japan tomorrow! wtf

hey so im back in the blogging game! whatever that means. but in all seriousness, I am going to Japan tomorrow. yes, that's right...Japan. I feel like i just moved back to LA from Vienna and now I'm off to Japan for spring break with Neil Denari, my research instructor. It's gonna be amazing, but I'm not quite ready for it because, well, I'm at school right now, at 6 in the morning, trying to finish a crazy project that has taken up a lot of my free time in the last ten weeks. I've been so busy this quarter I've hardly had any time to relax or even read my very own blog / look through all my pictures of my Europe trip. and now, start over again!

So after not sleeping last night or tonight, I somehow need to not sleep for a little while today and pack my crap, and maybe learn some Japanese? hmm, good think I have a roommate who knows all languages that can be know. that's helpful. what a wise roommate.

well the update is that i'm not ready to go, im tired, this quarter was insanely fast and busier than most (basically because I had to make up crap that I didn't finish in Vienna), and I'm a little worried about coming back after school starts again in two weeks...because this means I'm really not gonna get a break until I graduate in June...and sometime between now and then I also should probably find a job. whatever that means!

anyways, more to come. I'll keep you updated on my new adventures in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Beyond! (Beyond most likely just meaning Yokohama and Sendai, not anything crazier, like the moon or something)...

domi origato mr. roboto!

happy new year!

well it's 2010. crazy. time is flying. i'm back in LA now, after a 2 week adventure in redding. good times with old friends as usual, and great to see family again, even though there's always problems going home and living for a bit after being gone for a while. you know how that is...

i feel that some big things happened back home...life changing decisions and events for me and certain friends. it was good and bad. as usual. and i met some new people too, and that was definitely awesome! but just as it came and i began to get used to what was happening in Redding, whether it be with friends, or with girls, or with family, I am now gone from that world immediately. Made my way to SF, met my friends Victora and Jess...then on to SLO for a night. man i love slo...i could spend five minutes there and miss it for 5 days. its crazy. good times with victoria at ken's old house there...a house i used to kick it in constantly during the slo days...crazy how small the world is.

but today im in a new world that i haven't seen in a while. school starts in 3 hours. not ready. 6 months left of school. i love LA but im not ready for it. i know i will miss this when im done so im def gonna enjoy it while it lasts. im not going to be too hard on myself. lots on my plate right now. where will i be in 6 months? what job to i want? will i have a job? but what's awesome it that God knows and I have complete faith that He's got a better plan that anything i think i need or want, so I'm rolling with that plan. i'm in the process of closing a huge chapter in my life and starting another. lots to do but i'll enjoy it along the way. here we gooooo...

CONCLUSION

i think this is my last blog. well, about my trip at least. may continue with my regular life. not sure yet.

back home. its wierd. there's cars. roads of tar. 18 wheelers. cowboys. sandals. heat radiating from the sun. fat people (incredibly fat people). walmart. ugh. I WANT TO GO BACK. i realize how used to vienna i was getting. i love it there. the culture is so different. people do things different. they enjoy life differently. they speak differently. they drive differently (sometimes on the wrong side...or is it really the right side?) i miss the people. i mean, i love the people in LA and redding, but still. that place, and that experience, and that time of my life was really and truly awesome. i wouldn't change any of it. i wouldn't trade it for anything. every thousand dollar i spent was completely worth it. i was free to do whatever i wanted for three months. explore, meet people, try new things, enjoy culture, etc. FREE. still am, but with a little more work to be done!

i have been blessed to be able to have this opportunity. geez. i don't deserve it at all. i thank God everyday for what he given me in my life, whether this trip was involved in his plan or not, i am thankful for all the people and events He has placed in my life and am incredibly thankful for my family that is still almost too involved in my life :)

as great at this opportunity was, it is also easy to become engulfed in living for new experience. yeah, they are great, but they never completely satisfy me. they aren't needed, but they are definitely enjoyed. but i know this for sure...of all the places i was able to go, and all the things i was able to see, and of all the food i was able to try, and all the people i was able to meet.....the relationships i built with people in studio, or in my hostel, or at the church i attended, were by far the most important and most memorable. that's why when people ask what my favorite place was, i have to say vienna! i mean, the city itself is beautiful, and the food is great, and the subway is awesome, blah blah blah, but...what distinguishes it from alllll the other cities i went to (which were all beautiful and tasted great) was the people i came into contact with. the good times with had. the good talks we had. the jokes. the laughs. living life with them for a short while. the day to day with them. studying with them. working with them. eating with them. knowing them. influencing them. and them influencing me. seeing god in some of them. seeing god in the city. that's what makes the trip so meaningful. that's what i will miss the most.

maybe i will go back. work there? who knows. i graduate in june. crazy time at UCLA has gone this fast. seems like a week ago that i was starting architecture school, and now im halfway thru my third and final year. and i just spent three months on the other side of the world. time is going fast. life is short. don't waste it worrying about what might be or might not be. its not worth the time. you have what you have. roll with it. think less about yourself and more about others. love them. help them. give to them. selfishness isn't satisfying in the end.

im not going to stress about what will come after this phase of my life (where ill work or live). im not going to stress about school or temporary things that we are told are important in life. God has it all under control. we will see what He brings my way and I will be ready to follow whatever that may be...LA? Redding? (uggh) Vienna? the Moon? who knows what will happen. who knows if i will ever see the amazing people i ment in europe again. but if i don't, i'll still be satisfied with the time i did have with them.

that was a lot of rambling but its just what im thinking in my head right now. life is good.
God is good. Merry Christmas everyone that is actually still reading this. maybe i'll continue my blog for a while longer, if u are lucky. i know this is probably the MOST interesting blog you have EVER read. ya right! anyways, thanks for listening in. for now im saying goodnight. gotta rest my fingers for a couple weeks. we'll see if i can take some time out for this blog in 2010!

ciao, tchuss, servus, arrivederci, adios, bye, peace, bonjour!

NYC / Home for Xmas

12/18/2009

Well, NYC was great as usual. jared didnt get off work till 1030, so i roamed around the city with my stupid luggage for 5 hours, waiting. but i did a little exploring of my own for the time being. went back to times square, immediately had a delicious american made cheeseburger, and then roamed around little italy for a bit. i remembered how much i loved the brooklyn bridge last time i was here, so what did i do? that's right, i took the subway, with all my luggage, to the brooklyn bridge and i walked it out on the damn thing again. yaaaa. people probably thought i was crazy. who is this guy walking across a bridge with 80+ pounds of luggage hanging off of him at 9 pm? fun fun. it was beautiful at night though. manhattan all lit up and stuff. can't beat it. then i met up with jared at grand central station and went for a couple beers at the nearby pub until the last bus to new jersey's airport left at 2 am. GOOD TIMES with jared. i feel like this guy is one of my best friends. and i only met/hung out with him 3 months ago for three days. awesome! hopefully he's gonna come visit in the spring. we both called zach, our buddy in seattle (who i left my phone with 3 months previously) and yep that's right..he still had my phone. what a turd. so...i dont think i'll have my own phone with my own numbers till i start school again in january. dang. crazy what a big mistake leaving your phone somewhere can be. oh well, im still alive.

after new york it was on to seattle/los angeles for an evening...saw my roommate in LA. ate a burrito immediately. delicious. took a nap. prepared to leave again for.....THE RDG! back home for xmas. gonna take that stupid bus again alllll the way home overnight. why do i do this to myself? im an idiot. wish i bought a plane ticket. just want to be home. its so wierd being in LA though! what is this place? where is the subway? where are the old buildings? where are the beautiful lithuanians???? hmm.

so after 2.5 days (austrian time) of traveling. im in REDDING. ugh. sleepy time. i really only slept like 5 hrs in the last 2.5 days. all of my sleep time was reserved for when i was either on a plane, or on a bus. no beds involved. ugh. im an idiot.

What day is today?

12/17/2009 ?? (currently traveling thru time zones in the atlantic ocean)

so now im sitting here on two hours of plane sleep, three hours from a night in NYC. hopefully i cant meet up with jared even though i still have no phone. its a 16 hour layover and i have to change airports in the midst. jfk to jersey

over night. pretty retarded. im going to be so tired. can't wait to be home though. its gonna be nice. its will be a shock though at first. im going to miss europe so much! i met so many amazing people in so many amazing

places...austria, slovakia, hungary, germany, italy, swiss, france, ireland, the UK, and of course, the AMSTERDAM AIRPORT! yesss. ok i feel sick ultra turbulence right now. aaahhahhaah.

LAST DAYS!!!!

12/16/2009

Well now im on the plane again. going from amsterdam to new york. one nite in nyc tonight! let me recap on my last few days in vienna. they were completely awesome, despite doing a little work in between...

so on monday i still hadn't done any xmas shopping, but i banged it all out in like four hours. chirstmas markets are KING. and my family tried to make a rule that i can't spend more than ten dollars on them. that's like seven euros, which is basically worthless. so i do what i want. no problem. somehow ended up at school to sorta help my group afterwards. whatever. i cant do any work. screw it. just wanna hang out! gotta enjoy vienna for these last moments that i have!

put a little going away party together for sarah and i on monday night at the WUNDERBAR. it was so dope because everyone came. seriously. most of the studio actually pretended to care that we were leaving. it was just really cool to see everyone drop what they were doing at school to come kick it and have a couple beers. also, some of them got us cards and signed them. pretty nice of them. my friend madeline also made me a jager necklace out of little jager bottles and

zip ties. AWESOME. and at this point i was asked to give a little speech...and what did i give them? a damn good speech indeed :) Definitely some of my favorites were there too...names not being mentioned :) loved it though. by the way LITHUANIA IS AWESOME. just so you know. didn't go there. but yeah. so afterwards a small crowd of us went on to another place down the road...you know, the bar with the sausage stand INSIDE. can't it get any better than this? well maybe if a certain someone had joined us as well. but some people have boyfriends to tend to, so what can ya do? yesterday spent my afternoon talking to this certain someone for hours. kept her from doing any work. i just sat there, listening to her accent and just enjoying her. its great but its also a shame for other reasons. damn shame!

anyways.....by the time i was finished with that my group was really hoping i would help them out. but some how i found lots of ways to not help them. just kicked back, said some goodbyes, got my last taste of sausage at the wurstelstand / pita falafel / greek gyros...and by then people were again ready to go back out for a couple "last" drinks...great last day roaming streets of vienna and sitting in a small austrian hole in the wall with great people, including my group, minus "the guy" haha. saying goodbye was actually really tough. they are all so great there. really though. i'll miss them and my group a lot. "stupid romanian" haha. love it! and then i stayed up all night. why not? it was already three a.m. and i had to buy a bus ticket still for my trip from LA to the RDG. so why not grab my stuff at Saara's and head back to school/airport? i'll sleep on the 50 planes i have to take, right?

NOT. WATCHED MOVIES INSTEAD. GEEEZ.

last week in vienna PART 3

today i planned to get up at like 9 to go to church one last time...and that failed miserably. i woke up at like 11 instead. still went to church, hoping everyone i've met there would head to lunch afterwards. aaanndd that's exactly what happened. it was perfect timing and i was able to see all the awesome people one more time before i leave in a couple days. even though i didnt get to know these guys all that well, it was definitely cool to hang with them a bit and see what god is doing in their church and in vienna! hopefully...and maybe...i will come back here at some point and help them out..maaaaybeeee...

and tonight bin, huan, and I went to the OPERA. yeah, im so sophisiticated. you don't have to tell me. it was dope. a little MACBETH in the WIENER STAATSOPER (vienna state opera). it was actually an amazing show, and we got awesome seats because we are students, and students are cool like that. those opera singers are insane. their voices are incredible. and what's wierd is...the opera wasn't even annoying, or boring. i watched the show for three hours and was actually interested. either that means the opera is kinda of cool...or im just an old man now. let me know which one...

annnd tomorrow im getting up early to do allll my xmas shopping for the fam. want to get some cool "austrian" stuff for them. don't have a clue what yet, but i'm gonna get it allll done tomorrow morning. the problem is, i have to wake up first. and its difficult to wake up when you are perfectly comfortable in a futon bed in some girl's living room with her dog staring at you and occasionally licking and chewing on your fingers...and its warm in your bed while it's snowing outside in vienna.......so we'll see. can't make any promises on that

2 more days and counting. so sad. im so comfortable here now that LA / Redding are going to be wierd and probably suck at first. i mean, i love those places, but vienna? so awesome. i cant help but love it here...

last week in vienna PART 2

12/12/2009

been sorta helping my group the last couple days. by sorta i mean that i have another assignment at ucla to finish. a final project for a class there. put it off till now...now being the night before the extension deadline of a week later than the actual final deadline. sooooo...i have to do 60 (SIXTY) renderings of buildings that i have to quickly model in a certain way. yeah 60. insane. luckily i can use moritz's computer which has like 17 processors and can talk to you and probably drive you to school if you wanted him to. that's a funnything too...moritz calls it a "he". so when he gets mad at the computer...he will yell and say that "he is not working right". its actually pretty hilarious. i'm always saying, "who is he?" cause it makes no sense me. but anyways, used his computer because it renders faster than i can click the mouse, which is awesome. i need a new computer. mine is about to bloooowww...seriously. ive had it since i was four. its one of those original apple computers...you know, with the "floppy" disks? yaaaa. not. but close.

saara's place is pretty dope...love it here. the living room is more spacious than my hostel before, aaaand...she has a puppy who is so gangster. i love her. yeah. she's a girl gangster. not too many of those. sometimes when i hang my hands over the bed in the middle of the night, i wake up to the dog chewing on my fingers. it feels really great. i just really enjoy it. not. but still she is awesome. and the place is in a great part of the city. NEUBAGASSE. yeaaah. good stores and food places/bars like right outside. but i guess that;s how it is everywhere here...i do, however, have to walk like 10 whole minutes to the subway stop. it used to be 30 seconds. geeeez. whats up with that? 10 whole minutes........uggghhh. actually its better that way cause i can explore constantly...

last night (friday the 11th) we all went to a sweet house party for my friend roxy in studio. roxy..what a name by the way..but this house party was pretty fun. lots of interesting people from all over the place, among other people from class. seriously some crazy people there. one guy was so messed up on something that he was lying in the middle of the floor in one of the thousand rooms this apartment had, twitching and moaning. we were all staring at him for a while and finally paramedics came and took him away. it got a little too scary for someone apparently, so that person called an ambulence...saw lots of people making out and taking shots of wierd liquids, including some gluhwein on the stove....and of course found myself in a convo about religion once again with saara. a bit more complicated this time than the last, for various reasons, but still interesting for sure. we all ended up staying around there until like 6 in the morning. and it was awesome that we could just walk back to saara's from there. good times good times. now im trying to do stupid studio work on 4 hours of sleep. suuuucks. and pretending to contibute to my group's convos? impossible.

last week in vienna!!!!

back in vienna. made it to school on time after my trip. rolled right into studio at like 3 pm just in time for the ridiculous assistants to come around and see the work we had been (or not been) doing. it appears my group isnt mad at me so thats cool. and the assistants didn't seem to notice that i was gone for 12 days. no biggie. now i only have a week left here and im gone for good. crazy how time flies. i felt like 3 months was a long time at first, and now its over just like that.

now im gonna be staying at Saara's. my new home. my stuff is actually there right now. havent seen it in a while. gonna go settle in there when i can break away from this whole group thing. the next couple days are gonna be a little crazy. hopefully i can find time to do some laundry so i dont have to wear dirty travel clothes continually...although the smell is quite delicious.

race against time

12/8/2009

so now im here on a bus from BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA to

VIENNA! almost home. long day of traveling. i feel

rushed though cause the assistants at school are

meeting with the groups in about ohhh..i dont know..20

MINUTES! i think ill be there in perfect timing.

hopefully i will be cause apparently they won't meet

with group unless every member is there. SO I AM

NEEDED. PEOPLE NEED ME. WILL I STEP UP TO THE CALL? i

very conveniently booked a flight and got on a bus to

arrive at the exact time i am needed...without even

knowing it. wow. i am just so special. WE WILL SEE HOW

IT GOES! ADIOS!!

randomness in the dub dub

12/6/2009

this little excursion turned out to be the best thing

that ever happened to me. it was amazing. saw castles.

dominated. saw sheep. dominated. saw cows. dominated.

saw greeen pastures. everything was completely green.

it was crazy. so beautiful. and the coastal

cliffs...AWESOME! I can't even explain it. one of the

most amazing places ive ever seen. and UNCLE PATSY

attribued to that...he was our driver and he was great.

very interesting and knowledgable, except that his

irish accent was sooooo thick that we really couldnt

even understand his english. isn't that crazy? he even

took us to this little fish and chips place in a little

town neare where he lived, and then brought us to his

house to be slaughtered for dinner. :) not really...but

he did make us tea and play his instruments for us. i

got to wale on his drums like a retard for a bit...and

he also showed us how to make a chip butty, which is

basically just bread and butter wrapped around some

french fries, aka chips. money! uncle patsy really came

out of his shell for a little bit. told us about his

massive family too. well, 5 kids, but that's kind of a

lot, and they are all badass at something apparently.

engineers, pro soccer players, presidents of mars, etc.

so after that we had to head to the dub dublin. grabbed

a bus and passed out. somehow it took three hours to

get there instead of two. by the time we got there and

found our hotel we were exhausted. so we had a pizza

party in the hotel room. fun fun...watched the x-factor

like three times. so stupid. but this hotel was really

nice. the cheapest and best place we have stayed so

far. wierd. went to the guinness factory today and

christ church cathedral. the facto is great. free beers

as well. they brew so much beer there its insane.

dublin is a cool, dirty, ghetto city with a cool

downtown called temple bar. just small little roads of

cobble with lots of pubs everywhere. awesome. after the

factory, shane and amanda had to peace out. jess and i

still had some time there.................

utilized the sauna finally and then went for dinner.

picked the most expensive, un-pub-like place there was

in temple bar. why? i do not know. we were starving

though so who cares. then we pissed the waitress off

cause we ordered only enough food for one person

instead of two. hahahahah. thats right. it was actually

enough though. poo on her. jess left the next morning

for the states and i was left for another day to kick

it in dublin. cool but not cause i really needed to get

back to school to help my group. feel kinda bad about

it. plus the assistants hate our projects so they

aren't in the best mood and are getting upset when

people don't show up (like me). screw them. im in

ireland. ireland is the bomb. either way..a day in the

dub dub. explored the whole city by walking and saw

some cool buildings. a calatrava bridge as well and the

dublin castle.

my first though for my overnight stay was to just go to

the airport and sleep there. obviously a stupid idea.

instead i decided last minute to get another room at

the same hotel. of course, it had a stupid sauna in it

again. what the heck. why does every single room have a

sauna. why not just put one in the whole building?

anyways, went to a couple pubs down the street for the

rest of the night. cool place full of old men. just how

i like it! decided to stay and watch the manchester

united game. had some guinness (as everyone else was at

the bar). its crazy to see that...guiness guiness

guiness guiness....

then a band came on that played fifties americna

rockabilly. INTERESTING. am i in ireland or what?

america is everywhere! its nuts. just nuts.

IRELAND ACTION COMING UP!

12/6/2009

ON THE FLIGHT TO IRELAND--jess and i split up on the

plane so we can have some "alone time". we've been

together constantly for a week so it was time. not that

we werent getting along, but sometimes you need that.

had to switch to stupid pounds when we got there. which

means we lose even more money. sucks. the rate was so

bad that i pretty much gave them all my money and they

gave me enough for a small snack. and its funny to me

that northern ireland and belfast are part of the UK,

but the rest of ireland and dublin, well, is part of

Ireland. so dublin uses euros and belfast...pounds. can

i say STUPID? geez.

met up with shane and amanda at the hotel. he propsed

to her at the zoo while we were on our way. craziness!

everyone is getting married these days. i guess its

about that time. i love that he did it at a zoo in

belfast, and then he proceeded to buy loads of stuffed

animals to bring back to me. how awesome is that? we

cruised out to the xmas markets after. not a surprise

there. all of europe goes crazy over these, and of

course they had gluhwein. whats the deal with that. so

popular. but instead we found a tent that resembles

oktoberfest and ordered liters of beer. uh-oh. not

again. i'll definitely stick to only one this time.

after this we had a couple kangaroo and osterich

burgers (these things are delicious by the way)...jess

and amanda went home early. LE TIRED. shane and i

instead went on the search for the oldest pub in town

and enjoyed some good old irish whiskey and guiness. it

was an amazing experience sitting there with a bunch of

irish people in a hole in the wall place in belfast.

proceed to find another hole in the wall pub with a

live band and lots of awesome people. met some really

old couple there and talked with them for the rest

ofthe night. they kept buy us glasses of whiskey and

talking to us about how much they love cali and how

theyve been here and there and been drunk here and

drunk there and blah blah blah. they were funny. they

got my email as well to send a couple pics that we took

to us. good times good times. crazy old alcoholics.

cabs are impossible to catch here. there are like five

million of them but none of them stop for anythings. so

stupid. we sat on the side of the road and ate pizza

for a half hour before they finally came and stopped

for us. bunch of punks. ahh well. pizza was delicious.

and now we must get up early in the morning to go on

som excursion with some random cabby that does private

tours on the northern irish coast. boom shaka lacka.

hope we dont get killed or sold into prostitution!

PARIS PARIS PARIS

12/5/09

now leaving paris...last two days were awesome here. i

really really like france. paris is so beautiful.

buildings and girls. seriously beautiful women. but

they are extra tall. kind of sucks.

found a cool hotel in the city center. some nice tour

guide man hooked it up for us. it's wierd how stress

free everything has been so far...ok so a quick run

thru of paris. im tired of writing...

day one: awesome nap. random food in our part of town.

wierd, creeping waiter. began to learn french. merci bo cu,

etc. his the lourve and the notre dame cathedral

and the pompidou centre. all amazing. began to take

pictures of us dominating every noteworthy building we

came acrossed. watched a mass at notre dame. sat there

for a while. didn't want to leave. so much history.

began to eat crepes constantly. so much nutella. i

think i would bleed it if i had a cut somewhere..its

oozing out my pores. not good. after exploring we made

an awesome decision to go inside this small restaurant

cafe out of the millions on each street, and have some

wine and crepes there. best place in france fo sho.

the waiter there was hilarious and really nice

(contrary to popular opinion about french people). he

was so nice that after we ordered a pitcher of wine, he

brought us "special" drinks...hopfully not with rat

poison in them. they were glasses of straight run with

a little bit of caramel mixed in. intense. when we

finished those, he brought out another round on the

house...then he brough out shots of whiskey...then

beers...wtf. all for free? no doubt!and we still had a

while pitcher of wine left. BAD IDEA. he made us some

awesome crepes and then we invited him to sit and talk

with us for a while. so, of course, he did! got some

funny pics with him, like the one where he decides that

it is a good idea to kiss jess's neck a few times.

priceless! at some point he even offered us the keys to

his countryside home if we wanted to stay longer.

crazy! after all this we werent feeling so hot. mixing

rum, whisky, beer, and wine is definitely stupid.

decided to head home around 2. started to rain. got

lost. walked past our street by like 2 miles. finally

crashed around 3. woke up at noon....ugh. this is why

we havent stayed out too late on this trip...because we

would never wake up for anything...

for our second and last day we wanted to kick it at the

eiffel tower and arc de triomph. ya know..keep it

simple. as jess slowly got ready over a period of 2

hours, i explored the area around our hotel and found

some awesome cafes to eat at. we went to this money

breakfast place with amazing omelettes. sat outside on

a small street with tons of french people taking their

lunch. the sun was out. i had a view of a beautiful

gothic church. wow. life is good. no complaints here.

at all!

finally started moving toward the eiffel tower at 3.

had jess's iphone with me...played a little music at

the start. it's like a mini boombox. put on "walk it

out" and we both started dancing our way through the

streets twards the tower. wow we are so gangster. no

wonder french people think americans are retarded...

eiffel tower is awesome, even though its really just a

pile of steel trusses. cool to see though. felt fake,

like vegas or something. again, ate crepes here, and

avoided mysterious black men all selling th exact same

thing...clear plastic eiffel towers that light up. the

dumbest souvenir i've ever seen! these guys definitely

weren't supposed to be there because they run away in

groups when the french police come around, who were

also carrying guns at all times. they are so tough!

haha. did some cool jumping photos in fron of the

tower, and instigated other to do the same. met some

asian-australians from london in the process.

again..WTF. asian austrialians from london? really?

made our way to the arc and pondered life again there.

to get under the arc, you have to take a tunnel under

the circle road around it. didn't find that tunnel or

know it existed until after the fact. decided to run

across the street through about 10 lanes of insane

french traffic. allmost died twice. cops saw us. not so

happy with us. but didnt get arrested this time so its

all good! found a chirstmas market after. GLUHWEIN!

yeah! not as good as in austria, but still good to see

again! I also had a extremely large sausage here.

deluxe with grilled onions and mushrooms, french style.

WALKED IT OUT all the way back to the Louvre and saw

the good old MONA LISA. you know the mona lisa is so

popular and all, but im not sure if i really like it

that much. its actually not a very beautiful painting.

stupid leonardo da vinci. who was this guy anyways?

just kidding, dont get angry.

after we went back to the eiffel tower (we were allll

over the city at this point) for dinner and a carazy

light show on the tower. it was intense, and so was the

creme broule that i devoured at the cafe. geez i can't

wait to weigh myself when i get home. ugh. i feel like

a TURD. but the light show on the eiffel tower was

pretty dope. belonged in a little dance club with a dj

behind it. or maybe on top of it. i dont know. before

we crashed for the night - because ireland was in the

morning - we began a large search for sparkling water.

nothin was really open, but we did a few rounds through

the blocks of our neighborhood. enede up at a bar of

course! jess had a water and i feel wierd also ordering

a water so i ended up with a beer in my face. a huge

crew of french people come in for a pre party. every

single one of them was completely gorgeous. it was

crazy..and nice. afer awkwardly staring at them for a

good half hour we went back to the hotel and passed

out. time for an excursion to ireland tomorrow...to

meet shane and amanda. i have like four days there,

which is kind of a lot. i still have to go back to

school and work w/my group...

movin on to le france

12/3/2009

explored basel a little more last night, it was really an exploration for good, reasonable food that didn't cost 1 million francs. the city is really cool, too. something about it is different than austrian cities. not sure what. geeez everyone is rich there. "oh let's go out to dinner everyday and spend our life savings on stupid meals and drink...ah ahahahahaha..." we settled on a money crepe place and then immediately passed out. ...because apparently the only train we could catch to paris leaves basel at 6:50 this the morning. damn. but we are on that very train right now....

we are in the middle of nowhere in france. cool little farm towns. the architecture is much different and so is the language, which i know nothing about. jess knows a little though...its all good in the hood. i keep going in and out of sleep with my music on. i see lots of green and little homes with rooves that don't overhang at all. then i go to sleep. i keep haveing dreams. dreams about the past. its interesting. reflecting on old times. my life. where God wants me. what his will is for my life. just thinking..and its crazy people live here. people live in different situations and atmospheres all over the world. its insane when you think about it. some people out here in the country know nothing at all of the world that ive seen...people are born and die in the craziest places around the world. and the world is so completely beautiful...we know what beauty is. crazy. but reassuring....if you know what i mean. i think what i just wrote is also influenced by the music im listening to right now. its a group called four tet...like a small orchestra with electronic sounds. its dope. and its from bin, my roommate. its "thinky" music. or maybe "do drugs" music. right now its thinky music, though. well well we shall be in paris in one hour. brb. lol. rofl. blah blah blah.

dominating the country of switzerland

12/2/2009

basel is pretty money. small town, even though its the third largest in swizzy. found a cool river/bridge situation. B.E.A.-utiful. also found some old castle (typical) that we completely DOMINATED...and by this i mean we found a book of "wishes" sitting in the entryway of it, and decided to add some wish of our own to it (this was okay, since that's what it was there for). jess wrote, because of my influence, "I wish i was a big boy. love jessica." and i wrote, "i wish i was a little bit taller, i wish i was a baller." hopefully both come true!

ok so the thing about switzerland is that its insano expensive. I though we were good to go when we exhanged money, because the swiss franc is worth the same as a dollar. HOWEVER, everything was like 8x as expensive here. we couldnt find a normal meal for under 20 francs, so we grabbed some beers and went to mcdonalds. i hate to admit this, but it really happened. WE WENT TO MCDONALDS. and still, 2 cheeseburgers and a happy meal = 12 francs. stupid. whatever, this country is still awesome. freaking switzerland. i love it.

today we got up super duper early and grabbed a train to luzern and then interlacken. now we are heading back to basel for the night. let me tell you that the swiss alps are incredible. its like being in the LORD OF THE RINGS. some of the most amazing mountains ive ever seen. in some places there are little waterfalls coming off of the mountains, as well. Just little valleys, and vast cliffs cover in snow, everywhere, nonstop! small little villages with a church in the middle, with the steepest steeple that you could ever imagine, overlooking a lake that is slate blue. this crap was everywhere. those swiss people don't deserve this! no just kidding, I guess i'll allow them to have it.

both towns were pretty cool, in their own way. luzern was super old and medieval. definitely picturesque. my fav city so far on this trip. almost battled a swan there, too. there are swans everywhere on the lake here. i fed some. they liked me. cool wooden bridges crossed the river there, leading to an awesome old town waterfront of traditional swiss building filled with cafes and restaurants. plus swans. swans swans swans. of course we had a little gluhwein here. can't stop! and had some bread for lunch cause we are cheap/swiss is retarded with prices. had to leave in 1.5 hrs to head to interlacken. i had to peee so bad, and the stupid train bathrooms were locked. this is because the toilets open up to the train tracks, and if we peed and pooped there, everying would fall onto the station, which i think would be pretty funny. but, i still had to pee, so i ran to the station bathroom where it cost 2 FRANCS to pee...like 2 dollars!!!! i didnt even have 2 francs on me, so i ran back to the train, and found an awesome spot to take care of my business. right between two cars....the transition space between both of them. peed all over that transition space. the train deserved it.

and interlacken was pretty amazing as well. the city was kinda like south lake tahoe but the mountains around them were completely amazing and twice as deluxe. and the lake there is just stupid. how can anyone say God is not real. no accident caused such a beauty and perfection. sorry if you don't agree.

really wanna go snowboarding here but it too hard. we only have a couple hrs here. sucks. instead of boarding, i settled for a beer and sandwich (the size of a cookie...) in the local pub. jess and i continued to sarcastically make fun of eachother here...typical.

now we are back on the train..each swiss chocolate and feeling pretty sick from it. today's trip was pretty sweet. we saw a large chunk of switzerland (which isn't difficult because the country is the size of rhode island)...and what the heck is rhode island anyways...so now one more night in basel spending millions of dollars for one meal, and then heading to paris tomorrow morning..crazy traveling right now! we are stopped in a city called bern right now. i think its the swiss capital. we are continuing to eat swiss chocolate and get fat...people watching. oh look..the swiss army soldiers are getting on the train right now. i actually think its the entire army that just joined us. all 50 of them. and they have their guns, too. they are so tough. actually they are probably just skwirt guns! we all know that swiss soldiers aren't tough...but they are good drinkers, that's for sure. i think each on of them is drinking a beer right now, and if not, they are drinking our of flasks. the funny thing is that they throw their guns on the luggage rack like they don't care. i could easily stand up and create a terrorist attack rigth now, no problem. but , as i said before, skwirt guns..prob not real...

swizzzzzzy

12/2/2009

hola from somehwere in the middle of "swizzy". we are on the train from innsbruck to zurich/basel, switzerland. crazy ammounts of snow outside. the alps are monsters. beautiful monsters for that matter. we left innsbruck a little early this afternoon so we could have some daylight to see out of the train as we went went to swizzy. good call on that. see mountains =awesomeness. WHOA---the train just turned around. whats up with that? although my phone just buzzed, saying that im now in switzerland, so it must be all good. i don't care. fine, train take me somewhere else in swizzy. i'll deal, as long as im in a new place exploring and stuff. so whatever...

Jess is passed out, again, so im taking some time to write this little blog of mine...there's nothing to stare at anymore cause its dark outside anyways (at lie 430 pm everyday)...

so innsbruck was pretty cool. except for the rain/cloud factor. when we got there, it was pouring outside...but we found the best hostel ever right down the street. it was like a hotel but ultra cheap and the people were super chill. the old town was close to us as well...so we walked down there and found some good traditional austrian restaurant called teh goldenes dachl. i had a massive plate of meet. seriously. all kinds of meat this meat on the side. gangsta. it was completely insane. explored some little streets for a while after but it was definitely raining hard so we just kicked back at the hostel afterwards.

so after snoozing like 17 times we woke up and realized it actually wasnt raining, so we took off to look at some cool stuff. the olympics were here in the 70's so we went to that area, cause Zaha did a big ski jump there. not as cool as we hoped because of the stupid clouds. they were in the way of the awesome mountains. stuuuupid clouds. but the ski jump that zaha did was pretty dope in itself. (jess didn't agree at all). we got bored of this area pretty quick, despite the large amount of "sexy shops" that could be found everywhere. they were pretty interesting.

went back to the old town and immediately got some gluhwein, of course. The town is really cool, but it was missing that picturesque view of the mountains behind it, because once again, the STUPID clouds were blocking everything. so the next best thing to do besides look at the mountains would be...drum roll...how about a little beaver-looking stuffed animal that yodels and wear an austrian hat? heck ya. as we headed back to the station to leave for switzerland the clouds started to break, of course. perfect timing, when we are leaving. but, we could begin to see the ginourmously large mountains covered in snow directly surrounding the entire city. it was awesome for sure. this is what the city really looked like.

at the station we bought a little baquette and brie action for the 5 hr train ride we were about to go on. also prepared to battle for the first spot on the train, so we could actually get a good spot. BATTLE. this is necessary because last time be got screwed and sat with a little baby the whole time.....babies suck on trains. so now we are about 2 hrs from basel (on the border of france, germany, and switzerland) and we are continually pretending to be asleep everytime the train stops at a station. that way people wont disrupt our little private cubby area...no more babies!

trains and babies

12/1/2009

im sitting on the train watching a baby play with a bunny rabbit. (wow did i just write that?). lucky little austrian kid. just kicking back...not a care in the world. just screams and yells and dances all he wants. its wierd to hear a baby talk in german, too. whoa, the little baby is on the phone now. on his celli-cell talk to his poppa, i think. in german, of course. i love it. quite entertaining...worth a paragraph of writing for sure. i guess i don't really have a care in the world right now either. i mean, im training through europe with a good friend. no "real' cares in the world, i dont think. many times its necessary to take a step back and rethink what it is you think is important and worth worrying/caring about. you quickly realized that you situations really aren't bad at all relative to many real problems that people face everyday.

you know its also crazy im actually in school right now...studying abroad is the bomb. but realistically its pretty crazy that im almost done with architecture school now. seems like i just finished cal poly. no clue what im doing after either, or where i'll end up. redding? africa? moon? distant galaxy? BEYOND? HMMMMM. ill take it day by day...the land of BEYOND sounds kind of intimidating. but nothing to hold me down so we'll see what God has in store for me. and for now, im gonna kick it in INNSBRUCK like a gangsta...maybe do a little snowboarding tomorrow? hmmm you never know!

off to austria - WESTSIDE

11/30/2009

Just left today for salzburg after kicking it in vienna for a few days after jess got here. good times re-exploring vienna. it never gets old goofing off around there in random palaces and "platz's".....but today got up at 630 in the morning and grabbed a train at 730, and during that time i also moved out of the hostel! so i am technically homeless, traveling from vienna, west through innsbruck to switzerland, and then on to paris, and then on to ireland to meet up with shane and amanda...and then...no not really. i think that's enough right? insano traveling. so about the homeless thing...when i get back i will be staying with saara on her futon for a week. i just dropped my stuff off there yesterday to store while im traveling. works out perfectly.

so its crazy how time has flown by. im amazed. this experience has been completely awesome so far. i've loved nearly every minute of it. I remember when i first showed up here...i actually thought these three months were going to go reallllly slow for some reason. i thought it was enough time. but now i dunno. i think i want to stay. still gotta rule it out, but im thinking so. sure, going home for xmas will be great and all, but at the same time im going to miss this place we call europe a lot. but what can ya do? i guess move back here and work later eh? possible...

well nevermind all that cause we are training to awesome places nonstop right now! yeah! jess is passed out with her mouth fully open. quite attractive. shes still working out the whole jet lag issue. its a problem i hear. not so much for me for some reason. but lemme talk about salzburg a little bit. its pretty dope. only takes a few hours to see. at the city center is a massive castle / fortress of destruction and warfare as i call it. anything that is called a fortress must be completely badass, right? as an archtitect, i think my first project will be to build a fortress as my home. it only makes sense. it will be complete with warriors, trebuchets (made from my stupid high school physics class), and arrow-holes in all the walls...but in a CONTEMPORARY design, of course. it will still dominate enemies constantly, they will just be contemporary enemies. yep. that's my first project. settled.

also saw where mr. mozart himself was born / where he lived his life. definitely historical...MOZART PLAYED IS LITTLE BABY VIOLIN HERE. crazy. and of course there are christmas markets here. they are insane for these markets / spiced wine. we are counted how many "gluhweins" we have while on this trip. its the popular thing to do...drinking them that is. they are just so delicious that we just cant get enough you know? so we are sip sipping on some gluhwein and climbing fortresses and dancing upon them in triumph. yes. we are so cool.

found this awesome little lunch place with some bomb goulash souuup! GOUUUULAAAASH. mmmm. what's nice about this stuff is that it also has some veggies in the soup. i've eaten like .2 servings of veggies this whole trip. ugh. GOUUUUULAAAAAAAAASH. yes. ok now its time to leave. innsbruck actions coming right up--but wait, before i go must do one more thing (apparently). run down to the river in salzburg and wash my face off in the crystal clear waters of melted snow caps? fo sho. ok. now time to go.

NOTE TO ALL: even though "the sound of music" was filmed around the area of salzburg, no one cares there. what's even wierder is that i care, and that i have seen the movie a million times. i guess that's how a sister can influence you. they do, however, have a bus tour for the sound of music. except, its 4 HOURS long. that's just insane. seriously, singing that stuff for four hours is ridiculous. so if you are ever in salzburg and you are really wondering about where the sound of music stuff is, now you know. 4 hour tour baby! yeah!

BACK FROM THE DEAD

hey all, i haven't posted in forever but that's because i was traveling all over. i wrote it all down, and here are all my writings from the last days of my trip. im now back in the states wishing i was in Vienna...

11/28/2009

jess got here today, and i am pretty much done working with my group for now. going to miss the presentation next week cause we are heading to explore tons of places. yeahhhh! im showing her around vienna for a day or two and then we are off for a week and a half. that's a long time for sure. oh well. life is good. also i packed up all my crap and move it to my friend Saara's place. im gonna stay there for the rest of my trip, which is really only a week, since im traveling so long. so im moved out and homeless! yesssss....

TGI FRIDAYS...in vienna?

dude i just had the craziest thanksgiving dinner ever. tgi fridays with a bunch of american exchange students. it was awesome. and, it was a buffet. ultra awesome. ok ok...not the best food...but a thanksgiving meal nonetheless. i'm not really sure how much pie i actually ate. i lost count at some point. and mashed potatoes...ohhhh man. the only problem i had was with the "stuffing". def not stuffing. more like compressed bread that tastes like compressed bread. very wierd.

met some awesome people though. a bunch of girls from tennesse, illinois, and other random places. they are all undergrads studying here for the semester at the business school in vienna. afterwards we walked around aimlessly, pretty uncomfortable from our feast, until we ran into a christmas market here. these things pop up like crazy around here, and are pretty popular. we all caught the last train home and now im sitting here in my hostel working on this stupid project. i have to work a lot in the next day or so cause im peacing out for a week on sunday....

oh ya and get this...talked to my renter today. reminded her that im leaving on the 16th of december. she told me that i have to pay for the entire month of december even if stay for 15 days. now i understand if this is an apartment. but no..its a hostel. im not just giving her money for no reason. but she is annoying me, and since im leaving for a week right at the beginning of december...i am officially moving out of my hostel..TOMORROW. whoa. out of nowhere. im gonna store my friend saara's place and then prob crash on her couch after i get back for a week...so ya...im packing up tomorrow.

thanksgiving...

went on a search with bin today for some turkey. failed completely. diverted to getting coffee and pie, which turned into a pastry and pie. that's the closest to thanksgiving i could get. good enough i suppose. but apparently some guys are gonna head to TGI FRIDAYS down the street from my school later tonight. i guess they have a good old american thankgiving meal. screw it. im going. gotta have some stuffing and turkey. the rest of 2009 wont be quite right if i dont completely stuff myself with this food today...i've actually never eaten at TGI Fridays before...and there's probably a good reason for that. but i'll do whatever it takes on thanksgiving..

randomness at 2 am

you know what im doing right now?? listening to kanye

west with bin at the hostel. haha. he's singing right

now. such a gangster...this is pretty much awesome

right now. much better than earlier...

i had a little run-in with the assistants at school.

since some of us didnt make the zaha presentation and

were late for our own presentations, we got a little

lecture from them. we were disrespectful they said.

felt kinda bad, but also realized how unorganized their

system is, which definitely cause all this lateness and

missing of events. it was kinda funny

though...honestly...of all the things they could

lecture us about..it was that. i can think of 1000

other problems that have been going on in our groups

that are more important. aahhh well.

today is thanksgiving! doesn't feel like it...obviosly

because im in vienna. (for those of you that dont know,

austria doesnt celebrate thanksgiving...just wanted to

clear that up). might go search for some turkey with

bin later. realllly wanna watch football but i dont

know if that will happen. plus we still have a ton of

work to do this weekend before our review. it just got

moved to monday, which means i wont be here for any

more reviews this semester. so jess gets here on

saturday afternoon, so im basically working until then.

and thats it for now!

VENEZIA AND THE WORST PLACE TO DRIVE IN ITALY

we thought we would take a route from florence over

to the mediterranean immediately. we crossed some

awesome mountains and made some interesting stops in

the middle of nowhere...climbed some hills and threw

leaves around like little kids. the atmosphere was much

different than tuscana. all the trees were yellow and

red, and there were no wineries in sight. just little

houses burning wood in the fireplace. weather was still

amazing. we have been pretty lucky with this. so far on

this entire trip, no clouds at all.

after we came down from the mountains and started

approaching the ocean, we realized how ugly the area we

were in actually was. it was like an industrial

coastline with TONS of stupid 18 wheelers getting in

our way. ughh. every building was from the 70s and was

completely ugly. if i had a map of italy i was X this

part out and tell no one to ever go there. it was funny

though, because we thought we were going to see this

amazing coastline, along with beautiful cliffs and

lakes, and all we saw was an ugly marsh on a now cloudy

day. so instead of stopping in this area, we went as

fast as the trucks would allow, to venice!

got there pretty late cause there was a lot of traffic.

maybe because there were so many trucks. seriously.

trucks invaded the eastern coast of italy. it was like

I-5 in the grapevine. by the time we parked our car and

took a boat to our hostel (again, only sheets for a towel, aka toga),

i had already spend like 60

euros. this place is expensive for sure. BUT AWESOME!

venice is a great place to explore nonstop. there are

so many boats to take, so many canals to see, and so

many little alleyways between them all. it was just

what you would expect venice to be..and it didnt really

stink. one thing we noticed was the dogs in venice.

apparently there are a variety of dogs that appear to

live on their own there. we are just walking along down

some alleyway, and a little dog passes us, looks up for

a moment, and keeps on going. he knows exactly where he

is walking. turns a corner...doesnt ever look the other

way. just moving right along. THIS HAPPENED THREE MORE

TIMES. so wierd. dogs have lots of meetings to make in

venice. they know exactly where they are going and are

uninterested in stopping to hang out with people along

the way...

anyways..venice was great. saw the bienalle there (art

exhibition thats pretty awesome) and explored a little

more after. had to take off before 5 pm that day to get

the car back, since we were paying like 1000 euros a

day to park. at that point it was go time again.

started driving at 6 pm for a good 6 hour cruise back

to vienna. that was good times, but not so interesting

because it was dark again, and moritz kept falling

asleep at the wheel. so i forced him to pull over so i

could drive...when we finally got back it was 12 pm,

and as i walked up to my place i received a good

rememberance of italy. set my bag down to unlock the

door, but i guess i set it down a little to hard. my

wine bottle i bought at the vineyard near florence was

inside. looked down at the ground....wine everywhere!

it was spewing from my back in every direction.

AWESOME. i love the smell of wine wherever i walk with

my backpack now...

and thats italy! now i have to work for the next 5

days. we have a review next weekend and we havent done

anything. half my group isnt even around yet. what a

disaster. ahhh whatever. good times anyways. after i

work my butt off this week its off to travel again next

week! salzburg, innsbruck, switzerland, paris, and then

london/ireland. holy crap thats intense...

FIRENZE!

driving driving driving....more castles...more domination..took the most random ways we could to florence. did some wine tasting along the way. found a little whole in the wall winery on the side of the road and tasted some of their wine right where they bottle their stuff. it was great. we stopped a lot to take in the beauty of the wine country there. its nothing like california. something different. sometimes stopped and ran thru some the vineyard fields. not the best idea since everyone has crazy dogs that chase us. kind of intense!

by the time we got to florence it was dark again. found a hostel that was pretty dope, and went to get some food of florence! the florentine beefsteak....ohhh ya. so good. but expensive. this place was for rich folk, but we didnt care. they didnt even give us a menu so we didnt know the prices. but we wanted the "beef" so who cares. it was amazing too, but cost each of us 30 euros. stupid. steak, potatoes, wine, and cookies. thats like 45 dollars for that stuff. geez.

florence is great though. the duomo there is so massive it almost seems like it doesnt belong at all. the duomo is a huge cathedral there in florence. its like the centerpiece of the city. we roamed around for the day, eating a plentiful amount of bread, salami, and cheese, as well as too much gelato. explored the leather markets. these are pretty well known for florence. mortiz bought a new wardrobe in leather there. it was crazy. everything but underwear. ridiculous. then we went and kicked it on top of a hill, at piazza michaelangelo, and saw the entire city, as well as walked through a bridge that people used to live on. it looked like it was about to fall over, so maybe that's why no one lives on it anymore..makes sense. we were pretty much dead tired by the end of the day so we hit the sauna and pool at our awesome hostel and kicked it with some travelers there. problem with goines swimming in this hostel is that they dont give you towels. sooo what do we do? use our sheets, of course. wearing them like togas walking through the hostel is always a good idea. except when you need to use them for sleeping, and they are all wet. not so good anymore.. next morning it was off to venice for full day of driving along the coast..

on the road again...SIENA, next stop!

off to siena this morning! took side roads to get there. avoid the tolls that way. plus we get to see tons of awesome stuff. we are in tuscana, which is comepletely awesome. wineries everywhere, towers on random hills, castles and castle towns every hour. we, of course, were listening to techno much of the way. we only had one cd and that was it. so basically i know these techno beats pretty well now. :) i was driving, of course, racing around all these little turns in the tiniest car ever. clemens wasnt feeling well...he kept coughing and asking us to roll the windows up. i dont want swine flu all that bad so i just ignored him consistenly all day. he was probably gonna leave us at siena and head to innsbruck back home.

the drive was awesome! stopped and explore like 4 villages that were old castle towns. climbed castles and completely dominated them. every town was like a little maze of streets crazy buildings. we found an old church in one town. no one was inside, and we were able to sneak up into the bell tower. it was so sketching though..i dont think anyone had been in there since the middle ages. there were bones of dead birds lying EVERYWHERE, and a reallllly old wooden staircase leading all the way up. if one plank on the staircase broke, we would fall alll the way down and most likely die..next to the birds. it was actually intense. but we made it up to the bell like champions would. all the towns were so amazing, and we had an awesome time exploring. so by the time we got to sienna it was dark. spend a little time in siena. one night. explored the medeival city to the max. piazza del campo is so dope.a huge plaza that overlooks a massive tower that can be seen from anywhere in the city. kicked it out there most of the time... clemens took off as expected. just me and moritz now. siena is really small so it didnt take long for us to see the whole city and take off again.

LAST TOURS OF ROME

next day woke up early to head out to the tours and such. wanted to hit the forum and the colosseum during the day, as well as the sistine chapel back up at the vatican. met a few people at the kapital for a bit and took off to see some good stuff. antonio and i split from the group and started exploring the forum. so amazing. these buildings are so dang old its ridiculous. also attempted to explore an old tower that looked pretty interesting from the ground up. we snuck inside some building, past security, and searched thru the building to find the entrance to the tower. we felt pretty awesome for a while, sneaking around and running away from people working there. in the end, we found nothing. but pretty funny nonetheless. hit the colosseam afterwards, which was pretty dope. so many massive battles took place there. destruction and death to max. its crazy that type of "fun" event was allowed back then. haha. not anymore thats for sure. at this point we were planning to head to the sistine chapel. got a text from one of our teaching assistants, saying that we needed to head to the museum again for a presentation with zaha now. wtf. we just presented yesterday! the text said to be there in a half hour. screw that! our group, which only consisted of moritz and i at the time, along with a few others, decided it wasnt worth going to. zaha doesnt care about our work anyways....

so we went to the vatican, while others rushed off to make zaha happy. the sistine was worth it though. michaelangelo is nuts. just a crazy painter painting nonstop on every wall of every room. oh ya, and rafael. i love that they named the ninja turtles after these dudes. so funny. spent a lot of time there, and of course, got into some religious talk w/moritz while staring up at the sistine ceiling. what else would come up, right? i mean, all the paintings basically explain where we came from according to the bible, along with other great stories. why not talk about what it all really means.

got a text afterwards from sarah...said the reviews went ehhh...alright. of course! apparently zaha didnt like anything really and didnt agree with the project brief all that much. wow, she is really involved in the class. or not..zaha did, however, invite everyone to dinner afterwards, and that's what sarah told me about. sooooo, what do we do? show up for dinner, of course. rushed over to piazza del popillo and walked in the restaurant all calm and cool it no big deal we missed the review. haha. everyone was already there, sitting down, all quite. we just stood there, akward as can be. the servers found us some extra chairs and we sat down quitely, explaining that we were "inside the vatican and couldnt leave"....or something. zaha didnt even notice we had entered. she was too busy staring at patrick and eating bread or something. but i sat in a spot that was directly in zaha's line of sight, so everytime i looked up towards the front of the restaurant, it would appear that zaha was checking me out. i mean, i dont want to brag, but im a pretty sexy guy. i cant help it if zaha likes what she sees, right? :) actually, she was probably trying to figure out who i was and why i was eating food that she was about to pay for. haha. but in the end we did get a free meal from zaha. so that was cool.

after that our whole class went out a grabbed some beers and sat on the spanish steps for a while. i, of course, purchased another toy from some italian guy selling randomness. this time it was a stretchy little thing that had a face on it. it was like a litte stretchy man. good price. 40 cents! boom. four other people bought them too so i didnt feel completely retarded. good times kickin it out there with everyone. what an awesome experience. sitting w/people from all over the world, on the spanish steps in rome, having a beer, and playing with a stretchy man thing. PERFECTO.

after a few of us went back to the little bar/cafe covered with vines. along the way, i got into an awesome convo about religion and other intersting stuff with my friend saara from finland. it turned into a 2 hr convo outside this little cafe. pretty cool to see people's point of view on different things in life and have the opportunity to explain where im at on faith, religion, life, etc.

later on it was time for moritz and i to prepare for our roadtrip back. it was going to be me, moritz and clemens, who joined us last minute since we had extra space in the car. (see, pavel bailed out on us because he wanted to do a competition in rome for a couple extra days...and by competition i mean architecture. and mark bailed out even before we left vienna...so there were two seats available on the way back...). but anyways, we went back to the hostel to print some maps to siena and some other villages. got to the computer and some dude was sitting there watching a movie..seriously? watching a movie at 2 am in a stinky hostel? stupid. we asked him how long he would be, and he said one hour. what? i think not. we immediately removed him from the room...no not really. but we told him we would be like ten mins, so he let us on. but the printer didnt work and the internet was slow, so that turned into a half hour. then all of a sudden the mouse stopped working, and we gave up and peaced out. haha. unfortunately the guy could no longer use the computer since the mouse wasnt working. we felt kind bad rolling in there, getting nothing accomplished, and then ruining his precious movie. ah well. THIS IS THE END OF ROME! we were getting up early the next day to take off for siena. roadtrip action on its way! no time limit, no plan, no worries...just how it should be!

day threeeee

woke up at 230! the problem with this is that we were supposed to meet with patrick at one to present our project! haha. we were so late. by the time we got moving it was 3 pm and we got over to zaha's office around 3:30. all but two reviews were finished (mine and pavels group). :) got there just in time and somehow presented whatever was flashing on the screen. somehwere it was alright, considering we were still half asleep. it so stupid they scheduled the review the day after the party. even patrick didnt want to be there. he was really drunk the night before..i remember that. zaha didnt show, as i assumed. whatever though. i dont care. review went okay. it was decent. again...didnt really care. was more interested in eating afterwards. and that we did. more pizza, of course. so delicious. ran around again for a while. everyone was tired, but kept moving to see some cool stuff. walked through the place where horse races used to take place. this was pretty awesome. it reminded me of gladiator when the chariots are running around racing eachother and battling nonstop. love it. then we all passed out because it was just necessary at that point...but that didnt work so well cause moritz likes to talk on the phone with his girlfriend forever, and he talks really loud. he's considerate that im sleeping but also not very aware that even if he opens the window and sticks his head out of it while on the phone, i can stilllll hear him. duh. geez. so i didnt really sleep for a while..

Day 2 Roma

woke up at 12 or 1 today. uggghh the day is already

half over because we were out so late last night.

dang it. we missed the tour by the german, but

seeing as that is completely unhelpful, i don't

care at all. i can see rome on my own in the next

few days. so today is the diploma review for

students that are doing their theses. its at the

hotel where zaha and patrick are staying. moritz

and i went over there to see the work and get a

glimpse of zaha. and get one we did. she didnt

attend the review, of course, but she did make an

appearance. haha.

she walks out into the lounge area where reviews

are going on, and yells "PATRICK!!" like he is her

little pet. apparently she does this alot. he stops

the review and goes to talk with her. they walk

towards to front of the hotel...he mentiones

something to her...and shE blows up! meanwhile all

of us are watching what is taking place. (and by

the way...seeing zaha face to face is a little

scary...if u dont know what i mean..look up zaha

hadid on google and you will understand. but it was

cool nonetheless to get to see her finally). she

then yells really loud, "WELL, I WAS INVITED TO

LUNCH, AND I CANNOT STAY! SHIT!!" and then she

continues to yell so loud that everyone in the

hotel is looking at her to see what the heck is

going on. haha. so she left for lunch, and patrick

comes back in smiling. hahaha. there was no way she

would show up for our review the next day if she

didnt even care about the diploma reviews. geeez.

stayed there for a bit more and then went exploring

again. found the piazza del popollo where a protest

was taking place. SO MANY PEOPLE WERE OUT THERE

SINGING AND YELLING IN ITALIAN ABOUT LABOR AND

STUFF. very cool. climbed up a hill overlooking the

piazza and the prostest. saw the whole city again

at dusk. geez this place is so amazing! walked over

to the spanish steps. really cool, except there was

a stupid exhibition about the falling of the berlin

wall set up ON THE STEPs. does that make sense?

wierd place to do that.

later met up with bin and antonio for some dinner.

met at the fontana de trevi, a famous and massive

fountain somehwere in rome. went for dinner.

italian of course. lasagna this time. wine

included. sat outside in an alley. amazing. cant

get enough of this culture. i could sit out here

for hours, or days. after we went for a beer in

preparation for the zahas museum opening party that

we were invited to! this was going to be great.

dance party with zaha in the house. yaaaa. found a

really cool cafe with moritz and antonio (guy from

spain) that was covered with vines, and filled with

people. they were even coving the street so no cars

could get through. crazy. stayed for a bit but then

found a jazz bar up the street, where i basically

felt like i was in new orleans all of a sudden.

didnt need that in italy, so we peaced out pretty

quick and got ready for the party action.

how many architecture students does it take to find

a museum? about 15, apparently. it took a while,

but we got there. and zaha had already rolled in.

she looked pissed to be there. they had her dressed

up in clothes a 21 year old should be wear, and

were photographing her like she was angelina jolie.

and she haaated it. bin and i were loving it

though. i ran behind her a few times while bin took

my picture looking like a retard in the background.

it was great. bin eventually got a real picture

with her...but she didnt even look at the camera.

she was looking somewhere else...in a realllly

uninterested manner. :) figures. the museum was

amazing. interesting design for sure. after

exploring it was dance off time. at this point it

was about one in the morning, and our whole studio,

along with all the employees of zaha hadid

architects, were dancing like crazy. it was a

blast. kind of fell in love too. not really...but

ya. didnt stop dancing till about 6 am, when the

party ended. time to find a bus back home. this

took about an hour for some reason. got back to the

hostel at 7 am. ugh.

DAY 1 ROMA

met the whole crew at the vatican. got a tour from

a guy that only speaks german. completely

unhelpful. st peters square is pretty much amazing.

and the church is even more amazing. the scale is

so huge its incredible. at this point in the tour

we ditched the german and went on our own tour thru

the building. it was great. a group of us explored

every little area, even the dome. we climbed up

there and saw the entire city of rome, and the

vatican city that surrounded us. yesssss. it will

be the best panoramic picture ever. not only that

but pavel, the russian, all of a sudden became a

model. he kept asking me to take pictures of him

overlooking the city while he posed in "serious

model poses"....haha.

and exploring the city was great after that. i

couldnt imagine any place i would have rather been.

walking thru amazing cobblestone streets (all

streets here are cobble) with little flats up above

and shutters opening up with clothes lines coming

out of them. down on the street are little

pizzerias and gelato stores everywhere (and of

course, i got three scoops immediately). and

everyone is say grazie and ciao all of a sudden

instead of danke and tschuss. thaaaats getting

confusing. explored some more. ran into the

PANTHEON. no big deal. oh hi, pantheon. its pretty

amazing to see some of the greatest architectural

works that exist in the world. us architects get a

little excited about all that :)

tried my first real italian pizza tonight. with

salami. its really good, but im not sure how i feel

about the ultra thin crispy crust. its so thin, its

like a cracker. which is fine, but i could probably

eat a second pizza. and the wine....oh the wine. i

think people here drink wine more than water. like

wine is flowing in the local river or something. im

okay with that...so by this time mortiz, pavel and

i were completely exhausted. we only had a couple

hrs sleep from the drive the night before and the

wine and pizza was making us crash. moritz fell

asleep at the dinner table. but we roamed around

some more after dinner, saw a few more interesting

buildings, including the colesseum and the forum.

no big deal. had a little more wine with the group

as we toured around and explored. contemplated life

back in the ancient times for a while. couldn't

help it as i was walking thru ancient history in

every direction i took.

by 9 pm we were dead tired. so we went back to the

hostel for a nap, hoping to get back up and run

around the city later than night. woke up at 11.

considered going back to sleep. but rallied and

woke up moritz. the russian wasn't moving. he was

unwilling to rally. so he passed back out, and we

met up with some of the class. walked for a

while..met up with more of the class...walked

again...lost some of the class...walked a little

farther...found more of the class in a college area

of rome. tons of bars and cafes and

restaurants...and young people. there's a courtyard

in the middle of it all where people just kick it

outside and have drinks and talk. we all went

there. eventually our whole studio was there (about

50 people) just having a good time. it was

AWESOME. so much fun goofing off with a bunch of

random people from our class. not to mention

screwing with the italians there was sell random

items that ALMOST nobody needs. except for me, of

course. one of my friends in class bought a head

massager from one of the sellers.....and it was the

most amazing thing ive ever experienced. and only 2

euros! i had to have one. so i did. ahhhh. amazing.

(but later pavel loved it so much that he stole

it...i think). so we were out till about 4 running

around thru that area...and peeing on a random

street every now and then. my friend saara had to

pee so much that we had to coin on of the streets

"pee street". it was a perfect spot. no one around,

lots of cars to hide in between, dark and

spooky....PERFECT! see, in italy, cafes don't

really like it when you pee in their restrooms, if

they have one at all. if they do, they will

probably charge you. i think they want people to

pee on the street. and everyone does, because in

many places in rome, everything just smells like

pee...kind of like our room...hmmmmmm.

ROMA UPDATES

sorry i havent posted in a while! ive been gone,

but here are my previous writings while i was away

on my italy trip....

now its off to rome! we were supposed to leave at

7:30 tonite, after i woke up from my day-long

nap..but moritz never showed up on time. by the

time he got to school (10:30 pm) i kind of knew

what happened. basically his car got towed a week

before but he didnt know, so he had to go search

and rescue his little car that we were supposed to

drive to rome. haha. sucks though, cause it cost

him 340 euros and he stepped in dog crap on the way

over there. not a good start to the night! so we

finally left at like 11 pm...pavel, moritz and I (a

russan from moscow who is hilarious, and german

from achen who appears to be on energy pills

constantly, and an american from LA who doesnt know

anything about driving thru europe at

night....amazing). and i was the first driver!

driving a stick shift little car from vienna to

rome is awesome! i had never drove in europe

before, so this was gonna be sweet.

and it was, but also a long long night. i drove

till 6 in the morning to bologna, italy while

listening to techno the entire time. we passed thru

some of the alps, and went thru a lot of tunnels.

couldn't see much though, as it was obviously dark.

moritz loves techno. after that i passed out for a

few hours, and then all of a sudden we were near

rome. the sun was shining and the wineries

surrounding us were amazing. it was like a whole

different world.

found our way to the hostel quickly before heading

off to the vatican. its wierd being here all of a

sudden. i mean, you can drive 10 hours in

california and still be in california. and thats

just a state. crazy. anyways...found our crappy

hostel (but what can you expect, right) and got a

room that smelled like pee consistently. it was

great! the italian lady there seemed as if she was

mexican and basically her entire extended family

was living there. so strange. but whatever we don't

care about that. gotta meet everyone at the

VATICAN. boom.

oh ya, and i must also say that we didnt anticipate

the cost of certain things in terms of driving a

car thru europe. as amazing as it is, these

countries don't like drving very much. they seems

to discourage it with their stupid highway tolls.

we paid 42 euros for 10 hours of driving, just to

be present on the highway. stuuuupid. and then, of

course, we realized that we can't just park our car

anywhere. we have to pay for that too. so

everywhere we went, we were paying like 20 euros

per day. not much when you split it, but it all

adds up in the end. whaaatever.

a litte studio update...

here's some updated renderings of the shoes and bags, and some research we did for our chair design...the silversurfer lady is BACK!

leaving for roma!

its 8 pm here in vienna, and im about to drive all night to rome. its gonna be great. i just slept from 10 am to 5 pm, and im ready to make it happen. hopefully we make it there alive. its going to be a loooong night. pray that u see another post on this wall in the next couple days
ciao..

roma tomorrow...

yeaaaah going to italy tomorrow night! we are road-tripping it in a night. 10.5 hrs. yes! im at school right now trying to finish this stupid project. ugggh. im sick of doing it. but we have to potentially present to "the zaha" on sunday so we have to do something right. im stoked about this trip though. we stay in rome for four days with the class, and then when they all fly by back, three of us are going to drive to florence, siena, and venice, and the possibly take a scenic route through the austrian alps. so all in all we will be gone for 7 or 8 days.

buuttt, im still at school. its now 6 am. we are not finished with our work. and someone is screaming on the other side of the building. and someone else is sleeping on a table. where did my roommate go? this is stupid. in 12 hours we are leaving for rome, but we are DRIVING. this means we will be awake all night again. so basically, whenever we get done, we will be sleeping for the rest of the day so we can stay awake and trade off driving for the night. we will probably listen to lots of techno, because that's just what people do here. im not opposed, however, because it definitely keeps me awake.

sunday morning

forced myself to get up early this morning, even after not sleeping much this weekend. wanted to go to church. hadn't been to vienna christian center since the retreat like a month ago. missed the people and the service. it's awesome there. i can see god is there for sure. people from all over the world come together in one room for one reason. its awesome. and they are getting a new building...the first service is there next weekend. they are struggling to get it finished up, in terms of construction...so i think im gonna help out a little this week before i head to rome. its cool to be apart of their transition to a larger building and time of growth. theres not many churches that ive been to where you sit down and...on your left is a woman from nigeria dressed in traditional african clothes..on your right is a south african that knows french and is really of british descent...in front of you is a romanian who survived growing up in communist romania before moving to vienna, and behind me is a costa rican and and american on exchange, just here on a mission to serve the church. what the heck. that's so cool. people in this church are excited about god and really want to follow jesus no matter what. its great to be apart of!

wish i had some more time to kick it there. buuut im at school again! we have to do something by the time i go to rome! i dont know what that is but when my group shows up i'll find out!

GRAZZZZZZZZ

so on friday night 6 of us decided to head to graz this morning. its a smaller town about 4 hrs by the slow train away from vienna. there's lots of interesting architecture there. its good for a day trip from the city. but instead of going home to get some sleep before we left at 4:30 am for the train station, i decided to hang out at industrial design techno party in Greg Lynn's studio upstairs in the school. that was pretty cool, but it immediately led to meeting up with sarah, her boyfriend, and some friends from school at the "whole in the wall" voodoo bar on my way home. then it was off to the "hotdog stand" bar that actually has a hotdog stand in the bar. kinda cool. since it was getting really late, i made the decision to just stay out until i had to go meet bin and huan and the others at the train station. had my hotdog breakfast at the bar and walked home at 4 am to meet them. changed really quick, and walked to the subway station w/the roommates. i was sooo tired. stupid idea. it was like oxford deja vu....

we made it to the train station, but it was hard to find, so we definitely missed the train by 30 seconds. it was about 5:30 am at this time. sooo tired. we figured out a way to get there and back through different trains at different times, and basically this required us to make three different stops along the way over a period of 7 hours. haha. so we did it anyways (minus huan, who decided to head back to bed). it was crazy. we left at 6 am and got to graz around 1 pm. i did a little bit of sleeping in between these stops, but it was pretty annoying getting woken up all the time to change trains and walk around in the cold every now and then. there was some wait time in the middle, and we spent it cruising around little towns that we were stuck at. they were actually reallllly cool. one of them was so cool that we considered just staying there for the day eating snacks. mmmmm snacks. one snack we did try was this hot, sweet, wine that only comes around about this time of the year. it was wine. it was hot. it was sweet. interesting. not only that but the train ride on the way to these cities was beautiful. we were next to the alps, cruising thru mountains that were covered with trees changing colors completely, with larger mountains in the background beginning to show signs of snow. below all this was endless farmland with little traditional style austrian architecture. so awesome.

and graz was pretty amazing. saw some awesome contemporary architecture. for example, a blob building that kind of creeps through a part of the old city and houses some andy warhol artwork. nice. the six of us explored that for a while and then some other random pavilion on the river. but then...the castle on the hill. boom. it was awesome. overlooks the entire city...kind of reminded me of munich. stayed up there for while, joking around and doing stupid things as usual, and then headed out to a UN Studio building at the university there. its a glass concert hall. the first ever. its amazing. the concrete formwork was some of the coolest work i've ever seen. snuck around inside and watched some lady give a presentation to a class. then it was time to get some food. went to a little cafe and had a schnitzel burger while watching a little futbol on the tube there. this schnitzel burger was like the greasiest things i've ever eaten. it was PERFECT. topped it off with a couple bottles of wine while walking around the city towards the train station afterwards...everyone seems to love the idea of being able to have a drink on the street with no problems. kind of funny. by this time we were ready to head back. it was like 7 pm and i was about ready to die for exhaustion. but even so, i didnt sleep on the trains we took back. we all kicked it for hours and talked about complete randomness. it was great. train rides are actually pretty funny when you can make fun of eachother consistently...especially bin. he and i have a lot of fun together just making fun of eachother and joking around. its great. im hoping we can kick it a lot back in LA when he returns in February. also, im hoping Monica, a girl from LA that goes to school with bin, will be able to meet up with us when we get back as well. it's nice meeting some new people from california out here that i can easily keep in touch with when im back in the states.

so now im home, its 12 am. i am dead tired. when i think about the moments we spent running to the train station early this morning right before we missed it, it seems like 2 days ago. im finished with saturday. it was ridiculously long, but worth it. all this crap only cost me 30 euros. pretty awesome. would have been even cheaper if we didn't miss that first train, but hey...this story wouldnt be as interesting if we made that train and went straight to graz and back.

k im going to bed. goodnight people.