Classes (or something like that anyway) :)

So I'm sure everyone is wondering how all my classes turned out... well good I think!!!! Photography was my first class this year and it was my favorite. It went really well and I passed easily! i got to use an analog camer and learn how to work in a dark room. It was a blast and this was defiantly the most i had learned the entire time here! Every other class was a total JOKE!!!.

And I am completely serious about that! College here is a total Joke, instead of having professors teach you everything and enforce you to ready and study and do homework, the professors here pretty much tell you what they want you to do and expect you to research and do it all on your own. Seriously, what foreign exchange student is going to actually spend a lot of time and do homework and research! Defiantly not this girl!!! J

Then I had my Layout and Typography class. This class I literally went to the first class and the last one. We were told we needed to make a portfolio and most of us had one, though it wasn’t very good. So I spent a long time creating a new and better portfolio and it turned out awesome! We had to have them printed off and then turn them in and have the professor look at them and tell us what he thinks. He gave me some really good feedback and I think he loved mine! I had put a lot of work into it and am really proud of it. I will print one off when I get home and can show it off!

The German language class was the toughest, though the professor was really good and kind of scary. He knew all of our names by the time we showed up for class the very first day…. And he was an excellent judge of personality. He figured out right away that I was terrible at language and that Kenra and Audrey were really good. So he treated every student differently. He was definably easy on me and harder on the other girls. Anyway we spent 2 nights a week learning the basic language skills, this was so tough for me because I did not know the basics of the English language so I had a hard time understanding anything he was teaching us when he referred back to what it was like in English…. Anyway we had a BIG test at the end of the semester and if we passed we got 5 credits for it. I was so scared and on the test I knew NOTHING!!!!! I was pretty sure, more like 99% sure I failed! And I think I really did, but I passed the class with a C because I only missed one class the entire semester!!! Pheww I was really worried about this class! But it turned out fine!

Another class I had was my art class. It was a figure drawing art class. It was weird to say the least! We had this class one week a month each month. The first week was nude figure drawing! This was interesting, I had never done anything like that and it confirmed my ability NOT to be able to draw human figures. I was terrible! We had to draw both a naked young woman and an older one too. The next month we started working on a human object form. This was to be an abstract outfit that a person could wear as a form of art. It could be anything. I had no idea what to do for this soo I just started building out of sticks and tape. We had to make it stand and be able to fit ourselves inside. I just stated building and made something. I had no idea what it really was but it worked and she seemed to like it. This class was hard because the professor only spoke German and French. NO English! Anyway we built the “thing” out of sticks, and then the last week we were there we went to this creepy building and were able to paper machae our stick structures with these plastic sheets. It was actually a lot of fun! But SUPER messy and because it was with plastic material it got all over our hands and arms and hurt really bad to get off! Needless to say I lost a lot of arm hair in this process!!! Anyway what we ended up doing was making this and then a few days later we got together at night and put little LED lights inside of them and took some really cool photos! So it turned out to be very interesting although I hated it starting off!

 This is my stick thingy... it was funny I had to write a 300 word explanation about why I designed this and I honestly had NO idea :)

 The beginning of the paper stuff.. this part was a lot of fun!!!

 Kristin showing off our lovely trash bags we had to wear!!!

 first layer done!!

 Me showing it off :) ha haaa

 Final photograph!!!!

 This is really cool, this is all of us Americans designs. From the left, Kristin, Audrey, Me and Richard. It was really cool how we put lights inside and made them shine like this!

This is the whole group of them!!! :) pretty neat!!

Studio was TOTALLY different than anything I am used to! We met the first day and talked about everything. The second meeting we all went out to the Winery location to look at the existing building. We were given an existing company and building for a winery and we needed to create a new façade for it, or a new front entryway. After we met that first time we met off and on, on Thursdays to discuss our designs. I kind of knew what I wanted but it took me awhile to get the right design. It was after our trip to Berlin where I saw a similar building made out of plastic I decided on my final idea. I used the flow of the wine being poured into a glass to create the curve surface for the front that was to be mad out of wood. I spent a couple late nights putting it all together and building it on the computer. The presentation was a joke, I had to pin up some drawings and explain it to a man who was the head of the wine company and could not speak any English. But it went ok and my design actually compared pretty well to some of the other students! Anyway I was glad I was done with it finally!

So that’s how school went, I passed all my classes and will get credit for all of them!! Which I am so happy about!! I am short about 4 credits this next year so I will be taking classes this August. The 1^st through the 11^th to help!  Then I will be a 5^th year student!!!!!!!!