Festivus!

Sorry I haven’t really written in a while, but here’s a recap of my weekend and the first half of this week.

23April2005 – Saturday

I worked in studio all day long minus meals and going to sleep pretty late. I got online a few times randomly throughout the day, but for the most part not much else happened.

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24April2005 – Sunday

See Saturday.

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25April2005 – Monday

I decided to sleep in until just before lunch when I got up and showered and dressed, etc. After lunch I went and worked in studio up until class time. I just happened to be the first person seen by Peter because Peter started from the bottom of the roll and Marcel started at the top and they worked their way through alphabetically. Well by the time Peter was seeing me I had successfully built 2 rather large models, and had plan, section, and site drawings for both schemes. I hadn’t quite made it to a third variation like I was supposed to though. I had started one, but hate it so scrapped it altogether and decided to just focus on the two. Well, my review went pretty good. It went very well actually. Peter liked a lot of aspects of both variations but felt that one worked better and had more potential. He ended up tearing apart my model, which rather upset me, but apparently he was in a destructive mood that day because he ended up doing the same to every one else’s that he saw as well. Anyway, we talked about ways I could improve it and the new direction he wanted me to take the design to improve on it and then I talked to a structural engineering guy that’s his buddy and he invites to a lot of our reviews about my structural ideas, etc. By the time we were finished I felt really good about things and decided to blow off the rest of the day. I didn’t do much else after that really, I went to dinner and after dinner I watched people play spades for a while and talked on the internet a little before going to bed.

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26April2005 – Tuesday

I got early before my alarm clock and decided to talk online till I had panned to get up. Then I went and took a shower and got dressed and ready for class. When I got to class I found out that Paolo had some things come up suddenly that he couldn’t get away from so instead Debra (one of the head staff here) took the time to have us all do class evaluations, and paperwork we needed to complete for the end of the semester coming up. This ended up taking most of the class time and then we went to lunch. The day was really gorgeous and after lunch a lot of us just went outside and hung out in the courtyard in the sun. We played with the turtles and listened to music, and some people played music and we all just had a good time. Also, the students here were putting on a Children’s Festival that evening in the main city piazza so I helped some of the people with laboring work such as moving chairs and boards and booths and things up flights of stairs and helping Jen to wipe down and clean chairs and things like that. Finally at about 3 we decided to go ahead and make our way down to stone carving and we had a beautiful walk. The day really couldn’t have been much more gorgeous. We took a lot of pictures in stone carving that day and had a really good time as we worked for our last day there. When we left we had talked to him about coming back next week and I think we’re going to. I got back in time to go straight to the Children’s Festival and had the time of my life. All I really did was wonder around taking pictures of everything and soaking up all of the joy that the children were producing. They had a fantastic time and the whole thing ended up being a huge success. It really was an indescribable experience, I love children so much – they really are the true joy in life I hope some day I have a bunch of my own! After the festival we pretty much unloaded everything wed loaded up that afternoon and then went straight to dinner. I wasn’t really feeling hungry so I didn’t eat much and then after dinner I watched Forrest Gump with a big group in the student lounge. This was the first time I ever really realized how sad that movie really is and I really did come close to crying multiple times throughout it. I guess the times and things we are going through in our own lives affect how we view things on the big screen huh? Well anyway, after the movie I talked online for a while before Jon roped me into going to The Velvet with him. Surprisingly, I did have a really good time and a lot of nice conversations and stuff before making my way home and to bed around 3am.

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27April2005 – Wednesday

Today I slept till right noon and then got showered and dressed and met with the studio. The Profs took us to lunch today down at a pizzeria/café at our site for the project and we ended up having a nice lunch till about 4pm when I got back. At this point I was still dead tired so I took a nap until 7pm at which point I got up and came down here to get online and then decided to journal. I wasn’t too hungry tonight because I was still full from lunch so I skipped dinner and once I finish updating here and my pictures of Tuesday I plan to work on studio and perhaps call home for a bit. Well that’s really all I have, hope you are all having a good week, we’ll see how the rest of mine goes, but either way as of tomorrow I only have 8 days left till I’m home! Ciao!