A good school day

Sorry, photos of Prague are still in the works.  I got some INSANE pictures, but it's taking me a while to go through and edit them.  Trying to narrow it down to 20-ish photos will be really tough this time around . . . I could post more than that, but Blogger is ridiculously incooperative when it comes to adding photos.  :p

Anyway, school was good today.  It did NOT rain, thankfully, and I got to walk to and from class, which felt absolutely great after all that sitting on the bus yesterday.  Amazing how much easier it is to walk when you're not lugging two backpacks around!  The arm and back still aren't normal--I think I still should go to the chiropractor--but I can move pretty much normally again and my arm isn't hurting me.  So based on that, I'm feeling a lot better this week than last week.  Also amazing how hard it can be to do something as simple as walking when your back and arm are sore!

Printmaking class went great!  Was unsuccessful at getting out of the print lab before 5, but again, the several hours of work paid off because today's aquatint turned out really nice.  My teacher helped me use a different kind of varnish to make leaf prints for the etching, and I did a flower-motif design over top of the leaf prints (I actually copied the flower motif from the pencil box of the girl next to me--she laughed when I showed her and told me the box was just something she got at Ikea.)  Mixed up a nice muted green for the print, which looked good.  The only drawback today was that we had a new batch of acid in the basin, and it etched the plates like crazy!  The plate literally foamed when I lifted it out of the acid.  Printmaking can be kind of a toxic process, by the way.  You use all these abrasive and poisonous chemicals to make the zinc plates and clean up the inks, so you end up having to wear all this protective gear like aprons, gloves, and even masks and face shields.  To make an aquatint (like the ones I've been doing) you have to use alcohol, varnish, etching acid, lacquer, oil-based ink, and turpentine, and also use a gas burner to heat up asphalt dust until it essentially vaporizes.  Pretty obvious why we need the protective gear . . . carcinogens, anyone?

After school I went to the store while Indra and Marni watched the next episode of "Game of Thrones" (they've made it a weekly activity which I'm not really interested in joining), and then we made cauliflower soup from a recipe Marni got online.  It was super delicious and actually had very few ingredients: just a lot of cauliflower and carrots cooked soft and blended with caramelized onions, coconut milk, and some salt and pepper.  Indra and I contributed rolls (brötchen) for croutons to garnish it.  We weren't done eating until 9:15, though.  This whole thing of having the daylight last till 10 pm is soooo confusing!  I keep thinking I've got way more time until bed, and then all of a sudden I realize it's way later than I thought it was.  (Case in point: it's after 1 am, and I'm still up.)  Marni and I knew it was getting late, but we stayed in the kitchen drawing for a while because we were actually being productive on our book illustration projects.  We were about halfway through listening to The Wall by Pink Floyd when Petra came in!  She had just gotten back from her trip to Lebanon.  It sounded like she had an amazing time!  She stayed with family members and got to visit her dad's childhood home, meet the older sister of her favorite grandma, and try lots of super-fresh and delicious food.  ("I only got food poisoning once," she said, "when I tried raw meat.  I really shouldn't have done it, but I went for it and ended up super sick for one day!")  She is also super tan!  Her skin is a sort of light brown anyway, but after a couple of weeks in the Mediterranean climate she's noticeably darker.  It was fun to hear about her trip, but we all stayed up way too late!  Must shower and go to bed--I have painting class tomorrow.  Maybe this will finally be the week when I have a breakthrough and wrestle the acrylic paint into submission . . . but I'm not gonna get my hopes up . . .