Accomplishment?

Sometimes things just feel like they happened too quickly. During the progression of our most recent project, I continually find myself comparing what I am working on with the evolution of everyone else's projects. I know it is silly to do this, since everyone works in their own way and in fact many will end up doing a couple of things while they try to resolve the problem in their head. I just feel kind of silly when I stumble upon something I want to do so early into the work. It isn't so bad now, seeing as our project is due in a few days (days that I have slowly worked on my project, thinking steps through more laboriously) yet the actual project was mostly realized within the first week. I guess I just am not sure whether my project will end up working as well as I hope when surrounded by the work of everyone else. It is silly to worry though, because as long as I have my project do what I want, everyone else should have the expected response. Sometimes you just need to move past the doubts.

In other news, drawing is back in full swing. I, perhaps like many, usually find myself getting rusty with actual drawing if I don't do it for awhile. My brain just likes to focus on every minute detail, try to pass off images like they were photographs. The problem is that I, again like many, am not a machine. I can't create an image that perfectly replicates a moment of time, so instead you try to create a feeling, a grasp at the image. These rougher sketches are indeed wonderful because it becomes possible to capture the emotion or idea of your subject. I just am happy that I can make the pictures work again, now that my cobwebs are cleaned away.

P.S. Take a moment and draw something without looking at your paper. Be happy with your result, because if you learn anything, it can't be a failure.

Wash Away

This entire trip has been pretty much devoid of normal weather here in Rome. The summer heat keeps plodding along (in fact it is supposed to climb up to 76f this weekend) and yet people keep insisting that it is usually much cooler by now. In fact, I have been warned that the buildings don't usually turn on the heat until mid-November (which might be annoying, because I already feel like our apartment is too warm at night, so I really hope it cools down enough to counter act any artificial heat). All I can say is that I miss my odd Seattle weather patterns. We were given our first rainy day yesterday (it has rained before, but usually only for like an hour before returning to sunny or just grey skies), and while it was one of those things where it kinda interrupted what you were doing or planning to do it was nice to listen to the rain beat down and breathe in the air after the rain cleaned up some of the smoky atmosphere. The fact that this was the first storm we have had was also sort of exciting. Growing up in the Seattle-area means that I have seen storms before, but we usually don't have quite the view at home. It is strange watching lightning illuminate the skyline and cast light over the buildings. I kept thinking it would be really interesting to try to capture the moment on the camera, but I decided I don't really have the ability to take the shot right as the light hits. When it wasn't too blustery it was relaxing to sit in the doorway, listening to the rain and just being in the moment, however the wind liked to pick up and if you weren't careful you ended up soaked as well as getting water all over the house (as was the case with a couple of my roommates...).

Setting the scene for yesterday, we had gone to the Vatican museum and wandered through its crowded hallways seeing a large collection of art and artifact, and finally being packed into the Sistine chapel (which was smaller than I imagined, but still pretty cool). This meant that the evening was more of a time for relaxing than being productive (even though I really should have been drawing for class), and despite reading and just kind of meditating while listening to my music, it was nice to let the rain run over you and in a way clean off the mess, much like it was doing to the city. Sometimes you just need to relax and let yourself be washed away.

The Magic of Travel

This weekend I journeyed up to Florence with some classmates in an attempt to see more of Italy as well as just get out of Rome. We realized that we were about half way done with the quarter and it just seemed like every weekend was changed to just-sit-and-relax-time, which is stupid because who knows when I will have a chance like this again. We planned to leave on the early train on Saturday so that we could be in Florence early enough to make a full day of exploring, and our plan was to get tickets for the late train out Sunday night. As with any big trip, you run into little glitches along the way that just make the trip more hectic and, in a way, epic. The start of this little story begin with me and my friends (most of the people going) deciding it would be good to party out Friday night (especially since it was the end of our Italian class that day). Half of our traveling party was part of the large group that went out to some dancing party (which I guess was kinda lame) whereas my friends and I decided to dine out at what turned out to be a really tasty Indian restaurant, drink, and hang out. Our little dancing party, though a little sad at 6 people, was a lot of fun and made our evening into quite the fun time. The down side here was that the party didn't really wind down until 3:30ish and by the time we had taken the ladies home it was now about 4:30 in the morning. This all with our train leaving at 6:50 across town. So, I decided to just go without sleep when most everyone else tried to squeeze in some shut-eye. As a result, I was the only one to be ready on time, and so we all started our hasty trek at about 6:15! Running across town we jumped on the train heading to Florence, accidentally ending up on the slow train, rather than the Eurostar we had paid for! This slow travel was actually pretty nice though since we all slept for at least a little while on the ride.

Into the city, we met up with a woman who was friends with my friend Acacia's aunt. Turns out she is an art historian and told us where to get student cards which let us jump through the museums faster and see just about every famous piece of art you could imagine. What an adventure! While in Florence we also got to dine at a really great Mediterranean place, a good cheap pizza place, some awesome gelato, and the key piece - a damn good Mexican restaurant! To make the weekend even more incredible, we went wine-tasting at one of her favorite places and ended up sampling 7 wines and getting some chocolate for 22 euro a piece (when it should have been like 30+ from the wines). Perhaps the best part of this journey was that she also put us up in her home, so we got to enjoy all that amazing stuff and not pay a cent for lodging! Simply put, this was my best weekend in Italy. Can you believe our luck?