midterms midterms boo

John Lennon door in Prague
newly printed!

This week was pretty crazy. We're half way done with the semester. AH! It's going by so so fast. I can't believe I've been living here for two months!! It's already been decided that I'm coming back to Rome at least 4 more times in my lifetime. Four just seems like a good number.

Yoga on Monday went great. I got there a little early to warm up and work on inversions, and Sam was there so we played around with a new sequence Alba showed her. The guy who sits at the desk to let people in saw us practicing and came over to show us his skillzzz. It was fun! Class was focused on balance, so we tried dancer, crow, tree..good times.

It's been a rainy week. It's rained every day since Monday. BOO. I'm ready for sunshine and HOT weather!! (Miami, come back to me!) Hopefully it'll be warming up and clearing up soon. Starting tomorrow we're expecting sunshine. India, Dad, and Zach are bringing in the good weather! Of course I forgot my umbrella Monday, Tuesday, AND Wednesday. Apparently learning from experience doesn't always work.

After yoga was photo WOO! I was excited to print more pictures, because Phoebe and I went in last Thursday but the hot water was broken so the chemical process didn't work and the pictures weren't coming out. We had to give up. Today I was planning on printing at least 2, hopefully 3. FAIL. I forget how long it takes during class. There are 18 people in the class and 2 enlargers - so only 2 people can go at a time, and since we're all beginning it takes everyone a good 20 (at least) minutes per picture to do test strips, set up, and perfect it.

tree in Prague
(it's hard to see, but there's a
little boy playing on it!)
newly printed

Since I knew how to print from the class before, I helped everyone with their pictures and ended up going last. Two hours of standing got a little old, but the picture came out great! I decided to work on the statue picture again and perfect it to get the variation, contrast, and light right. We're hoping to move into the new photo lab next week, which will be exciting because there are more enlargers WOO!!

John Lennon wall in Prague
newly printed

Tuesday was my on-site exam which was pretty hard to study for since I don't take very good notes in that class. We walk around to different museums, monuments, buildings, art, etc. I always get too distracted at looking at everything to take super in-depth notes. Luckily it ended up being okay, there was only one or two that I wasn't super confident about. One down, two to go!

Painting was cool because we had a critique of our still lives then started our next project: figure painting. I'd taken a figure modeling class at Miami, so I had a little background in it. Painting/sketching nudes was way harder than sculpting them though. We focused on sketching out the layout of the canvas in class and will start painting next week. It's going to be harder than the still life, I can already tell. Challenges are exciting, though!

Carracci's "The Loves of the Gods"
The photograph doesn't do it justice.

Wednesday my honors class met an hour and a half early for a field trip yippee! Getting up early was rough, but it was totally worth it. We visited the Palazzo Farnese. This is a palace that's famous for Carracci's "Loves of the Gods" fresco in their Galleria Farnese. It's usually closed to the public, and actually takes a LOT of work to get into - my teacher only had been once before because she knew the ambassador of some country who happened to be friends with the French ambassador (who lives in there now). He decided to open it up to the public for a few months - lucky us!! We spent a loooooot of time there, almost 4 hours. It was lots of standing and a little tiring, but so incredible. I spent at least 2.5 of the time just staring up at the ceiling. Here's a picture from google, you should look it up though. It actually looks like the frames and statues are real, not painted on the walls. Awesomeeeeeee.

In fresco we planned out the walls! We lined the different sections of the walls to get all the proportions right and know where to do our giornata ("days work" - where you cut off the mortar so it looks neat and the seams are disguised into the walls). I think the final design will look really awesome. Somehow my math skills worked out and I got all the measurements together. Debbie designed this really cool top border for us, so we worked for a little while in the computer lab figuring out colors. Yay.

"haunting" trees in Prague
newly printed!

Today (Thursday), I met Phoebe at the photo lab to try to get some printing in. The hot water worked, thank goodness! We got to work and I ended up being able to print 5 pictures! Phoebe left after 2 hours because she was catching a flight to Paris this afternoon, but I stayed for another hour after that to finish up. It was so nice to just get in the zone and be able to take my time and print as many pictures as I wanted. It's hard with limited tools! But we manage. I was happy with my progress today. I printed another statue picture for Page (he told me he liked it yayy), a picture of the John Lennon door from Prague, the John Lennon wall in Prague, and two pictures of awesome trees in a park in Prague. Pretty pretty. I took pictures of the printed pics and scattered them throughout this post, but they never come out as good as the real-life print. But you get the picture (no pun intended..)

AMERICAN FOOD (don't judge)

The rest of the day I rested up. I'm exhausted for some reason! I didn't feel bad about staying in bed and watching movies all afternoon since it was so rainy and gross and cold outside. We were all craving American food, so we ordered in from an American steakhouse in the Prati area - T-Bones steakhouse. YUM. I don't even like burgers regularly, but my cheeseburger was AMAZING. Just what I'd been missing. We had to wait until 7 to order it because the restaurant didn't open until then, and we were all literally counting down the minutes until 7pm haha. Tara also made some sangria for us with fresh apples and oranges, which only added to the awesomeness of dinner. It was terrific! And we devoured everything in ten minutes. Just a typical night in "da scip".

I'm heading to the airport early tomorrow morning to meet my first visitor - Zach! Yay!! Can't wait for India and Dad to get here on Saturday, too (DAD/INDY: guys have to skype/email me so we can figure out your arrival situation!!!) I'm so excited for the week to come:) well, besides my honors exam on Wednesday. But I'll just think about that later...

Ciao mi amores!! Happy spring break to you JMU-ers and UVA-ers! Love.