Busy Week

Monday :: Irritable.

Starting at 8 o'clock this morning, this ridiculously loud speaker (that I didn't even know we had in our room) started playing ridiculous music and then YELLING Chinese at me. Because my bed is next to the door, I was lucky enough to have the speaker right next to my head!! This went off every twenty minutes. 8:20...8:40...9:00...THEN it stops. I'm sleeping for the last glorious thirty minutes before my alarm goes off. THEN! At 9:27 there is a knock on the door with someone wanting me to sign a piece of paper that says that I promise to move out. K, I'm awake.

Needless to say, I was very VERY cranky when we got to Chinese class at 10.

I went to lunch with my group and then we talked to Tin-Man about our model plans, worked out some stuff, discussed with him again and then I went to metal class to finish my ring.

Dinner at 711 was sweet potato fries and snickers (HEALTHY!) and then Kenney and I were going to watch Toy Story 1, but QuickSilver lied and told us we'd already watched a movie today. I photographed metal projects and worked on reports. Then SLEPT.


Tuesday :: Beastin' On That Work

We met at 10 and got our CAD model approved by Tin-Man then started discussing materials and got busy! Our shop experience kind of slowed us down. We were going to use the lathe, but the 1/2 scale size of our foam made the model not fit on the machine. We went to ask Tin-Man if we could do 1/4 scale. Instead of saying yes, he suggested that we sand it by hand. Haha. We did a lot of sanding in hopes that getting rid of any "hard" edges with decrease failure and we will try the lathe again tomorrow.

I think Meuck's face is pretty hilarious here. He was wary on sanding the edges on the belt sander.
Nickie supporting the sanding.
TOWER OF SANDING PEOPLE!!!!!


I hurried to the dorm at 6 to rinse off because I was covered in foam. [By the way, in moving out, I think one of my roommates exposed something old and rotting that released a billion fruit flies. They are all over the room and all in the shower. I gotta say, it's hard to feel like you're getting clean when there's bugs flying all around you.] I quickly made a PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH! (I found bread and peanut butter at 711!!!) and then left for our make-up glass class at 6:30.

We pulled the clay out of the plaster molds and added glass. We also made glass necklace pendants. Neither were finished molding / melting by the time class was over.

There are all of my plaster molds.
You do some special measurements and then break glass like this to fill the molds with.
The SUPER KILN. The last one we used only got hot enough for the glass to melt a little. This kiln liquefies the glass into the molds.
In our hurried make-up class, we also made necklace pendants. These were the materials.
Once done, you simply place the pendants in a stryfoam/ceramic cannister and microwave it!
The colors will be very dull and off when they come out of the microwave because they are red hot from melting. Mine's the one in the center. When it cools, that yellow will be lime green, believe it or not.

We went to 711 with Tin-Man and I had some orange jello (with mandarin oranges in it!) then we returned to the dorms. I walked in to find that my one remaining roommate had invited her friend to stay for the night because she was in a room all alone after the other roommates had moved out. [Move out day only required Taiwanese to leave. International students can stay until July 7th.] This new friend had invited about 5 others to stay and they were all on their mattresses in the floor yelling in Chinese while I was trying to work on all of the reports that are due soon. I worked until 1 and then went to bed.

Wednesday :: Very Tired

My roommate and her friends didn't get quiet when I went to bed, and I ended up going to sleep in an empty bunk in the guys' dorm. Their AC was out, so I didn't sleep well, but at least it was quiet. 

I met my group at 10 and they whipped out this CRAZY SUPER GOOD hollowed out, lathed model. They had worked all night and didn't tell me! They'd snuck into glass class and then said BYE BYE! so I thought that they were going home for the night (It WAS understandable because we'd been there for almost 12 hours). Now I feel bad because I wasn't helping because I didn't know that I could be. Here is the crazy hollowed out model. Compare to the pictures above!


We worked ALL day and ALL night and accomplished a LOT. I gave them the rest of their gifts (Mickey/Minnie Mouse bouncey balls and Auburn keychains). They all yelled TOUCHDOWN! when they saw the football, haha.

We then proceeded to apply a Bondo like putty the the foam for the rest of the day. Their bondo is yellow instead of red.


Some finished pieces ...well closer to finished than the rest ::


While waiting on bondo to dry, I took some panoramas of the four trees courtyard, minus the trees.



I came home at 3:30 and am now getting in bed. There is no yelling going on, thank goodness.

Thursday :: Surprise Crunch Time

I woke up to find a note saying that we were going to meet at one instead of noon. ooootay! (I taught my group that. It's pretty hilarious when they all do it. I also taught them 'dude' and 'babe.' I couldn't accurately explain "That's what she said." but I tried.) Our plan was to finish the model completely today so that we can focus on the powerpoint and poster tomorrow and be DONE for the weekend.

I got to studio at 1, ran to get a cheeseburger literally 20 ft from studio and it took 30 minutes to get back. Slowww service.

When I returned I heard Melanie talking about how everything was due tomorrow. But that could not be right because Tin-Man SAID Monday, and even if he didn't, everyone coincidentally heard Monday. I went to talk to him about it and he said that yes, in fact, everything is due tomorrow. Stress. Three days for the model / presentation / poster that we THOUGHT we had were now gone.

We also found out that two different people had scooter accidents on their way home from studio the night before. Maybe the due-date should back off so tired people will stop crashing scooters.
I'm in studio finishing up this blog right now, and I'm posting this before the day is over. Therefore, if anything CRAAAAAZY happens, I'll let you know in the next post. Good day sir!

Where I've Been Livin'

My mom keeps bugging me to show pictures of where I live and everywhere I go on a regular basis. Moms... :) So here you go ::

This is a view of "campus." Really, I'm facing the wrong direction, but I wanted to get the mountains in the picture. (PS - Look! You can see my shadow on the right side of the picture!)


This is the roof that I snuck onto to take that panorama of the campus :


This is the entrance to the campus. That's the Administration Building to the left and the road on the far right leads to the dorms. If taxi drivers are nice, they drive you down that way.


Here is the design building where all of my classes are (Glass, Metal, Pottery, Painting and Studio)


The design building is filled with little pockets of creativity, which is the complete opposite of the white-walled Wallace Center at Auburn. This is the smoke-break garden. I think it's gorgeous.

This is studio where we have...studio, of course. Chinese painting is held in here too.
This is the four trees courtyard. Every time I write "We met at four trees...." this is to where I am referring.


This is where we wait for taxis. It's the stairs in front of the design building / four trees.

This is the American Cafe food place. When all the cafeterias close, this and 711 will be our meal destinations.
This is the library. It's air conditioned! You have to sign in to go inside.


Here is the Administrative Building. Graduation was here. That torturous graduation party was here. We paid our dorm fee here. And Tai Chi class takes place on the 5th floor which has hardly any walls so it's open to sunlight, but shaded!

This is the pretty garden area outside Cafeteria 2. (There is no cafeteria 1 to my knowledge..)

This is the road to take to get to 711.

While on that road to 711, you pass this prison on your left. How nice!

This is the off-campus 711. You can see the tables on the right where we sit and hang out.


They sell very odd food in 711. Steam buns...hotdogs, not so weird. But then there's this metal tub full of hot water and soggy food.


Outside 711, there is a scooter parking lot. I think that a lot of our classmates park here instead of parking on campus.


This is one of the parking lots on campus. There's grass in it.


Across from the design building, there is a big lake surrounded by grass. It's nice.


Down this road you find the on-campus 711 and cafeteria 2 on the right. (The left is the American-type cafe)


This is the giant hill on the way to studio that will tone my butt by the time I come home.

This is my dorm building. I'm on that second floor.

This is the "common room" in my dorm....sector, if you will. There's three rooms in each sector. The one not pictured here has a sign that reads "The sex at the house." ....... ...

My door! And a red chair!

This is the view from the doorway. There's five girls in this room.

This is the view from that really bright window in the last picture. The fan pictured here runs all the time, thank god. The A/C only runs from 7:30 PM to 7:30 AM and it's not automatic so we kind of have to eye our roommates and then turn it on when we think it's ok. They're not used to AC all the time and they get cold.

This is my desk space. DESK B!

This is my bed and my closet. My bed is the odd one out because it doesn't have a desk underneath it. Therefore, there's a big pile of my shared/cleaning stuff there.

The tiny bathroom! Woohoo!

To the right in the bathroom, there is a room with a toilet.

To the left is the shower. It gets REALLY freaking hot in there. Apparently everyone elses' showers have windows that you can open to cool down, but not ours.

Outside our common room there is recycling along with other disposable waste baskets.

Next to the trash can is our laundry room. You can hand wash or pay 10 NT to wash and 10 NT to dry. Overall that's about 75 cents total to do laundry.

If you don't want to pay to dry you hang your clothes out here on the common room balcony. This is also where everyone smokes. I enjoy when they leave the door open and smoke comes in my room...oh wait, no I don't.

The balcony is also where the kitty lives. :)

This is the view looking out from the balcony dorm. If you look closely, you can see that it's raining in this picture. Super sunny with rain.

This is the lobby in the dorm. In the back of the picture you can see the convenience store.

This is about 1/3 of the juice and tea selection in the store.

They have a little heater full of steamed buns too. (I don't care for them, but everyone else thinks they're yummy)
These are the stairs that lead up to the lobby. You can see Cafeteria 3's doors here.


This is Amigo! When I say I got a bowl of fruit, this is where I got it. They also make fruit drinks on the left side.

This is the cafeteria. It's closed on the weekends...there's usually more people, haha. To the left is where I buy the pineapple fried rice.

To the right is where you can get danbings in the morning and sandwiches at lunch.