Amsterdam.

So, AIB decided to take us to Amsterdam.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this city.  

We took an 8am train out of Bonn Houptbahnhof, made a transition in Köln, and t

hen rode about 4 hours into Amsterdam.

My skateboard had come in the mail last week, but I hadn't had a chance to put it together.  Weecho and I decided that it would be awesome to put it together in the train.  How awesome is that! To build my skateboard...in a train...in Europe...on our way to Amsterdam.  Awesome.

Before.

During.

Success.

We finally got to the city and headed for our Hotel.

BE BACK TO FINISH THIS LATER.

Playing Hooky.

Felt sick and skipped class today.

Bonjour!

We took a break from Germany to visit PARIS.

At about 4:35 in the morning on Friday, we boarded our train.

We arrived to the beautiful city at around 10:15 in the morning.  We explored the train station, trying to find a place to buy train passes that would last us the entire weekend.  In that time, we made visits to bathrooms and shops to buy sodas and a giant map book.  Once we secured our tickets, we tunneled through the underground metro in search of our platform.  It was so

 interesting to see the differences in design between the Germany train stations and the French ones.  Our train came up almost immediately, and we hopped onto a train full of French locals.  

We came out from the underground metro and found ourselves standing along a street full of merchants.  The street seemed to stretch on forever, and it was neat to see the different things they sold.  Our map book came in handy, and it let us straight to our Youth Hostel.

That night, we took a train over to the famous Lourve Museum.

   

We woke up early on Saturday morning to have a go at the free breakfast downstairs.  No matter where I may be in the world, cereal & milk always tastes awesome.  We gathered our stuff and went back to the giant cemetery that was nearby.  It was such an enormous place, with tombstones dating back to the 1700's.  It took us a while,  but we finall found what we had been looking for: Jim Morrison's grave.  It was nothing lavish or spectacular, but it had a lot of flowers left by recent visitors.

BE BACK TO FINISH THIS LATER.

Don't Run When It's Cold.

I'm ready to jump into bed, but I'm waiting for my laundry.  Eh, clean clothes are overrated.

I totally went to class late today, haha.  We had Editing for about 3 hours before lunch, but I took that time to work on my collage assignment for 331.  It took a lot longer than I thought it would (about twice as long) but I am pretty satisfied with the final results.

I snuck into class during the lunch period, stopping by the pizza place to grab a slice on the way from the train station, of course.  The prof didn't realized I hadn't been there, so my plan worked perfectly.  Weecho had pretty much finalized the editing of our second video, and things were looking good.

Professor Muckenheim came by my desk to check out my collage that I had slaved over... and he loved it.  Great feeling.  We discussed ideas for further developing some of my graphics in the future, and that was it.  I chilled around for the next 2 hours... mostly surfing some design sites and playing around with the final versions of our videos.

I made sure to leave class with enough time to catch the 6:39 train... which was actually the 6:29 train. Oops.  Michael, Stephanie, and I ran through town towards the train station, and just as we made it to our platform, the train left.  Totally missed it.  I had promised my host family I would be home for 6:45 dinner, so I was kinda bummed I was gonna let them down.  Luckily, as I

 arrived home, panting from having jogged to the house, my host mom tells me the food isn't quite ready and that there is still time until dinner.  Insert crazy face emoticon here.

I have been buying "Magic Kinder" chocolate eggs for weeks now (the ones that come with tiny toys inside), mostly because all the cool kids had them at school back when we were about 5, and now its my turn to earn back some cool points.  Our toy collection in studio has been growing, but earlier this evening my little host brother Nico and I brought out a Sharpie and drew silly dudes on all the little plastic containers.

The Fruits of our Labor.

Good news:  Paris on Friday is a GO!  We booked our reservations on the ICE train yesterday, so we are set.  I am pumped.  Paris should be sweet.  Eiffel Tower = 1,000+ pictures.  Bring it! 

Is My Skateboard Here Yet?

Not too shabby of a day today.

We had our first session of editing class.  New teacher, and she's generally pretty cool.  We started editing the footage for our "Bathroom Dance Party" short film, and its looking pretty good.  I realized that I like editing, so thats pretty cool.

It was also the day for Studio, and luckily it went a lot better than I ever expected.  Instead of long, awkward presentations of obscure ideas in front of a sleepy class, we got to present to the Professor one by one at our desks, which can only means two things: (1) He will actually pay attention to what you say, and (2) I got to surf facebook the entire 2 hours that he was talking to other people. WIN.

We hung around studio for a bit after class, mostly discussing ideas for a weekend trip to Paris.  Sounds like it should be a blast.  I didn't leave AIB until 7pm, and missed about 2 trains in the process of buying a new computer mouse and stopping for a tiny bite to eat.

Album of the Day

Skateboard!

Ordered my skateboard today!

Düsseldorf.

Lets back track a bit.

I woke up to this.

So, Friday was our big excursion day to Dusseldorf.  I was pretty excited, mostly because I was curious about the place where we were originally supposed to living before things were changed up.  Needless to say, it was pretty awesome.  In general, it had a "bigger city feel" than Bonn does, and some of the architecture there was really awesome.

We cruised around the city for hours, led by our two professors.  We hit up a student Art Show, and most of the work there was either unimpressive or just plain weird.  I came out of it feeling much better about the quality of my work.

Sweet Sculpture.

Then we visited Blue Byte Studios, which is a small videogame development company stationed in Germany.  They are now owned by big dogs Ubisoft and put out games like The Settlers and Far Cry.  It was awesome to see a place where everyone is at their computer throwing video games together and behaving much like we do when we have been cooped up in studio for extended periods of time.

In the evening, Matt, Justin, Virginia, Weecho, Chris, Jack, and myself stuck around in the city.  We took some time to figure out the basic transportation system pattern, and then took a tram to the Youth Hostel on the other side of town.  After the short half-hour ride, we arrive with smiles only to be told that the hostel was totally full.  Figures.  So we decided to stay up all night and take an early train home instead of getting any actual sleep.  Smart cookies.  We had dinner at the local Hooters, and getting to eat a hamburger was a true blessing.  Good stuff.

Later than night, we went to a dance club our Professor recommended to us called "Stone".  They played only rock music, and it was awesome.  We hung out for at least 4 hours there, until it was time to catch the 3am train to Cologne.  We managed to make that without any trouble.  After arriving in Cologne, we hit up the Burger King inside.  Big disappointment.  They didn't have any food other than a handful of chicken nuggets.  But the drunk guys singing 80's rock out loud made up for it.  We caught our train back, but not after running like maniacs when they decided to announce that the train platform had changed.  So, one minute before the train arrives, we hear a German dude over the speakerphone.  People start rushing across the tracks, and others begin to quickly collect their stuff.  We caught on eventually as to what was going on, and sprinted across the train station to the correct platform.  It was funny.  

We chilled inside the train for the half-hour ride, and two stops before we made it home, a few train employees started to come down the aisles asking for tickets.  We freaked because we didn't actually have any for this ride.  Being the clever kooks that we are, we decided to run off the train at one of the stops it made and just barely avoided the ticket ladies.  Fewf!  We avoided an ugly 4o Euro fee.

Then, all 7 of us made the 10 minute walk over to Matt's house to wait for the next train to come in.  It was late, so his entire hos family was already asleep.  He quietly opened the door, and we all snuck in REALLY QUIETLY all the way through the kitchen, up the really creaky stairs, and into his room.  The entire time this was happening, his host dad was snoring SO LOUD. It was so hard to not burst out laughing, but at the same time, his snores hid the small creaks made by those darn stairs.  Once we got into the room, we all just sat around in a daze, tired from the day that never seemed end.  Weecho and Justin sat on Matt's bed, while the rest of us just sprawled around the room.  We had an hour to blow, and we didn't know what to do other than just sit there.  About 40 minutes into our wait,  we hear the loudest noise ever.  Matt's bed broke! It was the funniest thing to ever happen.  Ever.  I look over, and Weecho and Justin are both still sitting on the mattress, which sunk down to the floor, where there are pieces of wood from where the bed gave out.  The snores stopped.  It was amazing.

Then, when the time came, everyone snuck back downstairs and walked back over to the train.  What a night.

Scene 1, Take 3.

Today was all about filming.

We spend hours upon hours today filming our assignments for our Videography class. This morning our group wrapped up filming the first project and then we moved on to the second one, which involved creating a "video manual" for using some sort of electronic device. So we used Weecho's Zune, and I was the the dude who was demonstrating the Zune functions. It was pretty fun.

I also finally got a nap today! I sat down on the classroom couch right after I finished my döner sandwich, and the next thing I know its 45 minutes later and I feel well rested. Success.


When I came home, Nico taught me how to play poker according to the rules he and his friends developed. Of course, he basically won every game we played.

Oh yea, and on the way home from school, a few of us guys stopped at the store to check out the costumes for Karneval. I am still on the lookout for my costume. We had fun and tried on a handful of costumes in there. Blake is a dinosaur.

Breakfast, Bathrooms, and Rain.

Class at 8:45 in the morning is not fun.

But, when it includes breakfast, its not so bad.

Our German Language class today was about learning the names of common food and how to politely ask for things at the table. So we scooted all the tables together, brought out all kinds of crazy German breakfast food, and ate in the classroom! What an awesome idea!


I tried Nutella for the first time (the first time that I remember, anyway). Basically, it's a chocolate spread. And basically, its awesome.


After breakfast all I wanted was a nap.

I didn't get one. But it's all good because our Videography professor was awesome and took us to the local movie theatre. We thought we were gonna see a movie and were excited about it, but instead we got to go behind-the-scenes with the manager and saw the movie reels and crazy gadgets where all the movie magic happens. It was awesome.

(We saw the movie poster for "Yes Man" with Jim Carey, and the poster just had a picture of him and it said "Ja" above him. Hahaha. It was funny. Guess you had to be there?)


In our Videography class, we had to start filming our first mini-project. The idea is that we familiarize ourselves with advanced camera settings while also understanding nice shot framing and all that fun jazz. I am in a group with Weecho, Jack, and Ryan, and needless to say, we've been having a lot of fun with the whole thing. We are filming a silly scene in the bathroom of the AIB building (and filming in the bathroom was actually the professor's idea!). We filmed for a handful of hours, and we have until lunch time tomorrow to finish it up. Then, next week we will throw the footage into some sweet editing software and put it all together into a pretty funny piece.


Just as I arrived home, exhausted from carrying my heavy-as-heck laptop and camera cases through the rain (yup, I had an umbrella...which means I was carrying that, too), I come to find that the crazy rain had flooded into my basement room! I freaked out for about 5 seconds, until I found that all my stuff was totally dry! Apparently, Mother Nature was nice to me and only flooded the one part of my room where I hadn't actually kept any of my stuff. Cool? You betcha.

First Blog!

BLOG!

So, I really meant to start this sweet blog a few weeks ago. Like, on January 21st, upon my arrival to Germany. But, better late than never! So, yes, I am living in Germany! Am I starting a blog only because I am in Europe? Yes. Will I learn to like this blog business and keep it afterwards? Potentially. Will I thank myself later for writing this? Yea, dude.

Today is February 9, 2009. Another Monday at school. It was a long day. We had Videography class in the morning, which included a quiz. I didn't really study for it at all over the weekend, because I knew it wasn't a whole lot of information. Instead, I had to read the material over as I walked to the train platform and as I rode the 18 train into the Hauptbahnhof. Luckily, it was pretty easy. We watched some sweet extra features on the Sin City DVD about how they green-screened the entire movie. That was too awesome.

After a brief lunch, we had another long afternoon of Studio. We reviewed the collages for our initial Vertical Zoo designs in Amsterdam, which went pretty okay. But, then we had to do a crazy exercise involving producing a 'facade skin' for a random volume and covering it, then stacking them... eh, it was just a long afternoon.

Its about 10:35pm right now. My room is nice and warm, and I can hear the rain outside. I am excited to get some sleep, especially because we have our German Language class at 8:45 tomorrow morning. How do you say "Bummer!" in German? 'Cause that's what I would say right now!

Alrite, this blog is definetely long enough. I'm off.