90210. haha. prahaha.

ahh.

lack of photos is due to lack of a sufficient amount of time on my computer. got back from sweden/finland tonight. praha tomorrow. this break has been amaaaaazing so far. and i have a feeling its going to stay that way....