Living it up at the hotel villa st. exupery

Got into Nice in early eavning after a day of train travel. I like the relaxed atmosphere and scenery trains provide, with generally more legroom and chances to walk around, but trains do take about five times as long as a plane. The ride along the french coast was nice, many areas remind me of sedona with the craggy red rocks jutting out into the water. Most the beaches here are all pebbles. Should have brought my water shoes. Train stopped in Cannes, which looked wonderful. Didn't see anything about the film fest though. In nice, we followed these directions to get the hostel: Walk out of the nice rail station to a balustrade. Follow the ballustratde to a bus station and catch bus 23. Take bus 23 to St. Maruice. Walk to the phone booth across the road and a certain number. A car will come for you.
We followed the directions, and a guy came for us in a beat up old black mercedes-benz. The driver was the hostel owner. The hostel is amazing, situated in an old nunnery overlooking Nice. The sanctuary became the dining hall and bar in the evening. Our room here is 21 euros a night, and that includes breakfast. 5 beds to a room. Its an amazing place. People here actually talk to each other and the hostel owner, a german named Ulf and his daughter Yulie run the place and get to know the clientelle. Anyway, we're going to the beach today.

quickie

Yesterday was my favorite in Barcelona. Saw the Sagrada Familia, listened to Mozarts Requiem live in concert in the most famous concert hall in barcelona, Palau Musica de Catalonia, and then we got caught in a religious procession of corpus christi in the gothic quarter. Now its off to nice! hope to have internet access! Adios!

Sabado

Just waiting for Chase to get out of the shower so we can head off to dinner at a tapas bar the desk guy recommended here. We dropped our laundry off this morning at a laundromat that spoke no english. We sweated until we got it back at one in the afternoon. It´s so cheap here, compared to paris. This morning after we dropped the laundry we tried to go Palau Guell, one of the highlights I was looking forward to here. The interior is supposed to be fabulous, with Gaudi unrestrained by costs. the sign on the door said it closed in october of last yaer, not to reopen until 2006. We ended up going through the picasso museum in the gothic quarter. Went up the palatial catalan art muesum and walked around mount monjuic before heading back down to the beach. Tons of people out there today. The busses here are the best way to get around. Lots of the litte things remind me of singapore. The green, the sweltering heat, the trees, the ocean, and the clean, effciant smell of the bus interiors. Our metro passes we havn´t used more than twice, but they´re really paying off for the busses. Time for dinner!

If ASU were a town....

Left Paris last wednesday morning. we barely made the train 5 mins before it was due to leave. once we got to montpilliar, our train ran late, so we missed the connecting train to Barcelona. Our large group mobbed the rail information people, and they put us on a train to Peripignon, a sleazy little border town. the nex train to barcelona was in the morning so they put us in the paris-barcelona hotlel. There was some confusion because we were travelign with three other backpacking US college students and they lumped us all together. It took a french-spanish and spanish-english translator to get our point across to the french speaking rail attendant. I am eternally grateful to those unknown people who in the name of kindness helped us all throughout our travels. For the most part, everyone we have met in europe has bent over backwards to aid us, from the bakery matron who flagged down customers who culd speak english to us. My language skills are just not adequate for travelling completely rough. Anyway, we got a little room in Peripigion but they had almost a shower that worked well. The next morning, we took the train that was an hour and a half late across the border, fnally pulling into barcelona around midday.

Barcelona is hot and tropical. Its part singapore and part pirate town. especially the area we´re in, really close to the beach and the gothic quarter. I goofed up on the reservations, so we didnt´have any for thursday night here. We got to the hostel Sea Point, and were turnd away. We went back to the littl ghetto hostel where i´d asked directions, Miramar hostel. to get inside, you have to walk though an electronics boutique. I kept looking down expecting to see chickens runnign around. At least they had two beds per room, even if the room was six feet wide and the last half of the original room, with the moulding cut in half. We ate well as the food here is great and cheap. Our best meal yet was at La Fonda. Seafood Paella we split was aobut 12 euros. We checked into the right hostel this morning. An interesting place to say the least. They organize activities including ¨Smashed¨a booze tour for a set price including, I´m not making this up, ¨special¨super soakers loaded with vodka. Woopeee!! Pass.
Today we saw Parc Guell, Casa Vicens, and La Pedegral, all works of Gaudi. What a far out guy. anway, back to the beach. We´re litterally on the beach.

list

doing well in paris; its cool here; so Im glad I have my sweater. stumbled into a street market yesterday, and found an excellent bakery. even the french lined up out front for it. superlative. saw la defense arch, a giant bronze thumb, and mass at Notre Dame. Versailles the day before that, although we took a rather odyssean journey to get there includiding an empty train, a wild bus ride, and generally asking everyone we encountered how to get there. the gardens are absolutely amazing and mind bogglingly vast and wild. today we plan to go to musee d'orsay. Times almost up; typing in an internet center more later hopefully; Regards.

safe and wiped in paris

After waiting for three hours in the visa line, chase was told that his multientry LOI could not be used for a single entry business visa. He would either have to get an HIV test here in Paris or have dqd send q tourist visq to our hostel in Rome. I hqte these co,puter keyboqrds: nothing is in the right spot: Anyzqy; the hostel is nice enough; four beds qnd one bqthroom; qt the end of our second full dqy in pqris; ze hqve seen the lourve; montparnesse; sacrecour; notre dame, center pompidou, q lot of the embqssy district, the eiffel tower area; champs l*esses; the arc du triomphe; and the city cemetqry. Versailles to,orrow. More later: 30 mins costs 1.5 euro on this tiny seedy internet cafe.

Odds and Ends

A few other comments

My travelling companion, Chase Lancaster Kimball, is a finance major at University of Colorado at Boulder and a good friend of mine from high school. He is an entreprenuer with a registered business in selling adventure sport discount cards. the website can be found at www.coloradosportssociety.com . His interests include rowing crew, shaving once a week, and wearing dock shoes with seersucker pants.

For those interested, I finished this semester with a 3.96 GPA, and 3.91 cumulative. I feel pretty good about my chances for getting into upper division in architecture.

Three days in moscow

Well, actually only two full days. Monday I went on a tour around the neighborhood around the Kremlin. We started at St. Basil's cathedral. The tour guide, who had actually helped build it, pointed out many interesting facts like: "Do not lean against the walls", "we can not go inside of this chapel", and "do not lean against this car." To be honest, I found the tour a bit dry, despite the fact that the tour guide obviously longed for the days where she would have been shot for hanging around red square with Americans. We also saw many numerous churches in various stages of being rebuilt with a vauge resemblance to the original, and entered almost three. The third one had a few requests we had to satisfy before we entered, like wiping our feet, taking off our shoes, thrice-crossing ourselves, and foreswearing beef. We decided we could just continue the tour.

Yesterday, we went on two absoutely amazing tours. We met at the gate to the kremlin where there enough tennis-shoe clad american tourists to capture Normandy. We got to see the Great Kremlin Palace, the functioning residence of state for recieving dignitiaries, signing treaties, and press conferences. We passed through multiple security checkpoints, including checking passports against the tour list. The palace is superlative, completely over the top, and makes the opulence of Versaille look like a La Quinta. From the moment that I saw monolithic granite collums twenty feet high, my jaw dropped and kept dropping. It was just amazing. There was gold tracery and mouldings everywhere in style ranging from baroque to classical to rococo. A security guard followed the tour group.
Afterwards, mom and I went to see the Diamond Fund, a clever device that lets the Kremlin squeeze even more money by charging a separate admission to see the state jewellry collection. Most imperial jewellry I have seen mostly consists of an object like a crown, scepter, neckalace, orb, etc. made out of gold, then studded with diamonds and precious stones randomly all over like the worlds most expensive beadazzler. The Russians actually designed thier jewellry and objects with the stones as a single concept. There were flower brooches made with hundreds of diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, it was all absolutely amazing craftworkd and artestry. Also on display were diamonds the size of acorns, rough cut diamonds, heaping trays of the cut stones, and gold nuggets the size of footballs.
Today I leave for Paris on czech airlines. Wish me luck and I'll try to keep everyone posted on my futher adventures.

Back in the USSR

I'm safely back in Moscow after aproximately 15 hours of traveling. Caught a morning flight from Phoenix to JFK in NY, then flew Aeroflot to Moscow. Not too bad. Food was decent, and the seat was on the isle with lots of footroom. Took awhile to get through customs, but dad and mom were on hand to meet me at the exit from customs. Moscow is cool and green, but brilliantly blessed with a rare day of sunshine. Now I'm just listening to jazz with dad working on his laptop across from me, mom making dinner in the kitchen, and taylor working on homework in the study. Its good to see them all. Having some difficulty with getting the phone card to work. Maybe work on that tomorrow.

Grades so far

Final Grades so far:
Latin Dance/Salsa I: B+ (I went to as many classes as would get me an A, skipping twice on the days when I had been up for a few days on projects, but apparently I forgot to sign in on one of the days I did go)

Creative Writing I: A (Easily done)

Architecture studio: A+ (the big surprise- it was only in the last project where I had absolutely everything ready for presentation. Maybe my instructor really wants me to get in. This will help me a lot as architecture GPA counts for half of what gets me in.

so recently: been packing, cleaning, organizing, tidying up loose ends, planning, relaxing, working on visas, panicing, pacing, and relaxing again.

Finals

There are a few distinct advantages to being an architecture major. First among those are the relative lack of finals. Our final project was due a month ago, and I submitted portfolio about a week ago. I had two tests. One was a short essay test with six questions for Urban Planning, and the one I took today was on architectural structures. Questions included the following: "wood is the strongest: (1) perpendicular to the grain (2) parallel to the grain (3) in tension." I got a 90% or better I think.

Portfolio: Tricky subject. In order to turn it in on time, I sent it to the printer Sunday late afternoon. I took it to the Kinko's in Scottsdale since I knew the one near the university was going to be overwhelmed. Portfolio was due Tuesday at five. I didn't want anything to go wrong. I put my portfolio as a pdf and stuck it on my jump drive. It was formatted to be 8" x 8". My attempts to make it print right on both sides were not going well, hence my decision to take it to kinko's early in the game. Kinko's told me it would be ready by five on Tuesday. When I got home, I figured out how to get the pages ot align better, so I printed a full color, double sided copy of my portfolio, because if Kinko's screwed up, then I'd really be in trouble without a backup since they take at least a full day to print out.

A quick note on submission: Portfolio and applications to upper divion are due by 5:00 PM on that Wednesday. Any later, and you have to wait another full year. Hence, my apprehension at submitting on time.

Anyway, I printed everything out, then went to Kinko's expecting the worst. They did everything perfectly, from printing them on the right paper with the right ink to cutting them exactly right. I was so overjoyed I happily forked over the 90 bucks. It looked great. I had it printed on matte cardstock (heavy paper) with a professional ink. The black shined in the light. I also had 35 pages printed on the front and back. Anyway, I made a simple cover from chipboard and used acetone transfer to write "portfolio of design" on the front in Century Gothic spaced out at 100 percent, the same kind of font I used in the portfolio. I took it to alphAGraphics a little ways from campus to get it bound. There is one right across the street from the architecture building, but I dont use them because: 1) Everyone uses them, usually at the same time 2) They seem to be staffed by ASU dropouts, and 3) They only give decent service to women. This has been coroborated by nearly everyone I talk to. I usally stick to kinko's for these reasons, but only alphAGraphics has the professional metal ring binding. Anyway, later that night I picked it up, complete.

I submitted it wednesday, around noon. I was the 76th person to submit, which became the identifying number for my portfolio as you're not allowed to have your name in or on it. I would really hate to be 1 or 142, so I think 76th is a pretty good number. I also handed in my application to upper division, just a form with my name, school ID and where to send the letter of notification and a padded envelope to mail my portfolio back to Sally.

Speaking of Sally, she invited Jen and I for dinner the other night. She made us pork and mashed potatoes. It was really good. She also gave me a really good, extensive book on the house, everything from discussions of locations and aspects of urban planning to detail plans of soffits, foundation connections, and systems of construction.

Wednesday at 5 I went to see the closing of the door and the stragglers. Seven people submitted in the last five minutes. Two of those were in the last minute. How does one time such a thing? What if they had taken a different route, or gone back for sunglasses, etc. It boggles the mind. There were about twenty people lined up along the hall as spectators. At 5 o'clock, the head of the office called out "anyone else? last call!" the people who could see the door said there was no one coming so she closed the door, locked it, and turned out the office lights. That was that.

Regrets? Sure, for one thing, I wish I'd taken the time to give it a good proof-reading. Nothing too major, just a few speling errores. Hopefully, they'll either glaze over it without noticing, or not decide to reject me for my spelling. Anyway nothing I can do about it now. It's quite literally out of my hands. All will be revealed July 1st, when they mail out 94 rejection slips, and 48 acceptance letters. Hopefully one of the latter will be addressed to me.

DONE!

At high noon, the lone stranger entered the architecture office and became applicant #76, the 76th person to submit an application and portfolio for the 48 spots of upper division. The finished book is 70 pages in 35 spreads, professionally printed and bound, 8" x 8", with plain chipboard covers with the title 'portfolio of design' in black letters. See here>>>