Amour-Fou♥Net

Obviously I’ve been super busy–I think I just have to accept that I’ll be blogging less frequently during the school year.

But at least when I finally do blog, I actually have things to blog about! Wow, hella silver lining! And yeah, apologies in advance cause this post is loooong.

So the most important thing going on right now, clearly, is the fact that Tom and I just booked plane tickets for our Round-The-World trip next summer. No but seriously. Round-The-World trip. Next summer.

As I think I mentioned a few posts ago, Tom bought tickets to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and put me down as his plus-one even though I’m totally ignorant about soccer. ( him) Then I decided that as long as we were going to the other side of the world, we might as well go all out. Yesterday we finally purchased our tickets, and below is our final itinerary.

Epic awesome trip destinations!

1. South Africa (Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town): 1.5 weeks
2. Bangkok: 1 week
3. Hong Kong: 1 week
4. China (starting in Shanghai): 2 weeks
5. Japan (starting in Tokyo): 2 weeks

Could I be more excited? Absolutely not. Between now and then, I have to finish learning Japanese ( ) and possibly learn lots of other languages.

Speaking of really ambitious goals: I’ve finally finished the Human Japanese textbook app that I was working through on my iPhone. Since I realized I’m going to be in Japan for 2 weeks next summer (OMG OMG OMG) I’ve started to get more into teaching myself Japanese.

So earlier this week, I went downtown to Kinokuniya Books and bought some things to help me continue my haphazard studies: A book of Japanese short stories with parallel English text and translation notes, a book that teaches Kanji using comics, and two of the same manga: the first volume of Bleach in both Japanese and English. Clearly excited about that.

Also I’m psyched about the Karate classes I’ve been taking for my PE requirement. I can officially punch and block in a few different ways, and as a small and weak girl, I have to say it’s empowering. Ridiculously cliche as it sounds to say that–I punched Tom to test my punch-power (with his consent, of course), and he actually stepped back from the force of it! That’s so amazing to me!

Next semester I want to continue taking Karate in some capacity, and also take Japanese lessons at the Japan Society. (They’re not that expensive, so I think I’ll ask for the language stuff for Christmas…)

What else… I’ve been working at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, and it’s been wonderful. Such a great environment, the books are ridiculously cheap, and it’s all for a good cause so I don’t feel guilty spending my money. It’s kinda like my version of heaven, in other words.

And now for a visual tour of the work I’ve been doing in my drawing class. Enjoy! (I hope…)

Drawing 101! (so far)

Here are some figure drawings from a model we had in a couple of our classes. I tried to incorporate color into two them… (Done with combinations of a graphite stick, colored pencils, & compressed charcoal)

Here are some attempts at a self-portrait… The one that’s clearly worse than the others (the full-color one) was supposed to be in another student’s personal drawing style, but I clearly forgot that proportions exist, but I still kinda like it for some reason. Overall, though, these look way more like me than I expected. (Done with vine charcoal and colored pencils)

And below is my final self-portrait (the first one is from before I added color, of course). I actually really like how it turned out, even though there are definitely a couple weird proportion issues. (Done with vine charcoal, compressed charcoal, & oil pastels)

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