En mi casa

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree...

Well, they say there is no place like home.

Over the past few months in Spain, and these couple weeks back here in Maryland I'm just beginning to learn and understand what home is. For some it is where you make your family or where you grew up. For others it is where you are happy.

For me, right now home is where I can always find my dad stretched out on the lazyboy with a laptop in his lap, my mom would be nearby working on a puzzle with a big cup of Diet Coke sitting next to her. Maggie, my dog, will be snoozing under the coffee table with her feet sticking out at funny angles. Jenny would be in her room blasting her music while Kelly's relaxing watching something on MTV. We're far from the perfect family, but I'm lucky to have one that is so wonderful.

And with less than a year before I leave the nest for good, I'm wondering how I will make my future 'home,' wherever it may be.

So anywho, I'm now plotting my next travel adventure. Hopefully a little trip to Japan is in my immediate future. A little farther down the line I'd like to return to Europe and live in Budapest, Hungary as a teacher. I want be in that constant state of learning that I felt in Valencia and Paris. It was so completely inspiring, energizing and challenging to observe and then try to become a part of these places. To be frank, I'm hungry and I crave more of that feeling, that state and I refuse to let anything stop me from reaching it.

Look out World, cause I'm makin' my way!

Love, Katie

Week 15: Werk, werk, werk!

So this has been a fun filled week of double-checking that I understand exactly what the heck is going on with my finals and such. Otherwise doing my best to balance play with schoolwork with packing with eating all my food with finding more gifts. So far, good progress is being made as all my projects enter the polishing stages and the studying is going fairly decent.

I have one week left here in Valencia. All the fantastic people I've met are slowly leaving, hopping on those RyanAir planes and getting ready for their own twists on Christmas. We had a dinner and a movie this week at Tal's (pictures soon once I snag them from people!). Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godfathers was absolutely brilliant, the food was delish (Dutch zucchini cookies anyone?), the Sangria was sweet and the conversation was, "international," I suppose you could say. It's incredibly intriguing, the little traditions and quirks that survive the ages and help to define a culture in another's eyes.

Even if I've been moaning and groaning with homesickness for the past few weeks, it's really hitting me now how much I'll miss this place. Even more so the chances I'll be able to return here at all as it's time to head back to my Not-So-Real-World of UMBC before really stepping out into the Real World.

Well, my next Sunday post will probably be from the USA. Until then, thanks for reading everyone :)

Love, Katie

Week 13 & 14: Gay Paris!

Well well well, what can I say? Paris, Paris, Paris!

An incredible trip and just the break I needed before I begin working on my finals for Politecnica. 5 projects, 3 exams and one portfolio to do. Weeee...

Some of my stops included The Eiffel Tower, the Arc du Triomphe, Notre Dame, the American Cathedral of Paris, the Pantheon, Luxembourg Gardens, Montparnasse Cemetary, the Louvre, Musee d'Orsee, Musee d'Branly, the Centre Pompidou and I probably passed a bunch of amazing things as I wandered my way through this fantastic city.

I'm going to be updating this post more but as you can probably guess, catching up with work is going to be a pain. Over 600 photos were taken on this trip, so be patient while i find the best ones! More words and picture captions soon!

Taken from near the Musee d'Branly...

Lookin' up the Tower's skirt! Woo woo!

From across the river, I think.

I think this was near the Princess Diana memorial. Either way super neat clouds!

At nighttime when it was all sparkle-sparkle-sparkle! Very pretty!

Main hallway of the Musee d'Orsee, absolutely littered with delicious sculpture.

Posing with my hero, Paul Gauguin! This painting was my computer's wallpaper for over a year too.

Manet, I love you! If the bartender painting had been here too I would have flipped.

Fun story with this. I can now say I've visited two of the few copies of Honore Daumier's Ratapoil sculpture! Absolutely fantastic!

As well as another collection of clay reference sculptures he used for his caricatures!

Rodin's Gates of Hell. Quite terrifying up close, the detail was something one cannot fully understand just by looking at slides or pictures.

Mayan motifs on the glass of the Musee d'Branly.

Now I didn't fully understand what was going on here, but by the time I came out of the museum the previously clear plastic rod-lookin' things sticking out of the ground exploded into color as night fell.

Pastry! Omnomnom!

Mugs, ?, Judy and myself at the American Military Cemetary. This is the one Mugs used to work at.
The graves here are from both WWI and WWII.

There are also a few nurses buried here as well.

Me and the Arc du Triomph! Aren't we cute?

Door knocker. If I remember correctly, the lion represents good or the French people and the snake represents evil or something. Need to brush up on that, but anyway, this motif was in all nooks and crannies around the city. Also on the doors of the American Military Cemetery.

The Princess Diana Memorial.

Senate building, I think? Gold dome!
A street! Busy busy!
Kind of amusing how the first church I enter in France is the American Cathedral of Paris.

At this point I was feeling incredibly homesick. As soon as I caught sight of the Maryland flag I broke down in tears. I didn't see it as something weak for once.

Craaaaazy building!

Luxemborg Gardens.

Giant raven on the statue's head. Ho ho!

Flowers!

Fountain at Luxembourg Gardens. Was totally diggin' the reflections.

Montparnasse Cemetary.

The angel in the middle of the grounds. There were also gigantic ravens that were stalking me as I browsed the tombstones.

The Louvre and it's pyramids. Check out the videos at the bottom of the page to get an idea of how incredibly huge this courtyard was.
Say "Queso!" Er..."Fromage!"

Inside the glass pyramid.

A tiny glimpse at maybe what the old salons really looked like?

Waah waaaah. I love Easter Island Heads.

Ooo a peek into their statue stash!

Welcome to the Louvre


Delacroix Gallery


Mona Lisa


No Better Feeling

Week 12: Mi viaje a el museo!

Yum yum!

Oranges are in season here in Valencia's parks! I'm glad to know the homeless can get their vitamin C here.

Hey Mom!

Entrance garden was littered with old stone sculptures and broken pillars. Probably my favorite thing ever!

Entrance to the Museo de Belles Artes.

Steph really liked that sculpture...

The dome of the museum from the little garden.

Plaza for the older sculpture art. I was really impressed with all the old, old Valencian artwork. They put that bat crest everywhere.

This coffin was special since it looked like the guy had melted into it.

Oooh I really want to make a copy of this... Wish I knew what the Arabic says.

Hall of Baby Jesus being breastfed and people being eaten by demons. Christian art rocks.

This was gigantic.

Dome ceiling with stars.

How could I not take a picture of these ladies. Too bad the glare from the window forced me to have to take it from a weird angle.

Classy Spanish gentleman.

Om nom nom.

The guards were like hawks in this room, but I snagged a picture of a matador outfit that wasn't horrible without a flash. Crazy to think these intricate costumes are probably always ruined during the bullfights...Poor toros :(

We decided to explore centro historico some more and found some pretty buildings while searching for foodums.

Pretty pink buildings are always good in my book.

Stay out you heretics!

Column detail on church's back door.

Pretty window on church near Plaza de La Reina and the Plaza de La Virgen.

Carrer del Miracle.

I thought his nose was the knocker, but turns out you can look inside his mouth to see to the other side, hehe.

School
Museo de Belles Artes
Foodums

Week 10 & 11: Oh snaps.

Plaza de Ayuntamiento with its pretty fountain and palm trees.

I ate about 4 ½ out of the 5 of these guys.
Yeah buddy! Good tapas night!

Sorry for no blog last week, but since nothing spectacular had happened I opted to combine it with this week, which was much better (and because I'm lazy). Hopefully Blogger will be nice and upload the images without having a brainfart.

Rocio's amazing dress.

Rocio y yo.

School is dumping a lot of crap on me, but luckily my professors are being swell about helping me get stuff in order before leaving. The workload is going to be hell and I get to waste money on even more supplies I will probably only use once. Boooo! I wish I had told a white lie and said I was leaving a bit earlier just so I'd have a few days to recover from exams and projects before hopping on a plane for a 15+ hour flight homeward. Dumb dumb. So yeah, 5 weeks to go.

The fruits of my labors in Clay conservation/restoration.
Amazing aren't they??

Some dude and Biotza pose with a beautiful sculpture.

So we have some birthdays coming up! Jen-Jen's is tomorrow, Katya's on Tuesday and mine this Thursday. Sweeeet! My flatmates threw a very awesome fiesta last night for Rocio and I, complete with cute presents, lots of food and, as you can see, literally a bucket of this wine, grape juice and canned peaches mixture. They even made an "American" dessert, chocolate brownies! How sweet is that? :)

The gang!

The flatmates and the booze bucket.

Vane poses with me as I show off my sweet Bday gifts! A tote, and apron and some cute pencils!

Saturday was also the day I sliced the end of my pinky on a razor and discovered my room *does* have heating. It was a nice, cozy schnooze after walking back from the dance club in the 4oC weather. (That's about 39oF, haha.)

This is where I mail stuff. It's a lot prettier than Pville's post office...

Otherwise, mailed out some postcards and my UMBC housing contract this past Wednesday so keep an eye out, one may just appear in yours!

Love, Katie

Week 9: Wild and Crazy Spain

So this week we had some birthdays, Halloween, Mercado Medieval and a Biker Rally. Yes, you heard me correctly, I went to a biker rally. It was loud, smelly, packed with people and not what I expected at all. The cups they served booze in were bigger than cereal bowls. It wasn't exactly my favorite event this weekend, but at least I can say I've been to one.

The Mercado Medieval was a nice treat on Saturday after missing a train to Gandia with some German ladies I'd met in September. So much food and the most delish sausage I've eaten in a long, long time.








Countdowns:
8 days to register for classes.
18 days to my birthday.
25 days to my first test.
27 days to Paris trip.

Week 8: A Normal Week

I apologize as this blog may get a bit more boring as I focus more on school stuffs.

So a funny thing happened in Conservation/Restoration of Paper this week! We're moving on from the history of papermaking and onto the materials and such used on paper, their properties and their effects (types of ink, paint, etc). This shift means a new professor comes in. The lady was nice and I could keep up with her lecture more or less (thank God for Powerpoint presentations) and to my happy surprise, she speaks English as well. So we start to chat about my stay here and it eventually shifts to where I am from. And guess where she was living over the past two summers? Chevy Chase! That's right! Snuggled right into MoCo. She said she recognized my Merlin accent from my mangled Spanish. Go figure! Ok, ok now if that isn't exciting enough, guess where she was working? The Smithsonian Institute. Holy crap!

And that was about it. Had a birthday/Halloween fiesta for Angeles and Vir this past Saturday. When I get some photos from it I'll post em, but for now let's just say my tortilla de patata making skills will improve drastically after seeing the proper way to kick them out.

In other news, the class list for UMBC came out this weekend! Here's what I'm looking at for my very last semester at UMBC:

ART 489: (MW 2:00pm- 3:50pm) Senior Projects
ART 447: (TuTh 9:00am-10:50am) Special Effects and Motion Graphics
ART 429: (M 4:30pm- 7:00pm) Seminar in Art History and Theory: Museum Curatorship
MCS 222: (MWF 11:00am-11:50am) Introduction to Media and Communication Studies
AMST 320: (Tu 2:30pm- 3:45pm) Television in American Culture
AMST 322: (Th 7:10pm- 9:40pm) American Society and Culture in Film

Still not sure if would be wise to take the Art History course, as interesting and helpful it may be for that career path. :( (Plus senior projects conflicts with Preminda's Museum Theory class boo!) With my senior film in production for a big chunk of the semester, it may be an overload with 18 credits. The game plan will be to sign up for it and see what the courseload will be for the TV and Film studies class (which I expect to be a lot of writing and couch-potato action). Thoughts?

Love, Katie

Week 7: Deep-Fried and Delicious

The Space Invaders are taking over Valencia!

Wowie it really doesn't feel like I was in Barcelona just last week. Or that I'm about to reach the 2-month mark in Spain soon. Or that the Month of Amazing Births (Me, Jenny, Katya, Mandy, etc.) aka "November" is about to begin! How time flies!

This week was a sad reminder that I am, in fact, in school. It was a bit of a punch in the gut getting used to speaking and understanding Spanish again, but by Friday I was more or less back into the swing of things.

Pretty! Plaza Porta de La Mar.

The Conservation/Restoration of Sculpture class has more or less split into two sections, one of clay and one of stone. In clay, we are making all sorts of pots and stuff all sorts of ways, some old and some still used today. Like sticking your thumb into a sphere of mud, using a stone to shape a bowl or using a mold that sucks up the water. (Forgive my extreme ignorance when it comes to sculpture, I've never taken anything like a ceramics course in my life.) Stone's professor is much easier to understand then the clay class (who mumbles and speaks very softly, argh!), so I am relieved there. Plus he puts a lot of his materials online, allowing me to translate them directly instead of translating the notes I take in half-Spanish, half-English. Fun times I say, fun times.

(Angeles, Vir, Jordan, Miguel, Liis, Alice.)

Vir, all smiles as always!

So enough of that academic junk, I know you're only reading this to hear about the PARTIES! I threw a wee fiesta for my flatmates and some amigos from UPV. Half as a get together for friends, half as a way to connect with the flatmates after being antisocial for a little over a week. The beer-battered tempura went over a lot better then I expected (even though it could have been way better) and the BLTs gave my tummy a bit of a nostalgic turn, but with Alice's pesto dip, Liis' apple pie and the tons of booze donated by Jordan, Miguel, Angeles and Vir it was a very fun and chatty night. A downpour of rain and a very full belly put a halt to any post-dinner dancing though.

Mmmm...apple cake...

The rest of the week is looking to be much more academic, but hopefully I will get some artworks done as well. My goal this week is to make some more visual concepts and finish cleaning up SOOT's script so I can send it on to Eric Dyer to approve. The story/scriptwriting process takes me so loooong, and the characters don't even say anything! Argh!

Anywho, until next time!

Love, Katie

Week 6: To Barcelona and Back

I have a ton of things to talk about, but in the meantime, here are some photos from my Barcelona trip last week! Overall is was an awesome trip, the city was much, much more touristy, but Liis, Alice and I still walked, partied and explored the heck out of it. The architecture alone is enough to make you faint from awesomeness.

It is very good to be back in Valencia though! :)

Would you like some crap stics?
(Well the pic sucks, but I still think it's funny...)

Oh Gaudi, you so crazy with your houses!

Las Ramblas.

Crazy mimes on Las Rambles! When they
peddle their bikes, the skeletons dance!

Freaking awesome sphinx. Liis was terrified of him.

You can also buy any kind of pet you could imagine.
Chickens, parrots, doves, roosters, bunnies, guinea pigs...

Heck! You can even get a chipmunk to
pester your Mama! ;)

Getting lost on our way to the Contemporary Art
Museum. Very fun and colorful though.

The view from Park Güell.

Mommy, can we put this in the garden?

More of Gaudi's famous park.

He designed all the buildings too. It's like
a fairy land...or even a candy land!
(Mmmm...candy.)

Most everything was built with these stacked stones,
or broken ceramics. Created a great atmosphere
with lots of different textures all around you.

La Sagrada Família. Beautacious, breath-taking and so
many different styles too.

Tapas night!
(Me, Liis, Alice.)

So much yummy food...

Tapatapatapatapatapatapatapa!

Omnomnom snails!

Tastes like chicken!

Take care, and until next time!

Love, Katie

Week 5: The Travel Bug

Plaza de La Virgen at night.

So initially the thought of coming here to Europe has had me extra excited because of the chance to visit other countries. Some of these include Hungary, France, Italy, Germany, etc. Now trying to find a cheap flight it another story. Not so much to, saaaay Paris. But more so to Budapest since it is pretty darn far. I can put just enough money away for a rainy day that will hopefully come the first week or so of December. In Paris I can visit with both Krissy, Mike's older sister and one of Fran's sisters :) I'd like to go for a week since that would make flying cheaper and also give me a nice break before my exams start up from these classes. Knock on wood though, since I have yet to make these reservations!

Lately I have been thinking much more about how I am shaping my experience abroad. I am making more of an effort to interact with people and getting over a fear of practicing the language with people I do not know. My pants have gotten pretty baggy from walking more and more, trying to get a better feel (and I'm sure you'd be amazed with how much better my sense of direction has gotten!) for the area around me. It is the little triumphs of the day that make me feel more like an adult. Something as simple as 'saying what you mean' has never carried with it such a weight of personal experience. It bothers me sometimes thinking too much into it, but this ridiculous anxiety has developed that when I return home, these responsibilities I have been taking for myself will fade away. With graduation on the horizon it is unlikely, especially when financial responsibility will hit me like a brick wall, but regardless being the worrywart that I am, it is still here.

In odd times I have found myself viciously searching for career and job opportunities for Americans abroad. I have learned the value of knowing multiple languages here. Knowing English is a sharp sword to have in one's arsenal, but it means little when there is nothing to go along with it. One girl I have met is fascinated by my "American" accent and by the everyday expressions and slang from home. I taught her a bit of Balmerian and fun things like "warsh." It catches me off guard most times, but it is a fun way to entertain and teach someone at the same time. So yes, I do enjoy being in this constant state of learning. I do enjoy having to be on my linguistic toes for just about every word that escapes my mouth.

Who needs to worry when there is all
this fresh food available!

So enough of that "thinking" crap! Now onto the happenings...

With the day of Saint Donis (aka the founding day of the city of Valencia) coming up there will be even more Valencian culture to be in, not to mention a hella ton of fireworks. When I say "hella ton" I do mean, "in greater quantities and addition to the fireworks that people are setting off at all times and all places in the city anyway." I'm still not sure what to expect, but I have been told it is a must. Just now I am getting used to the eating times. Breakfast of a pastry and coffee, lunch from 1-3pm, and a gigantic dinner from 10-12am. The dinners are so big though I don't mind the wait as much, haha.

Hayley, Me (looking extra dorky), Liis, Alice.

Liis, Alice (both classmates from animation class) and I were all feeling the similar travel itch. We want to get out and about, explore, party and meet even more people! So we decided it was time to plot a trip to Barcelona. We have our bus tickets, we have our beds, we have a week off of school and from here it's time have some fun. The girls are great and I couldn't have asked for a more fun bunch to hang out with.

And on the menu we have...

On the rooftop, eating by the light of the moon
...and a tiny lamp.

On Friday we met at the bus station and from there we to the Institut Valencia d'Art Modern for a screening of Czech animated films (among them Jirí Trnka and Jan Švankmajer). From there it was a trip to the market and then to Liis' flat. This I will remember as the evening I learned how to clean calamari. We made a dinner of couscous, steamed mussels with white wine and garlic, fried calamari and cucumber salad, veggies, shrimp, toasted bread and eggplant. And it was delicious. With Liis' flatmates we ate, drank and were very merry on the rooftop. From there it was to a fiesta on the beach and then homeward bound. The party was a little lacking, but still met some very nice Erasmus and España natives. The crescent moon rising over the sea was beautiful, I only wish I had thought to have taken a picture of it.

And here are some more pictures from the beach...

Even Photoshop couldn't help these tan lines...

La playa. The chain Pan's and Company makes these delish
'patatas bravas' which are basically little potato wedges
with mayo and a spicy ketchup.

I love looking down the beach and seeing the mountains
over the skyline. I want to see what is over there.

So this week at the beach was filled with more clear water, more calm waves, lots of swimming, lots of boobies and some more sunburn. But also there was a great instance of a business man stripping off his suit, handing it to his buddy and running full speed at the water in his tightie whitie underpants. This is about as cool as the gentlemen and women in their suits riding their motorcycles to work. It is the Spanish beach life for me!

Next time I shall be reporting about Barcelona. Stay tuned!

Love, Katie