Manic Monday

Well today was a mini adventure. I first woke up at 7am( wanting to get around early and do some laundry) and I found out it was freezing outside. So being the morning person I am, I decided to not do laundry today and just wait until tomorrow, so I can do it midday. So I went back to bed after a while and got back up at 10am to make some breakfast (or brunch I guess) before I headed off to my first class at 1130. So I made pancakes and eggs (yummy!) and got around and headed out. I arrived on time to my Ornamental Class and did some not-so-beautiful sketches out of the book. I don't know how long I'll last when I can't find anything interesting to sketch in the books, and I just kinda doodle until it's time to go.

Photography Class is next and I headed there to see what we'd be starting on this week. It turns out that our first project will consist of taking pictures of the Architecture Building (which I have posted a picture of previously) and the Engineering Building, as well the connection, which has a semi-lovely atrium space (it's nice for students to sit between classes and work on their laptops). After this assignment which will last until mid-month next month, we'll have a little Expo of all our photography. So, I guess I'll be hunting around the building to find unusually and/or beautiful settings to try to take pictures of. For next week, out assignment was to bring in copies of previous photography. Hmmm...Unfortunately I have never really tried to take interesting/beautiful pictures, I just take pictures of things I like, and just for fun.

I headed home after class so I could start hunting through pictures to see if I can find anything I was semi-pleased with to burn to a disc and bring next week. I also decided to cook some rice and some lil smokies to eat for lunch, and I had an orange as well. As I balanced cooking and searching for pictures, I finally found enough pictures to be content and burned them to a disc. I hope it will be enough for the teacher, some of the pictures are of Praha, so we'll see what he says.

Realizing the time, I decided to pack up all my stuff (laptop comes with me to studio), but I then started to get a Skype call. My dad was trying to call me from home and I was needing to get to class, but figuring it was important I took the call. It ended up that there are a mass of storms in the Midwest (from Texas to Chicago) and that my Aunt Tammy and Uncle Jim's house got severely damaged by a tornado, but luckily everyone was ok. (I'll keep you guys in my prayers!) I have not even been able to keep up with what's going on in the world, with not English newspaper, no tv (it'd be in Czech most likely anyways), and trying to search on-line for interesting stories, I've just fallen behind. So if anyone has any good websites that might have live news, or radio news, I'd appreciate the links!

So after chatting shortly with my dad, I packed up my stuff and headed out. I made it to class a little late, but that is not usually for people here. They aren't always in a hurry to be there in time for most my classes (I don't have any lectures so that's probably why). So after a bit, our teacher shows up and so does the Czech student who is working on the same project as us Americans. The student comes over with a disc and explains to us that he has CAD files for our site, Ariel pictures of our site, and a PDF of the CAD layers. So Allison and I both copy the files on our laptops, and I burn MacKenzie a cd, since her computer is still getting fixed. Then we get a little explanation from the Czech student and he leaves. Next the teacher arrives again (he must have slipped out for a bit) and approaches us Americans (wow that's a first, he's always talking to us last) and has a pile of papers in hand. He then gives us each a set of plans and elevations and explain what they are. He told us that if we haven't visited the Praha City Museum (I have :) ) to do so and maybe it will help inspire us to do our 5-10 sketches of urban fabric ideas for next class. So we pack up our things and head home.

I get home and start to work on decoding the PDF of the CAD layers. Yes, that's right, it is all in Czech! I know I sound lazy in wishing it was in English, but I sure do. I probably have spent two or more hours decoding it (luckily most of it was repetitive, so I didn't need to nearly look so much up). Unfortunantly, it still doesn't make total sense. So my next mission is to print off the PDFs and finish decoding it, by comparing it to the CAD files. Well I better head off to the ISIC room before they close so I can print off the PDFs and the pictures, as well as pick up my T-Shirt from them (I forgot about the e-mail last week and how they finally arrived). Ahoj!