Amsterdam

Sorry this post is late. I've been a bit under the weather the past couple of days. Besides going through a box of tissues in less than two days I'm fine. The trip to Amsterdam was amazing. I absolutely loved the city. It has such an amazing vibe to it. I don't think I would want to live there but it is a city that I would love to go back and visit.

The first day was very disorienting. We were let loose on the city with just a map with some dots of a few suggested places. Needless to say we got lost a lot. In fact I'm not sure we knew where we were most of that day.

I learned very quickly that bicycle bells are harbingers of death and destruction. Amsterdam is a bicycle city. They barely tolerate pedestrians and even the very rare car. Cyclists will pass you before you even know that they were behind you. I was almost hit a few times but I returned to Farnham unscathed.

Walking through the city is amazing. There is a great juxtaposition of old and modern. The picture below is of the courtyard of this really neat store. Its a modern design store called the Droog. It had some amazing things inside it. I so want their birdhouses. Just around the corner from the Droog were beautiful canal houses.

I went to a lot of places. I did go to the Anne Frank House Museum. It was a great museum. Very well done. The line to get in was huge though. My favorite museum was probably the Van Gogh Museum. It was a lot of fun to sketch in there. As you walked through the museum they tell his life story through his paintings and letters.

I really did have a great time. I'll upload some of my sketches later. I will leave you with this lovely sign of spring I found on my return to Farnham. I promise it is coming soon. I know that is hard to believe for all of those in Indiana.

Greetings from Amsterdam!

I'm in Amsterdam! It was a really long bus ride with a very early start. The bus ride was very interesting. When we crossed over from England to France we used the Eurotunnel. Basically, our bus drove into a large shipping container sized compartment. The containers are actually attached to a train. After everyone is loaded up both vehicles and people are driven through the tunnel. It is a very quick crossing. We were in France after about half an hour.

Driving through France and Belgium was really great. It was oddly familiar. It was very flat. The landscape reminded me a lot of Amish country in Indiana. Instead of white wooden buildings the farms we passed had red brick buildings. Throw in a few more trees and a couple horses and buggies and I would have sworn I was back in Indiana. 

We stopped in Ghent, Belgium. While we were there we stopped at the Design Museum of Ghent. It was a great museum. The building that the museum was in was unlike any museum I've seen before. It is a very old building with rough wooden floors. The next room might be ultra modern and have a newer stone floor. It was really neat to see how they married the old with the new. 

While we were there they had an exhibit about light. They had amazing displays of light everywhere. Here is a picture of my favorite display. I loved how they put a very modern display in a traditional room. There was light everywhere. It was extremely beautiful. 

After I was done visiting the museum I had some free time. Not too far away from the museum was the canal. I sat on the edge of the canal and sketched for about an hour. It was a lot of fun. People were coming up behind me and watching me draw. It was a very new experience for me. I don't have a scanned copy of the drawing yet but here was my view. It was so surreal to be there. 

It took another three hours to get to Amsterdam from Ghent. I was very happy when we finally arrived. Tomorrow we get to go to a museum and explore the city. I can't wait to see Amsterdam. 

Slides

A week from today I should be in Amsterdam! It's crazy how fast the trip has come up. Our class has a really packed week planned. I can't wait to share my adventure. 

We've really been working on taking a concept and carrying it through to a final piece in class. On Thursday I had my first project presentation. It went pretty well. We've been studying the concept of traces. As part of that we have been playing with slides and filmmaking. I've really enjoyed working with the old style slides. 

I made a few traditional type slides but I stumbled on something kind of fun. I took fishing line and super glued them into the slide frames. I used dried sheets of Elmer's glue (PVC glue in the UK) and ink to get the colored parts. I really enjoyed working with the slides. We get to develop our ideas further this week and I think I have an interesting plan. I'll share it in the next blog post. 

I also wanted to share this photo I took. If I had been back in Indiana I would have been waiting to see a funnel cloud. The weather was so strange. It had just finished hailing and the sun was going down. The atmosphere was amazing. I was a little freaked out by it though.The air felt charged from the hail falling. It really did feel like tornado weather. Thankfully England does not get tornadoes as often as Indiana.

Snow and Cooking

It actually snowed here! It came down for all of ten minutes. Most of my classmates have not had much experience with snow. It was a lot of fun to watch their reactions. The snow did not stay on the ground very long. There was only enough for one small snowball fight before it turned into muddy sludge. The funniest part of all of this was the local reaction. My university actually sent us links to check in case they had to cancel classes the next day. We were even late on our visit to the Canterbury campus the next day because of the snow. The picture below is the view of the blizzard from my window.

Our visit to the Canterbury campus was a whirlwind.  UCA's Architecture and Fine Arts programs are housed at this campus. We did a really fun activity with the Architecture department. The goal of the activity was work in groups and build the tallest tower out of zip ties and hula hoops. My group was the third highest structure that could stand on it's own weight.

I do plan on going back to Canterbury and see the cathedral and other sites. The quick glance I got of the cathedral set off my history geek radar.

The best part of the week was when the Kitchen Fairy came! I finally got my UK bank card and could buy cooking supplies. Last night was the first time I got to cook a homemade meal since I got here. It was wonderful to finally be able to cook. I've been here almost a complete month. It has been a really wonderful experience so far. I can't wait to see what other great experiences are waiting for me.