So today has been very stressful. The whole studio is a-buzz preparing for our midterm reviews tomorrow for this project. I have some free time right now because my group is reformatting our section diagrams and Caitlin is creating the new scale system... I'm thankful that for once our project is headed in a clear direction. The only problem is the amount of work to get our diagramming to become real architecture. It's about 4pm here and once we finish our sectional diagrams we will have to tackle g.c. and/or rhino to develop the 3d scheme. For some reason I'm not as nervous as I would be at RPI. I know that we have a design system with this project that is working and I just hope that we can show some new things tomorrow that are headed in the right direction... rather than rush through all the steps and show up with something bad. Thankfully mine and Caitlin's Italian partners are very helpful and hardworking... even though Claudio hasn't been able to make anything for the past couple days because his computer has been broken. Erika has been making a million diagrams in Photoshop and they are really nice - the Italians are really talented with Photoshop which is both good and bad because they are fast at making things in Photoshop, but they tend to over-do the whole color thing and all the images have a rainbow of colors all over them.
Last night was an awesome dinner. Actually, the whole weekend was really good... which kind of makes me nervous for this week. Saturday, I went to Italian class at 8.30am until 12.30 and then got home and napped for 2 hours. After napping, me Caitlin and Jenni walked the entire length of Via Po to go shopping. Jenni got some really nice new purple heels, but me and Caitlin didn't find anything. It was really fun to just go out and shop though... we found an Italian version of a hippie-store that sold really nice leather wallets that I might go back and look at. I was also being a super-tourist and walking around taking pictures of everything, especially the duomo and the hills at "Over the Po" -the really wealthy neighborhood across the river from the city.
After shopping we got home and Jenni made alfredo sauce from scratch that we added chicken and some people added pesto to. It was a realllyyy good dinner making alfredo by hand (well not literally 'by-hand', but I cant think of another good way to explain it... I also have a pounding headache right now because alot of the groups around us today have been arguing about their projects...) After dinner, we all hung out as an apartment and watched PS I Love You, which made me really sad... but I wont give away the movie because its a pretty good one. That movie also gave Caitlin and Jenni the idea to go to Ireland during Thanksgiving which I am super-jealous of because it looks amazing there. Erika, said she went there with her boyfriend and it was beautiful. They saw these rock-formations in the North that look man-made and rise vertically out of the ground right near the ocean.
On Sunday, me and Caitlin had our partners over to work from 10am-4pm and we got a good amount of work done. We also made lunch for them which I was really nervous to do because I didnt want to mess up pasta and sauce for real Italians, but they seemed to like it. Also, Erika brought a plate of pasteleria (?) really good desserts that we demolished after lunch. They also found it really funny that me and Christina thought the expresso maker was a coffee maker at first, and so we each had about 6-expressos worth of drink our first time making it at the apartment and were up all night talking because we were so hyped-up on caffine.
Sunday night was the really amazing dinner, where me Cailtin and Christina met a really enthusiastic-about-Americans waiter. We went to a pizzeria one block from our house that was a little pricy - but wellllll worth it. The design of the place was really beautiful with an array of different colored/different shaped chairs and they had amazing concrete pillars with wood panels covering the recessed lighting. ( I just wrote a whole bunch more about this dinner... but it got deleted and I'll just have to rewrite it again later...)
Monday, September 21
Thursday, September 17
Farmville Day
So today we all woke up to texts from Jefferson saying he was not going to be at school until 10.30am. This was awesome news because we got to hang around, make tea and I got to shower and blow-dry my hair before even leaving for class! Unfortunately today has been super unproductive... we got to class at around 9am cuz we were awake but right after my computer connected to the internet I got a skype-call from Marissa and Coker who were awake at 4.30am (US time) and can't go to sleep because the window in their apartment is so small that they can't tell whether its day or night and so they just are asleep and awake at random times. Needless to say it was an entertaining conversation cuz Coker was definitely over-tired/hyped up on red-bull (?)... she kept attempting to eat their webcam and made it a hilarious experience from our side of the web. After this whole episode, me and everyone else who was in on the skype-conversation looked aorund to see the whole class working really hard on illustrator, g.c., cad, and rhino and -at least I- got nervous that we were falling behind...
Anyways, me Caitlin and Cristina took an early lunch which was a good deal, because now we are in the classroom chilling and working without the noise of everyone else around us (everyone else is out for lunch now). I am going to get back to work soon, but I just wanted to update those of you who play Farmville on the new animal names for my farm, because we think their names will give them the real heartandsoul of farm animals. My chickens are Darcy-lou, Betsy-jo, and Joanna-May. The cows are Lady, Bella, and Wayne. And my sheep are Jim-Bob and Billy Orville.
Well, I hope you have appreciated this random post. I am kind of tired from staying up and watching the MTV VMA's last night... which BY THE WAY was AWESOME because of the finale by JayZ and Alicia Keys and I highly suggest everyone to listen to their song "Empire State of Mind". And also, Madonna's speech for Michael Jackson I thought was really nice and made me appreciate him so much more as an artist than I had before (probably cuz I don't really listen to his music). The things Madonna had to say for him put him and his work in a much better light than I had previously thought and I also didnt know she was such a good speech-giver... but again I dont keep up with Madonna either. Andddd Kanye's episode with Taylor Swift was TOTALLY uncalled for! She's such a sweet, young artist... getting her first VMA award non-the-less and he has to come up and ruin her moment in front of a ton of people in Radio City Music Hall ANDDD THEN across the whole word when it was broadcasted on tv. I'm just glad he didnt get an award himself because his attitude is so poor. Okay- well that's all my comments for the VMA's haha just had to voice my opinion on a few of those items...
"Alrighttyy" (as said by Marissa on skype today...) I guess I will be getting back to work now.
Ciao!
Anyways, me Caitlin and Cristina took an early lunch which was a good deal, because now we are in the classroom chilling and working without the noise of everyone else around us (everyone else is out for lunch now). I am going to get back to work soon, but I just wanted to update those of you who play Farmville on the new animal names for my farm, because we think their names will give them the real heartandsoul of farm animals. My chickens are Darcy-lou, Betsy-jo, and Joanna-May. The cows are Lady, Bella, and Wayne. And my sheep are Jim-Bob and Billy Orville.
Well, I hope you have appreciated this random post. I am kind of tired from staying up and watching the MTV VMA's last night... which BY THE WAY was AWESOME because of the finale by JayZ and Alicia Keys and I highly suggest everyone to listen to their song "Empire State of Mind". And also, Madonna's speech for Michael Jackson I thought was really nice and made me appreciate him so much more as an artist than I had before (probably cuz I don't really listen to his music). The things Madonna had to say for him put him and his work in a much better light than I had previously thought and I also didnt know she was such a good speech-giver... but again I dont keep up with Madonna either. Andddd Kanye's episode with Taylor Swift was TOTALLY uncalled for! She's such a sweet, young artist... getting her first VMA award non-the-less and he has to come up and ruin her moment in front of a ton of people in Radio City Music Hall ANDDD THEN across the whole word when it was broadcasted on tv. I'm just glad he didnt get an award himself because his attitude is so poor. Okay- well that's all my comments for the VMA's haha just had to voice my opinion on a few of those items...
"Alrighttyy" (as said by Marissa on skype today...) I guess I will be getting back to work now.
Ciao!
Wednesday, September 16
Learning the Italian Way...
So today during lunch at the Architecture Cafe, Jenni and I sat with some Italians to have coffee and a panini (oh-by the way the food at our school cafe is AWESOME!) its 0.85 Euro for a cappechino and 2.00 Euro for a big panini! And these aren't just any cappechinos and paninis - these are like when you hear everyone say "Italy has amazing food"... well, yea... thats our school cafeteria... in the castle... in the park.
But anyways, the conversation was pretty funny because we started talking about the working habits when we are in Troy. Basically telling the Italians how we eat lunch, usually dont have dinner, and coffee at midnight. (its amazing that we have cooked dinner every night here) They were horrified that we didn't eat dinner and stay up until 5am back in Troy...even though to us its so normal - one of them was like "I wanted to study in America.. but now... no". Then, this same Italian (who, by the way, made a lord of the rings movie for our first presentation and has a crush on Jenni..) then went on to explain how in Italy their work mindset is: get "something" done, find a cool picture on the internet to show, think about how to make your "something" sound alot better than it is, eat, party, and then sleep.
They really dont understand our working habits, how we can stay working until early in the morning to get a project done.
It has been getting frustrating working with the Italians because they have such a tried-and-true mindset. They dont really understand the conceptual architecture we learn in America and only see design as something that is actually going to be realized. They also like a bunch of colors and labels, but they dont understand layering in diagrams to generate a new condition. But at the same time, its interesting seeing what they know versus what we have learned and being able to show them new things. As far as we go for being frustrating - I think the fact that none of us know Italian is pretty embarassing. Right now we are in Italian and cant even hear the teacher because there are Italians talking in the back of the classroom and only the first four rows can hear a teacher.
But anyways, the conversation was pretty funny because we started talking about the working habits when we are in Troy. Basically telling the Italians how we eat lunch, usually dont have dinner, and coffee at midnight. (its amazing that we have cooked dinner every night here) They were horrified that we didn't eat dinner and stay up until 5am back in Troy...even though to us its so normal - one of them was like "I wanted to study in America.. but now... no". Then, this same Italian (who, by the way, made a lord of the rings movie for our first presentation and has a crush on Jenni..) then went on to explain how in Italy their work mindset is: get "something" done, find a cool picture on the internet to show, think about how to make your "something" sound alot better than it is, eat, party, and then sleep.
They really dont understand our working habits, how we can stay working until early in the morning to get a project done.
It has been getting frustrating working with the Italians because they have such a tried-and-true mindset. They dont really understand the conceptual architecture we learn in America and only see design as something that is actually going to be realized. They also like a bunch of colors and labels, but they dont understand layering in diagrams to generate a new condition. But at the same time, its interesting seeing what they know versus what we have learned and being able to show them new things. As far as we go for being frustrating - I think the fact that none of us know Italian is pretty embarassing. Right now we are in Italian and cant even hear the teacher because there are Italians talking in the back of the classroom and only the first four rows can hear a teacher.
Tuesday, September 15
Shutterfly!
Hey All-
Just wanted to let you know I now have a Shutterfly account, so you can see all the pictures that I have taken... I will probably not put as many up on facebook anymore cuz it takes so long and creating albums on there is a hassle. So, try and keep up with my Shutterfly account, the url is: http://fromitaly.shutterfly.com/
So many funny things have been happening lately, especially due to our over-tiredness from starting the project for Torino. We have people arriving and working in the apartment from 1am to 5am and have had Italian students cooking us frozen meals (which probably scare them). Jenni now announces that she is "going to bed for bed-real" because she doesn't know how to speak English anymore.
Last night I planned to make my really good alfredo-pesto chicken that I learned how to cook from the Yellow House and Jenni offered to make the alfredo sauce but probably because our burners are messed up the alfredo turned into goo and it was scary. But it was somewhat okay because we made the kitchen smell like heaven and just cut up a bunch of onions so it was all-good in the end. We also had shaved parmigian cheese... which Jenni ended up licking the cheese grater because she likes it so much and now we don't know if there is tounge on the grater....
Class is pretty funny right now also because we are learning g.c. and everyone is falling behind so we just copy each other's transaction files and paste them into our programs and during the lectures theres a bunch of thumb-drives being thrown all over the room. For some reason Caitlin is the g.c. Einstein and even the boys are super jealous (which means our group's project is guna rock other people socks off).
Oh also, Cailtin saw a lady fall off a tram the other day. The doors have these really silly drawings on them warning people not to stick their bodies between the doors (duh?!) but this lady was like trying to frolic out of the tram and got her foot caught in the closing doors. She then proceeded to face-plant onto the pavement and then the whole tram was held up for 10min with about 5 other trams honking behind it. But don't worry the lady is okay - shes 30 and strong and yelled alot at the poor tram driver, but really... its her fault... who jumps out of a tram and doesn't expect to get their foot caught? C'mon lady...
In other news, Steve has a crush on every walking female. But unfortunately they all have boyfriends. When we were out on Saturday night he got really bad hiccups but it was hilarious because he would sit on a bench near the river and say "hiccup... ciaooo bellas!" at all the ladies. He even went as far as to run up a flight of stairs, past girls taking a picture together and then leaned over the railing and said "Ciaoooo raggazziii!!" lol. Quite funny.
Okay, well its back to the wonderful world of G.C.!! Check out the shutterflyy!!
Ciao miei belli, (Erika helped me write that one)
Christianna
Just wanted to let you know I now have a Shutterfly account, so you can see all the pictures that I have taken... I will probably not put as many up on facebook anymore cuz it takes so long and creating albums on there is a hassle. So, try and keep up with my Shutterfly account, the url is: http://fromitaly.shutterfly.com/
So many funny things have been happening lately, especially due to our over-tiredness from starting the project for Torino. We have people arriving and working in the apartment from 1am to 5am and have had Italian students cooking us frozen meals (which probably scare them). Jenni now announces that she is "going to bed for bed-real" because she doesn't know how to speak English anymore.
Last night I planned to make my really good alfredo-pesto chicken that I learned how to cook from the Yellow House and Jenni offered to make the alfredo sauce but probably because our burners are messed up the alfredo turned into goo and it was scary. But it was somewhat okay because we made the kitchen smell like heaven and just cut up a bunch of onions so it was all-good in the end. We also had shaved parmigian cheese... which Jenni ended up licking the cheese grater because she likes it so much and now we don't know if there is tounge on the grater....
Class is pretty funny right now also because we are learning g.c. and everyone is falling behind so we just copy each other's transaction files and paste them into our programs and during the lectures theres a bunch of thumb-drives being thrown all over the room. For some reason Caitlin is the g.c. Einstein and even the boys are super jealous (which means our group's project is guna rock other people socks off).
Oh also, Cailtin saw a lady fall off a tram the other day. The doors have these really silly drawings on them warning people not to stick their bodies between the doors (duh?!) but this lady was like trying to frolic out of the tram and got her foot caught in the closing doors. She then proceeded to face-plant onto the pavement and then the whole tram was held up for 10min with about 5 other trams honking behind it. But don't worry the lady is okay - shes 30 and strong and yelled alot at the poor tram driver, but really... its her fault... who jumps out of a tram and doesn't expect to get their foot caught? C'mon lady...
In other news, Steve has a crush on every walking female. But unfortunately they all have boyfriends. When we were out on Saturday night he got really bad hiccups but it was hilarious because he would sit on a bench near the river and say "hiccup... ciaooo bellas!" at all the ladies. He even went as far as to run up a flight of stairs, past girls taking a picture together and then leaned over the railing and said "Ciaoooo raggazziii!!" lol. Quite funny.
Okay, well its back to the wonderful world of G.C.!! Check out the shutterflyy!!
Ciao miei belli, (Erika helped me write that one)
Christianna
Thursday, September 10
Our Project
So I could also tell you about my first project here in Torino since my journal-entry type stuff from our North Trip isn't translating onto this website right now.
We are in groups of 2 Americans and 2 Italians. I am working with Caitlin Walsh and our partners are awesome (right now Claudio is already finishing our 3d Rhino model at his house and we were only given the 2d CAD files yesterday in class... freaking amazing)! Oh yea, so our partners are Claudio a 6th year and Erika a 5th year. Unfortunately neither of them are actually from Tornio - they live about an hour away in the countryside. There are 7000 archies at this school we are attending - the Politecnico di Tornio - and we go to school every day in a castle built in the 1800's thats right in the middle of a park that lines the river.
Our first project here will last about 4 weeks. Our midterm review is Sept 21st and our final review is Oct 2nd (this project is going to FLY by). It is located at the Lingotto in Torino, at the site of the 2006 Olypmic Village. We are given some structures that must remain in-tact and a lot of space to be redesigned. It's located right by a bunch of train tracks which is depressing because it looks really similar to the Cordoba site from last semester. It's a long site from North to South and theres like 20 train tracks on the eastern side of the site that basically cuts off one side of the city from the other. It's really nice working with Caitlin, Claudio, and Erika because we are all hard workers and its cool finding out how similarly me and Caitlin have thought about architecture even though we havent had the same professor or really seen alot of each others work at RPI.
Okay, well for now I'm going to finally get offline for the night. It's already 12.03pm here and I haven't been able to concentrate or do any work today since we bought our internet usb at 5pm... haha. I hope everyone is doing well and that home is nice and sunny!
Con amore,
Christianna
We are in groups of 2 Americans and 2 Italians. I am working with Caitlin Walsh and our partners are awesome (right now Claudio is already finishing our 3d Rhino model at his house and we were only given the 2d CAD files yesterday in class... freaking amazing)! Oh yea, so our partners are Claudio a 6th year and Erika a 5th year. Unfortunately neither of them are actually from Tornio - they live about an hour away in the countryside. There are 7000 archies at this school we are attending - the Politecnico di Tornio - and we go to school every day in a castle built in the 1800's thats right in the middle of a park that lines the river.
Our first project here will last about 4 weeks. Our midterm review is Sept 21st and our final review is Oct 2nd (this project is going to FLY by). It is located at the Lingotto in Torino, at the site of the 2006 Olypmic Village. We are given some structures that must remain in-tact and a lot of space to be redesigned. It's located right by a bunch of train tracks which is depressing because it looks really similar to the Cordoba site from last semester. It's a long site from North to South and theres like 20 train tracks on the eastern side of the site that basically cuts off one side of the city from the other. It's really nice working with Caitlin, Claudio, and Erika because we are all hard workers and its cool finding out how similarly me and Caitlin have thought about architecture even though we havent had the same professor or really seen alot of each others work at RPI.
Okay, well for now I'm going to finally get offline for the night. It's already 12.03pm here and I haven't been able to concentrate or do any work today since we bought our internet usb at 5pm... haha. I hope everyone is doing well and that home is nice and sunny!
Con amore,
Christianna
First Day of Internet!
We finally got coffee and Internet today! My skype name is christianna.bennett and I will most likely be online from about 11am til 6pm U.S. time (so get online and talk to me peeps!). Me, Caitlin, and Jenni already talked to Jeff and Paul today and I got to talk to Eric! So if you're not Eric, Jeff, or Paul then you SUCK!
Ciao bellas,
Christianna
p.s. ciaobello is the password to our internet here... isnt that cute? ("hellobeautiful")
Ciao bellas,
Christianna
p.s. ciaobello is the password to our internet here... isnt that cute? ("hellobeautiful")
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