Studio Stress Suppressent

02May2005 – Monday

I woke up around 10:30 before my alarm could have its way with me and go showered, dressed, and headed downstairs. When I walked past the studio there were a few people still milling about inside, but no one from my group so I decided to go to the lab and check my mail. I found some extremely late owls online from back in the states and had a chat with them for a bit till Kim wandered into the lab and asked me if I’d mind finding a compass for our drawing, we hadn’t put one on it yet. So we found on that we thought would suffice and printed it out and then I got offline and traced and inked it onto our drawing. Ah… completion at last. Andrew and I spray mounted it onto the frame we were required to make for it and then we were absolutely finished. And, luckily enough it was getting pretty close to lunch time as well. So I went downstairs to lunch and while he first course was definitely my least favorite thing here, the second course was the baked or fried fish they have, I’m not sure which, and I was ravenous for it. I think in the end I ate about 6 pieces of that fish and it was splendid. After lunch we all went to studio and put things together getting ready for our review at 2:30pm a mere half an hour away and soon we were there and things had begun. Four looooong hours later it was over. Thank God! Our groups review went pretty well, although one of the reviewers – some ^&%$ from The States who thought he was big ^%$# – tried to pick a fight with me, but all in all we kept our cool, stood our ground, and things went well. After the review I was in heaven and didn’t know what to do with myself. It was finally all over. No more studio, no more school for the semester, no more worrying about anything, no ore stress, no more negativity of any kind! Whoop! After that I didn’t really know what to do with myself till dinner so I just bummed around and chitchatted with random people here and there. Finally dinner came along and while it wasn’t the best thing id ever eaten, it was baked chicken and it certainly wasn’t bad, so I ate that as well. After dinner I played spades with Jon, Jason, and Jess and Jon and I won. Then it was back up to the lab for some chatting until around 11pm when we went out to celebrate the end of studio at Regiro’s. I ended up eating a pizza there and it was delicious as well as sharing some laughs and taking lots of pictures and generally having a good time. I came home around 2am and drifted away to dream land for the night.

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03May2005 – Tuesday

Today was clean up day. We were all supposed to meet in the studio at 11am to start to clean the horrendous mess we called a work space and get things organized and put up for our studio exhibit for the next 2 days I think. We’re having kind of an exhibit of all of the work we’ve done this semester so that everyone in the center can come through and see all of it for the next few days and I think they are inviting the mayor - who we saw at the bar last night, lol – as well as some other VIP’s. So this morning I awoke at 10am, again before my alarms sounded its sleep destroying blasts, and showered and dressed and was downstairs no later than 10:45am. Immediately we started cleaning and right up until noon that’s exactly what we did. The studio looks very different now, and soon after we were finished cleaning we went to lunch. Today was tomatoes and cheese, so I didn’t really eat more than a small bowl of ‘noodle soup’. After lunch I believe we were supposed to be hanging and putting up all of the models and etc. that we had cleaned up for, but seeing as how I was one of few that were actually still around cleaning the last half hour I think I’ll let some other people handle the rest. So now, here I am sitting at my laptop once again, I finally got her back, and I feel more relieved and stress free than I’ve felt in a long time. Later this after noon we’re going to go down to see Bruni and stone carving one last time and then I’m not sure what I’ll do with myself for the remainder of the night. I know I need to start cleaning the room up and packing, so I’m sure that will be at the top of the list of things I do, but perhaps I’ll watch a movie or something as well… who knows? Tomorrow I think I’m going to attempt to go to Florence to acquire that pair of Euro-trash shoes I’m longing for and I guess we’ll see how that goes. Then Thursday is our final day here. We are scheduled for check out of our room at 6pm Thursday evening and then at 12:30am we are loading up the trucks with all of our bag and things and by 1:30am we’ll be on a bus and on our way to Rome to get on a plane and say goodbye to Italy. Exciting stuff huh? Well, I guess that means 2 and a half days left? Man… it feels weird to be leaving after having lived here for so long and having immersed myself so much into this Italian culture. I think when I get back and have some time I’ll do some sort of a summarization of my thoughts and feelings about this trip and what it ha meant to me, but now…well, now is not the time, lol! I hope you all are having a fantastic week so far and I can’t wait to see you! Ciao!!