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i knew studying abroad this semester would provide me with many new experiences and stories to tell. but oh the stories i have to tell.its been a busy week running around through ancient roman ruins, exploring cryptaporticos/underground dark tunnels (and being frightened by "bats") and seeing temples that were converted to churches, and so on. so after a week of this, we get the weekend off to enjoy all to ourselves. of course, we want to shop after wearing the same clothes over and over. plus, i was in desparate need of a pair of jeans...they'd be perfect for cool nights and going out.first thing in the morning, becca and i woke up to head up to her church that she has to research for her presentation. there are typically a lot of cops, but this was just insane. i mean, there was quite an assortment of different branches of police, from the swat team, to army looking officials, to the snazzily dressed cops that always roam the streets. the streets were lined with armored vehicles parked one after the other, huge charter buses all in a row with cops on board, and guys standing in the street. basically, we were overwhelmed with it all and i don't think a description could quite describe it well enough. so anyway, we're walking along, knowing that president bush is in town and figuring that was the reason behind the madness. we soon ran into a photojournalist who chatted with us for a bit after offering us help when we looked like the confused tourists we are. he pointed us further up the road..."where bush is coming from". so indeed, it was confirmed, we were following the same route that bush would be coming down in a few minutes.we continued on our mile and a half walk, in disbelief of the crowds and cops and protestors. anyway, long story short, we got to becca's building to find the walk was all in vain. we had stupidly worn shorts and tank tops which is a sure way to be denied to a church here. we sat around the gorgeous fountain out front waiting to see if bush would go by with no success. becca grew weary of waiting and we were anxious to get to shopping. we arrived back to the hotel around lunch time and reported to everyone how intense the atmosphere was out there. we went out for our afternoon spree and soon we came to a road lined with pedestrians and cops yelling at anyone who dared to step off the curb. no one could pass. we knew something was about to happen, so i whipped out my camera and turned it to video mode. within a minute or so, motercycles and black suburbans with tinted windows and flashing lights were speeding by. we were trying to figure out which one he would have been in when we saw a black limo go by and a shadow in the window waving to those he passed by. everyone's conclusion as it went by was that it was indeed, president bush! we were all pretty excited about the casual run-in.the shopping continued, though dampered a bit by the HIGHLY expensive shopping district by the spanish steps. on our way back, we thought we might get another chance to see bush. waiting again, we gave up and headed back. becca and i headed out again together nearby our hotel and i finally purchased a pair of jeans for a great deal of 15 euros. we continued around, and decided it was time to head back. we stepped out of the last store to hear tons of music and crowds yelling and saw flags marching by that consisted of communist red flags, cuban flags, italian flags, anti-bush banners, and a man on a megaphone yelling something about america quite often. needless to say, becca and i felt a little uneasy about the hostility towards our president and americans in general."if something goes wrong, jeannnine, we're speaking in french" were the words of becca as we walked on the sidewalk next to the chaos. i felt like we stuck out like blond hair, blue eye,d american twins amongst the punk, dred locked, baggy clothed, haven't bathed in a few days protestors. we are a block away from the hotel when becca squeezes my hand to tell me its time to move off the main road with all the protestors. then i see the group of girls we're always with sitting no more than 30 feet from the road just sitting down for dinner. we ran over to them and questioned their coolness about the atmosphere."these are just peaceful protestors!" carina reassures us. "plus we have front row seats!" we should have listened to our gut instict, but we did need to eat dinner and it would be interesting to watch. so we had a seat and placed an order. as i always do for security measures while eating out, i wrap the straps of my purse around my leg so it doesn't get stolen. not so good in light of what happened next.within five minutes of sitting down, i suddenly see a look of fear on carina's face and jump up in a split second, and then i turned around to see literally a stampede of people pouring into the alleyway towards us. it all happened so fast. i try to grab my purse, but its tangled around my leg, caught on the chair, i'm reaching for my shopping bag, i'm hopping on one leg trying to get my purse, pushing through chairs to get to the restaurant doors, people are screaming, i'm shoving chairs into other people, i see carina standing at the door, the owners trying to shut the doors and roll down screens, i finally get inside and the doors close. i looked around and didnt' see becca anywhere, so i was freaking out yelling "where's becca??" over and over and very emotionally shaken at this point that i started tearing up and so forth.then i see becca, sarah, and katie come bursting through the doors. apparently they had hit the ground when they saw us jump up, thinking there was gunfire or something and were hiding under the table laying on the cobblestone for a good minute. we were all scared and the waiters were telling us we're fine and seated us inside to have our meals. our apetite had left and we were ready to go within 15 minutes, but still worried about what was happening outside.we try to walk casually back to the hotel, which was literally around the corner. it concerned me that protestors had made their way off the main road, but we hurried as much as possible. we reached the hotel doors when we heard loud banging, realizing it was the police on the next street lined up with their sheilds and banging on them with their batons. we ran upstairs to our room to see what was going on. we could see the protestors on the main road marching, the cops through the two buildings in front of the plaza lined up with their blue helments and sheilds, things were exploding, and sirens wailing. it was really scary. then we'd see people run up our alley from the main road. becca and i spotted our photojournalist friend from our window...he was right below us with his cameras and all. there were suspicious individuals who we tried to keep an eye on...of course, i got the majority of this on film. after about an hour back in the hotel room, the police broke up the protest and things slowly went back to normal. the sun had set, people were sitting down to eat a candlight dinner, couples strolled by holding hands, and a man played a clarinet for change just below our window.
so i'm sure y'all are awaiting updates of my travels throughout the greek isles and the stops leading up to my arrival here in rome (we arrived yesterday). but i have an interesting story to tell.we've been island hopping for the past week and a half, enjoying the beautiful landscapes despite the dampening rain. that has been quite a tragedy. but not the point. once we finished with our travels throughout the isles, we took an overnight cruise on a ship to southern italy. however, once we arrived in itlay, we were out of connection with the world. this is becuase for three nights, both of the hotels we stayed at had 1. no internet connection and 2. no phone lines availible to us 3. in the middle of nowhere. they did have some nice views/ close proximity to ruins, but we felt a bit removed from society. we had to pay to have air turned on, our tvs didn't work, and so on. okay so enough complaining. i know, i'm in europe for goodness sake.so anyway, point being that when we arrived here in rome yesterday, we were desparate for both laundry and contact with loved ones. becca and i hit the ground running and were first to locate the nearest laundry facility and get it going. when we finally got back, we walked into carina and katie's room to be in the middle of a story that confused me.she was talking about a man who had tuberculosis that traveled on like 7 flights or something. it didn't really make sense to me at first why she was so animated about the story or why this mattered so much. i don't know if you have heard the news about the atlanta man who flew to athens, greece for his wedding and had a severe/rare case of tb, but it turns out that this same man flew on the same flight from paris to athens that carina and jamie had been on. jamie and i have been roommates the whole trip and carina, jamie, me, becca, sarah, and katie have been hanging out the entire trip.so basically, this all broke out on our last night in greece and school officials, parents, etc. have been trying to get in contact with us because they knew they had been on that flight with him. we find all this out last night and they would have to use their first free day in rome to get tests in the hospital. fun, huh?but this is not the end of the coincidental story. as we gathered more information about the circumstances surrounding the events of tb man, how he was from atlanta, how he just got married in athens, we make a very sudden and ironic connection. a random and rather unimportant conversation with an older atlanta man who shared a breakfast buffet with us at our hotel (which pretty much only housed our group of 30 and maybe 3 additional rooms) popped out of our blur of memories from the past 3 weeks. we had finished our week in athens, had enjoyed our stay in mykonos, and were wrapping up our stay in santorini when this man told us he too was from atlanta and he and his wife and the other couple had come to greece for their son's wedding which was that past weekend. the wedding was in athens, greece. so basically, not only did jamie and carina fly on the same airplane as tb man, but we ate breakfast with his parents a week and a half later! its just too strange to comprehend.as for the testing today, their chest xray scans came up negative and they are still awaiting the tb test prick in the arm which they'll go back for on wednesday. so i think we're safe. we'll see...if you hear of an outbreak of tb amongst a group of georgia students, think of me.
internet access here is not so easy...either i dish out about $1.50 for 15 minutes on the computer, or i sit and wait for the opportunity to borrow one from one of the lovely people on study abroad that had the guts to bring one along. one has finally fallen into my hands.
becca and i left about 9 days ago and headed for greece. the flight alone was interesting enough, but i'll just get to the part where we got to baggage claim and had no bags to claim. yes. becca and i in our heels and dress clothes (being "non-revs") after they were our pjs a few hours before, would have to remain in them for an additional 28 hours or so.
apparently, delta decided that the weight of the airplane couldn't hold an additional 84 pounds of luggage and decided to hold it in atlanta. we figure that after finding becca's bag had been searched by the asa, they simply missed the plane or something. so in a haze, we wandered around athens trying to find our hotel and later some flip flops to escape the pain of walking on cobblestone in heels. but of course, every plastic flip flop turns outto be at least $30.
instead, we had to use that money to go back to the airport the next day to pick up our beloved baggage. it was a one hour trip both ways, but so worth getting out of those clothes!
becca and i spent the rest of that second day getting acquainted with our next hotel's location. we mastered the metro with no problem and haven't gotten lost yet. we surprised some of our study abroad buddies by showing up at the hotel and explored the area. those extra two days really helped us get our bearings.
on monday we all headed to the beach. the mediterranean is a bit colder than we all anticipated and quite rocky. like most european countries, they don't seem to like swimsuits over here. we had some rather akward moments as topless girls in thongs decided to occupy the sand adjacent to us. it was even worse when a perverted man busted out his camera phone, as you can imagine.
we were bombarded with men trying to sell us a wide variety of items, from bouncing, light up sea urchins to magazines about jesus in greek to bikinis those girls don't want to wear anyway. theres a lot of that around here. but aside from that and not having any towels to lay out on, the view was beautiful.
later we met up with all the study abroad group that made it to the hotel on time. thanos, our professor, lead us to the top of a mountain right next the the acropolis that had the most amazing view of the city. there are buildings sprawling out just about as far as the eye can see...we could see the mediterranean in the distance, the acropolis, and a number of other significant mountains and landmarks. the view was amazing at the top. it wasn't so great on the way down.
becca, kaite, sarah, and i all stayed back to take more pictures and admire the view. the group was only about 5 minutes ahead of us. but somehow i guess we took the wrong path. we were just chatting and watching our footing on our way down the mountain path that was lined with trees and brush. suddenly from the corner of my eye, i saw more to a male figure than i wanted to see. we all quickly passed by this man, trying to continue our conversation that was being held moments ago, but words were mostly lost into studders. i don't know why a man in a blue collared dress shirt and dress socks would be standing on the side of a mountain without any pants, but it definitly wasn't what any of us were expecting or wanted to see.
tuesday kicked off our week of intense sight seeing. we took a long bus ride to mycenae to see the ruins of one of the most ancient pre-grecain civilizations. it involved a lot of hiking and beautiful views, like most of the days, but i think my favorite part was where we stopped for lunch. we stopped in the beautiful city of nafpoli, which used to be the captial of greece. it was right by a blue sea, with some sort of castle that appeared to be floating in the middle. the streets were packed with vedors of souveniers, but what i admired most were the flowering vines of pink flowers that crawled over the walkway from one balcony to the other. there were two mountains there, the tallest with a huge mideaval fortress on top and the other with an older one. we got some delicious gelato...it was a great way to start the trip!
the next day we began our tour of classical athens, visiting the agora and, of course, the acropolis. at the acropolis, the cheif architect gave us a behind the scenes tour of the reconstruction...we got to see how they are carving the new marble to fit with the ruins. its amazing how many pieces of various buildings they have and they pretty much know how it all fits together! so that was pretty cool.
our hotel is right next to the acropolis, literally a 5 minute walk to the gates. we're in the heart of the touristy district, which has its ups and downs. we always have a fabulous view of the city and the acropolis from our hotel's roof garden. the bad part is that whenever you step outside the hotel, the restaurant people are enticing you to "come! eat here! we have best food in athens" and "pretty girls, would you like something sweet? drinks? coffee?" and so on. i hate that as much as i hate the men trying to sell those bouncy sea urchins.
so on with the trip. thursday we did some more hiking around athens. THE longest day ever. we probably walked about 6 or 7 miles and i took about 15 pages of notes (which means pretty much the whole time). it was very hot. but despite the length, it was great.j
one fun story is when we were about to cross the street at the beginning of the day, a fat lazy dog awoke from his slumber on the sidewalk. well, when a group of about 30 people walked up, he woke up and decided to cross the street with us. its funny how all the dogs here know to wait for the people to start crossing. anyway, the lights are retarded, and only a few people make it barely two steps beyond the median before the light changes red for us to cross. so they turn back and all 30 of us squeeze onto a 3 foot wide median. but the dog was unaware of this, so when he got to the other side, he realized his new pack was not with him. he barked and howled at the cars and motercycles as they whizzed by, as if he were angry with them. it was pretty funny to watch and he did this the whole time we waited. when we all finally crossed, he was satisfied, but would bark at the stragers that passed by. so this dog followed us for a solid hour and a half...he waddled through the town, up the streets, didn't give a ticket to get through the gates to the acropolis, sat with us through lecture, climbed up the rocky slopes, you name it. he was our pet for the day.
we took a break for lunch and the most exciting thing about that was becca got pooped on by a bird. well, maybe not exciting, but it was pretty darn funny. but my bad event came later when we finally ended our day and we were all walking back from the other side of town. i was exhausted and weary, walking along the road when suddenly my vision turned sideways and i was catching myself on the ground and my ankle popped. i had stepped in a massive 4 inch deep pothole in thev middle of the freaking road! it hurt painfully bad and becca was kind enough to let me hobble home with her assistance. it was swollen pretty bad until about sunday (which is today).
friday was a fabulous break from the excessive walking of the day before. it was a 3 hour bus ride to delphi, where the gods were said to have lived. apparently, theres some kind of chemical in the water there that made people high, causing them to hallucinate and stuff like that. if you smelled too much of the fumes or drank too much of the water, you would die. anyway, it was gorgeous up there, the mountains were incredibly high.
i spent a lot of the time after the excursions rewriting my notes into a final journal. its very exhausting. but anyway, the past two days have been pretty low key. we went to the national museum yesterday and then dished out a lot of money for laundry. its been rainy, of course, on our days off, which sucks. but oh well.
we're leaving tomorrow morning at 6 am for mykonos. more updates to come!
so resolutions are no good. i guess you can hope for the best, but that obviously doesn't always happen. of course, this semester has been just as chaotic as the last and at no point did i sit down and say to myself "i have too much time on my hands. i guess i'll blog."i had a huge semester long project that i'm sure i'll be wanting to post soon. i designed a house for my boyfriend jonathan's parents and did everything from bubble diagrams and programming to picking out finishes and rendering final perspectives (and believe me, theres a lot in between). thats a pretty good summary of the semester.the girls (anna, amy, and colette) and i are all living in a new house together next year. the plus side is its brand new (we signed the contract within a week of them breaking ground). the downside is its kinda in the ghetto. but we'll make do and have a wonderful final year (well...i might be the only one in my final year).i guess i just wanted to summarize the semester before i study abroad for two months all over greece and italy. the plan is (as it always is) to keep everyone who wants to be informed on the adventures of the trip. i'm sure there will be some great stories to tell. lets just see if i'll be able to share them while away (may 12-july 7).stay tuned in the midst of static...
i am not lance armstrong. i am not sweat proof. i am not a mechanical expert.
but after two and a half years of walking up and down the hills of uga's extensive campus, i have gotten my hands on a red "vintage" road bike.
why not until now? refer to line one. plus add that the idea of having a bike at school has always been just that...an idea. but after many occasions last semester when i had to walk a mile home in the dark by the cold moonlight (because i am a car-less junior), i figured it was time to make the dream a reality.
the benefits of having a bike? getting to an fro quickly. perhaps extending the boundaries of how far i can venture. exercise.
the setbacks? i mentioned that i'm not sweat proof. biking uphill for a few hundred feet with giant buses trying to pass on my left doesn't help that. secondly, i haven't ridden a bike in years, let alone having never ridden a road bike.
so the first week of classes i shied away from riding the new mode of transportation for fear of losing balance and falling off in front of a bus to meet my demise. so basically, i had to teach myself how to ride a bike.
side note. wherever the expression "its like riding a bike" came from, it should be scratched out of the cliché handbook. i always took it to mean that once you learn it, it comes right back to you...but no. i wouldn't say that the bike analogy works for me like that.
of course, the last bike i rode was magenta. it was smaller. i sat straight up on the seat...which was comfy. it had the gear shifts ON the handlebars. that was brilliant. those were the days when bike riding was easy.
i think what made this bike so hard to adjust to was the fact that i have to bend over and reach pretty far for the handlebars...plus they're curled. i don't think the seat and i were meant for each other. and i have to take my hands OFF the handlebar in order to shift the gear.
so anyway, the bike and i were just starting to get along. i was getting used to squeezing the crap out of the brakes to slow down and shifting as i'm starting up a hill has become quite a talent of mine. though i have bruises covering both my legs from having to carry my bike up two flights of stairs to my apartment because there are no more spots left on the bike rack, it gives my arms a little exercise. i get to class in the morning a little out of breath and breaking a sweat, but i can deal with it. and aside from the gears deciding to jump around while i'm pushing my way up a steep hill, things had been going just fine.
but like i said, i am no mechanical expert. i guess i should have taken the gears jumping around while i'm pedaling as a symptom of something much worse. last monday i hopped on my bike after a full day of classes and began pedaling my way home. i waited at the stoplight for a green light, and when i began to pedal again, there was no resistance and i was only moving because i was heading downhill.
i pulled over the the side and, embarrassed, climbed off my bike to analyze the problem. it just so happened that the chain had come off the gears completely. i spent the next 15 minutes trying to reattach the chain with no success. the only result was wasting time, getting black grease all over my hands, and having to push my bike all the way home.
in short: not fun.
i have yet to fix it. that would take me googling bike gears or something and trying to guess by looking at pictures. so that is the extent of my biking experience in the past few months. it hasn't been as easy or ideal as my expectations.
if my life only consisted of what was written on my blog, it would be proof that i didn't have much of one (be that a blog or a life). according to my blog, all i've done in the past six months or so is get a speeding ticket, get locked in a bathroom, and drawn a bunch of random things.its a relief that i'm not required to record my life's events, though they do tend to disappear from my memories when i don't. i guess that was my intention when i began this blog back when college was a fresh beginning. i wanted to keep track of all the funny moments, random trips, and perhaps any insightful thoughts i had...though those are quite rare.last semester, i figured it would be mundane to write about things that were going on because it felt like all i did was work in the studio. but thinking back now, plenty happened that was interesting...but eventually i won't be able to remember much about it at all. so i'm using this post to say that i need to be better at posting...for me and my future faulty memory a few years down the road and for all those who wish to keep up with the happenings in my life. not that there are many of you out there.anyway, i guess you can say its like a new years resoultion a few months late...or maybe a valentine's day resolution that is not really associated with love or romance whatsoever. so here's to being a better blogger...but you know resolutions are hard to keep.
it was only one of many time consuming classes that i had, but the work from my rendering class is probably more interesting than drafting.
when the semester began, none of us in the program knew how we were going to be able to do what our professors expected of us. its amazing to see how far we came in just one semester.
i've tried to arrange the following pictures in the order i drew them. all of them were done with prismacolor markers and colored pencils.
