My birfffday!!

My 21st birthday was on a Monday - first day of classes after spring break. So I thought everyone would be busy getting ready for school and recovering from their breaks. I decided to have dinner at a russian restaurant called Marina. I called and reserved for seven people in Russian. It was very exciting to have someone understand me in Italy! The owner told me that he could tell I lived in the states for a while because of the way I spoke. haha. But he was either from Georgia or Azerbajan and had the thickest accent himself! For dinner, it was me, Kathleen, Katelin, Gina, Jenah, Elena, and James (who came to visit my roommates for a week from Westchester). When we sat down at the table, a guy came in who was selling roses, so the owner bought me a rose! It was so cute! We also got a bottle of wine on the house! I had galuptsi sa smetanay and they were delicious!! Katelin had pelmeni sa smetanay, and Jenah had some zharkoye. They all really liked their food. Elena got me a tiara, and I wore it the whole night! After dinner my roommates and James went home and the rest of us went out to Yab, which is a club in the center. There was hip-hop night there and a bunch of breakdancers. We had a great time!

Amsterdam 3/11 - 3/15

Our train ride to Amsterdam took about 16 hours and it was a pain! I printed out the wrong part of the ticket so I didn't have my seat number. I was so scared I would get kicked off the train. I was in compartment with Kathleen, and Katelin was in another compartment with this Czech guy. Kathleen and I came over to Katelin's compartment to hang out because we still had like 3-4 hours before we should be goin to sleep. The guy, whose name is Vladimir, was a musician, in his 30s, and very good looking. He knew ten different languages because he has been traveling all over the world. He knows Czech, Eng, RUssian, Spanish, Italian, Serbian, Japanese, Arabic, and some other ones! He doesn't really have a permanent home since he hasnt stayed in one place for too long. He told us really crazy stories about how he hitchhiked across Germany and Japan. He said that it's not as dangerous to do it in Europe and that Germany was the easiest place to hitchhike in (good to know). He told us about the time him and his girlfriend tried hitchhiking in Italy and some drunk man picked them up. For some reason as they were sitting in the car, the man reached for a gun and Vladimir and his gf just opened the doors and rolled out of the car. Vladimir sounded like he knew a lot about life and he gave some good advice.

After a few hours of talking kathleen and I went back to our own compartment and tried to fall asleep. It was just us two at first, but then around midnight our train stopped in Berlin and a bunch of people came into our compartment. It's really hard to sleep when you're sitting squished in between strangers. So I did not get much sleep that night.

The first day in Amsterdam we went to the zoo and aquarium. The zoo was not that impressive. Definitely no where close to the Bronx zoo. there were just a bunch of animals in very tiny, not so animal-friendly environments. The fish in the aquarium were beautiful with very cool patterns. Why do they need such bright colors and such beautiful geometric patterns? I was very inspired by their designs and want to do a series of paintings on fish patterns...haha we'll see how that works out. After, we just walked around a bit, stopped by a coffee shop - Bluebird, and then by 7 we came back to the hostel. All of us fell asleep by accident until the morning.

The next day Olga came and I was very excited! Before she came though, my roommates and I went to the Rembrandt house. It did not have any of his paintings, just his etchings. They were soooo amazing! He did not try to idealize people, but drew them the way they actually were. He was not afraid to emphasize people's not so pretty features. Many of his etchings were tiny...like 1 or 2 sq inches. I took my time looking through all of them and making some sketches. My favorite was the one of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Both of them are not so hot, especially Eve who has really frizzy hair and a saggy tummy. I also got a better idea of how an etching is made.

When Olga finally came, we walked around the redlight district. We ran into Zach...how random! He was there for spring break, and he's not even studying abroad. It took us a while to find the windows where prostitutes just line up and stand there. We walked into these narrow, creepy alleyways by accident, and that's where all of them were. Those streets were all filled with men, and it was pretty frightening walking there at night. That area is supposed to be the safest in Amsterdam though because there are so many cops there.

Olga and I also looked for a bridge that was supposed to have a really nice view of the canals at night. We walked through a bunch of canals, really pretty castles, and brightly lit up streets to get there. We had a little photoshoot on the way since Olga had her prof slr cannon. We walked around so much that day and were extremely tired by the end. We had some shoarma for dinner and then went to check out the nightlife in Leidseplein Sq. That whole area was filled with bars and clubs. Olga and I just decided to go from one place to the next to the next, since none of them had cover charges. The first place that we went to had "macarena" blasting as we walked in. That was definitely a plus! We decided to leave our coats at the coatcheck there so we wouldn't have to worry about carrying them around the whole night. Then we went to another club that had a bunch of people standing outside waiting to get in. They all looked pretty young, probably younger than us. Once you enter the club, the bouncer tells you to lean your head back and pours a shot in your mouth before you enter. We danced around there for a bit. Olga spotted someone she thought was cute...an emo boy who looked like a girl and was probably like 17 yrs old. typical.

We just hopped around from place to place and spoke Russian most of the night. Every single place we went to charges at least 50 cents to use the bathroom. So annoying! there aren't free bathrooms anywhere in Amsterdam! When we got back to the hostel we couldn't get our door to open. We kept on ringing the doorbell even though it was like 3 in the morning. But no one would open the door for us. Then Olga just pushed the door and it opened right away. So it was open the whole time, and we felt so stupid.

The next day was very eventful. Olga and I split up from Kathleen and Katelin because we wanted to walk to the Van Gogh museum, but they wanted to take the tram. On our way there we found some really cute shops and a flower market. There was also a Christmas store with pretty decorations and different ornaments. The Van Gogh museum was amazing! It had three levels. THe very top was dedicated to his art friends, artist of his time, and artists that inspired him, such as post-impressionists. Then the other floor were all his paintings and some drawings. His career only spanned 10 years and he produced about 800 paintings. The bottom level was dedicated to his fascination with twilight. It had a bunch of paintings of dusk and dawn, and of course included his most famous piece, Starry Night.

After the museum, Olga and I were really overwhelmed by all the art, so before going to the masterpieces museum, we decided to take the tram and bus to see a windmill. The windmill was in the middle of the city...it was bizarre. We took some pics by it and left after about ten minutes. Then we took the bus and tram back to the museum area and went to the Rijksmuseum. We saw some Rembrandts and Vermeers, but other than that I wasn't really impressed with it. I learned that Vermeer only produced like 30 paintings in his lifetime that we know of.


After, we walked around for like 2 hrs trying to find a cheap dinner. All the places were extremely expensive. We found this one block filled with cute restaurants. Amsterdam has any type of food you can ever want...Indonesian, indian, mexican, chinese, thai, japanese...but we couldn't find any Dutch food! Everything was over 20 euro. So we ended up settling for some cheap stirfry from a chain Chinese take-out, and it was GROSS!!

We finally came back to the hostel for a little bit and then went out in Rembrandt Plein. We wanted to have a chill night, we just went to a coffee shop for a beer. There was a Russian couple sitting in front of us, and we were trying to guess their names. We came to the conclusion that it's probably Svetlana and Veetya. The bouncer in the coffee shop randomly came up to us and told us that he met us last night at another club. He also said that we were speaking Spanish to him (but i think it was Italian). I dont remember any of that eeeeek. The coffee shop was playing really hilarious music like Baby One More Time and the Gypsy Kings. After the coffeeshop we got some ice cream and walked home.

The next morning, we went to a few outside markets and then to the Sex Museum. There were a bunch of old men there walking around which was kind of creepy. Olga left around 2 pm and I went back to the hostel to meet up with Kathleen and Katelin.

some of my artwork from this semester

This is my big painting I was working on up until mid semester, and some other little studies/sketches. I don't know if you can tell, but it's really big! Our assignment was to pick an object and develop a concept based on that object. It was a long process just developing my idea and experimenting with a lot of different stuff (you could see some of the experiments i did on the small canvases below my painting). My object was a flower...as i was making a study of it, it just died on me. so then i decided to go along with the concept of life and death/vulnerability and really capture flowers in their dying stages. I used a lot of texture - i made a really really really thick layer of gesso and glued flowers all over the canvas. then i painted over the flowers with gesso and white oil paint. All the pigment that you see on the flowers is their natural pigment as they dry up...no colored paint was added!!
Sorry these pics came out kinda dark. I'll try photoshoping them later.

March 9th in Praha

So I've been doing a pretty good job blogging during this break surprisingly. Today my roommates and I decided to wake up early and go on a tour of the castle. We had to meet our tour guide at 10:50 by the astronomical clock again. The day was perfect in the morning...very sunny but pretty chilly. It was this young Czech woman and she was a pretty good tour guide. I asked her if many people in Prague still speak Russian and she said that her parents do and she learned it because she likes how it sounds. She told us that Prague has four main types of architecture - Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque. I first thought the castle would be really old-fashioned looking - like in Gothic style, but it turned out to be mostly Baroque. My favorite fact that I learned today was that Rococo actually means sea shell in Italian!! And all Rococo architecture has sea shells on the buildings. Why didn't our art history professors ever tell us such a vital fact?? We weren't actually allowed to go into the castle, but we got to see the changing of the guards which was pretty cool. We also went into St. Vitus cathedral which was right next to the castle. It is in the gothic style, and is considered the most important Church in the country. We learned about the legend of St. John of Nepomuk, who was buried there. He refused to tell the secrets of the queen of Bohemia, and was thrown off the bridge because of that. Legend says that when he was thrown off the bridge, people could see stars in the water. Many years later when Catholics dug up his grave to check for signs that a miracle has occured, they found his tounge completely intact because he did not spill out the Queen's secrets (usually the tounge completely decomposes). Later they realized that the tounge was actually the brain, which decomposed, turned into mush, and then fell down into his jaw! Yuck!

Then we just walked around and got a really nice view of Prague from the castle hill. We saw a bunch of other soldiers walking by, and one of them was smirking at us when we took a picture of him. How unprofessional of him. And when we were leaving the castle, one of the guards that was guarding it (standing very still like the guards at Buckingham Palace) was falling asleep while standing! Once we left the castle it started drizzling and then hailing! And it was sooo cold!
We then went to a toy museum right next to the castle after our tour. the museum had very creepy dolls and many toys from the 1900s. There were a bunch that looked like devils and ones that were doing really scandalous things. the museum also had a huge barbie collection. We saw spice girls Barbie dolls, 90210 dolls, Skipper, and Barbie's best friend Midge (who is not as pretty as Barbie because of her freckles and her not-so-hot face). All the toys brought back many childhood memories.
Then we got rained on some more as we were walking back to the metro. As we were walking some guy randomly ran up to Katelin and jumped under her umbrella, and then I offered my umbrella to one of the other people from his group. They were completely drenched!
When we got back to the hotel, we wanted to go to some kind of music venue, like a concert, ballet, or Jazz club but when we looked into it online, we discovered that everything is closed on Mondays. We ended up just going to dinner and then a few drinks afterwards. We got thai food and it was delicious!! I got this soup called Tom Ca Koong, and it was with prauns, coconut, and some spicy stuff. soooo goood. and then me, Kathleen, and Katelin split an amazing chocolate cake. I'm going to add pictures when I come back from break, so keep checking back!

March 8th

Yesterday was a very educational day for us in Prague. First we got a tour of the Jewish ghetto and then Kathleen and I went to the Communist museum. We woke up around 11 and booked a tour of the Jewish ghetto online. We figured it would be much more meaningful for someone to explain to us what everything is since I don't know much about the Czech Jews and my roommates don't know much about Jews in general. The Jewish quarter is the biggest and most impressive Jewish ghetto in all of Europe. The tour started at the astronomical clock (a medieval clock which is a big tourist attraction now-a-days). Our tour guide was named George (he had some really complicated name in Czech, but he told us to call him George). He kind of reminded me of Agaustus Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate factory. We were the only ones on the tour so we were able to ask a lot of questions. We learned a lot about the Czech jews and the conditions they were living under throughout the centuries. There were always good periods and bad periods. THe good periods were always when the Protestants ruled, and the bad periods were always when the Catholic Church ruled. The Jews were put into a ghetto during the Catholic rule (i think in the 1300s), were made to wear yellow hats, and were not allowed to leave the ghetto at night. We also went to the Spanish Synagogue which looked very Sephardic and had architecture that looked like it was influenced by the Middle East. It was filled with intricate decorations and gold everywhere. There was also a Jewish museum that showed a bunch of world famous Jews from the Czech Republic...such as Kafka. Then we went to a memorial for the thousands of Jews killed in Prague (only 10% of the Prague Jewish population survived the Holocaust!). The memorial was in the Jewish synagogue and all of the walls were filled with names of the victims, the town they were from, and the date they were deported. The names took up all of the first floor and second floor of the synagogue. It was crazy to visually see all of the names written out because we could actually get an idea of how many people perished, as opposed to just getting a numerical statistic. It took the people about 15 years to come up with a list of all the victims and another year and a half to write all of the names out.
We also went to the old Jewish cemetery. It was filled with gravestones very close together and from all different time periods. Because there was not enough space to bury the dead, the Jews stacked bodies on top of bodies over time. There were about 12 levels of graves. Our tour guide told us that if you look at the symbols depicted on the graves, you could figure out their family name. For example...A pair of hands is Cohen, a water pitcher is Levy, a rose could be Rosenthal or Rosenstein. Modern jewish names are mostly german translations- so families with the words "Gold" or "Silver" like Goldberg or Silverstein were bought to elevate their status hundreds of years ago. Jews wanted to have German last-names so they could fit into society better and be more respected.
The tour was a bit overwhelming. The tour guide presented way too much information, but a lot of it was things I knew from before. George thought that we were at the beginner level of Jewish knowledge (which my roommates definitely were) so he didn't present us with too many complicated facts. After the tour, we went to get some hot chocolate and then Katelin went home because she didn't feel well, and Kathleen and I went to the Communist museum. It was a lot of reading but it had some really interesting info about communism in Czechoslovakia. It had different artifacts like communist books, old bike, a big scary suit in case there was a nuclear attack. THere was also this blackboard with a homework assignment and poem from the teacher in Russian about some girl feeding geese and cows. There was a short documentary as well that included very graphic footage of protesters against the regime. It showed people getting beat up and harassed by the Commies. One British man was trying to get footage of the protest and a commie ripped out his film. There was also a 20 yr old student who lit himself on fire to protest the regime and died from his burns. After the museum, we walked back to the hostel, got some food at the supermarket for dinner, and just chilled at the hostel for the night.

Praha - first few days (March 7th)

After a very stressful and hectic midterms week, it was time for spring break!! Me and my two roommates -Kathleen and Katelin made plans to go to Prague and Amsterdam several weeks before. Kathleens birthday was this Saturday, and so was Gina's, so Gina decided to meet us in Prague for literally a day to have a double birthday bash! My roommates left on Fri March 6th, but I booked my plane ticket for Sat because it was twice as cheap. So me - the girl who gets lost everywhere - decided to travel to a country all by myself. I had to take the bus, a train to Rome, then from Rome a train to the airport, and then from the airport a bus to the hostel. Crazy right! I made it in one piece and managed to not even get lost...well maybe a little. I had to ask a bunch of people for directions though. I also discovered that i now have a phobia of flying from my traumatizing flight to Florence in January. When the plane started to take off to Prague, I started tearing up a little because i was so scared. And then when it was landing, i was asleep so it wasn't too bad. Our plane had a huge group of Italian highschoolers who were being very obnoxious. THey were screaming during take-off and cheering and yelling through out the whole flight...which didn't really help my phobia. Oh and when I got to Prague, and I had to take the metro to the hostel I didn't really know which direction to take it so I just jumped on a train and asked some random old man if I'm going the right way in English. He didn't understand me so I changed to Russian...and he was like.."oy ti Ruskaya da?" And I was hesitant to say yes because I heard they don't reeally like Russians there. But he was very very nice, and helped me out. He also wished me to have a very great trip.
So I finally met up with my roommates and Gina at the hostel and we decided to get some sushi that was right around the corner. Gina and I walked in there and looked at the menu and it was waaaay overpriced. California rolls for like 20 Euro. We thought we would be eating like kings in Prague since 1 Euro is equal to 28 in Czech money. Talk about inflation! We decided to look for another place to eat but every restaurant we passed the menu was in Czech and we couldn't understand it at all. We were trying to look for a place that had English translations and we finally found one. But it was pretty much like a diner with American food.
After dinner we decided to go crazy since we had two birthday girls who just turned 21! First, we went to a local bar right next to our hotel. The drinks were extremely cheap so we just chilled there for a bit. Then around 12:30 we hit up the discotech, which is supposed to be the best in Prague. The discotech was sooooo much fun. The DJ was incredible...it was American music (but really good american music you could actually dance to). And the most surprising thing was that noneof the guys were being sleezy. They were just minding their own business. so us girls were just having a ball dancing and not having to worry about anyone disrupting our time. Gina had to catch the plane at around 6 am, so we ended up leaving around 3:30 so she could get a taxi to the airport. On the walk back Katelin and I were walking behind Gina and Kathleen and all of a sudden we lost them because we didn't see them turn a corner. Katelin and I didn't really know where we were going and everything looks so different at night..After a while we found our hostel, but we were too embarrassed to tell Kathleen and Gina what happened to us, so we just said we stopped by at a bathroom and that I had to tie my shoe. We decided to sleep in the next day...