UW

Today was the first day of my last year at UW. I saw a guy carrying a stuffed animal lion on his shoulders, saw another guy doing yoga in the quad wearing jeans and a button down shirt, ran into a million different people (it was 5), got hit with someone's keys, remembered how annoying over-talkative/show-off types are who aren't always on topic with their comments, and discovered I have two great professors (we'll see about the third tomorrow) that will make this a great quarter. I love UW. And that is not sarcastic (in case you weren't sure).

Headlines

I keep using too much shampoo.

Tea for Two

Kurt and Charity went out to eat at The 5 Spot in Queen Anne.

At the end of our meal, the waiter said: "You two look like an eHarmony commercial...wait...you didn't meet online did you?"

Is that a complement?

Life is good...

and full of frustration.

As if doing it once wasn't difficult enough, I had to quit my job at the IMA 3 times. Apparently telling your boss to her face "I cannot work in the fall" is not clear enough.

My computer just decided to freak out. iTunes was not working and neither was the internet. I restarted. Apparently there was a corrupted file which took 15 minutes to delete. Then it finally turned back on. Now Internet Explorer won't work (luckily I also have Safari) and iTunes keeps on giving me issues. And now I'm going to bed at 1am instead of midnight.

Sorry to complain especially since it has been great to be home. I love Seattle, my friends and family and I'm so happy to be in regular contact with them again. I love my bed, ice in beverages, the price of gum (and everything else), screens in windows, English (the language), and even the food. It's good to be home.

Final Countdown

Today is my last day in Paris. Crazy.

I bought a children's book at the Louvre a few days ago. It is kind of like "Where's Waldo" but each page is a different location in Paris. It was really exciting to flip through and realize that I've been to many of the places in it. But, there were several I had not been to. So while Kurt was here he indulged my endeavor to find some of these places (despite the fact that he only had 2 days in Paris and wanted to see other things and was terribly jetlagged for most of the time). Now, there are only 4/24 (I think) places I have not been that are illustrated in this book. I plan on printing off pictures of all the places I've been and putting them in the book as proof. I'm pretty excited about it.

The picture was taken at a Roman Arena still standing in Paris from the days when it was part of the Roman Empire.

The Surrealist Guide to Paris

Our final project for my Paris class is to create two entries for "The Surrealist Guide to Paris".

For my first entry I chose (surprise!) The Eiffel Tower, but more specifically the Eiffel Tower at night when it's all lit up and sparkling. Pretty sweet! I wrote an entry about it (I don't tell you the history, but just my experience there...which should make you want to go) and instead of attaching a picture I made a collage. The collage is based off of a photo I took of the tower from underneath. It's made of pieces of paper I've collected while in Paris including receipts, pieces of brochures, and a metro pass. It is on yellow paper because it glows at night and on the hour it "sparkles" so the small, round, yellow circles represent that.







My second entry is about the small park behind Notre Dame. I wrote about my hour spent there, a most glorious hour indeed. I also did a collage for this entry, but it's quite different. I wrote about park benches, trees with shade, being fenced off from the city, and pidgeons. So, I found pictures of those things (the background and tree are actually cut out of one of the books for this class) and put them all together. The most tedious part was cutting out space between the individual bars of the fence so my guy on the bench could fit behing them and still be seen. Also, I couldn't find a picture of a bird in my limited selection so I just "wrote" it out.




I hope that this will be suffiecient. We weren't given a lot of instruction, so I just did whatever. We'll see! I present on Thursday.

P.S. Sorry if there have been a lot of spelling/grammar errors in the blogposts of late. I can get blogspot in English, but spellcheck is for the French language...not very useful.

Chartres!

A church was built in Chartres, France in which was kept the veil of Mary. It was burned down in a viking attack. Then it was decided to build a stone cathedral. The towns folk were resistant to have it built due to extra taxes, but before it was finished, the church burned down again. Three days later, 3 priests rose from the rubble with the veil of the Virgin Mary entirely intact. After this miracle the town willingly gave money to have the cathedral built. Years later they rebuilt the second tower (which fell in the fire) and it is therefore built in a different style. If I remember correctly it's new vs. old gothic. This is one of the oldest cathedrals in Europe and the first to build such a huge facade for the entry way. Chartres became the center of the Virgin Mary cult in France and eventually throughout Europe. People still make pilgrimmages every year. Unfortunately, it has been discovered the veil was not actually Mary's- it's origin has been traced to Africa (I can't remember where).