little things

OPEN STUDIOS!!!

Rome 2008

these paintings have been neglected but they were/are important

spring 09

new(er) paintings

2006

"In and Out" 2007 60"x84"

Old Paintings

Battle of the Sexes

tranny-saurus rex

Sights in Reading Terminal today:

- A Plethora of Transgender/transexual people

-Tranny-saurus Rex t-shirt on some funny and friendly ambiguously gendered individual

-a middled aged woman drying her pigtailed hair in the bathroom for at least two hours as she laughed to herself

-one sparkly turbaned 75 year old.

- a woman with a bad case of toenail fungus painting her fingernails near the salad bar.

things that happened to me

XIV!

OPENING THIS SUNDAY! 5-8 

504 South Street

Philadelphia, PA

!!!!

More openings bi-weekly! Stay tuned! 

Come see my paintings!

oops

my computer is really broken so this blog may have to take a long break. its raining too much in rome. my parents are here! i went to naples, ate pizza, and came back. schools over soon. im going to travel lots of places for the two weeks after school is over. im also going to london again for 5 days. aaaaand im coming home on dec 25!

la cena americana

Here are some pictures of the grilled cheese and tomato soup dinner we made for the french boys.

abbey, kristin, phillippe, me, meg, patrick and Thomas after dinner

the same, with Matteus ( a nice italian!)

washing dishes

ive basically just been doing schoolwork and sleeping. not too many exciting things to report. its been raining a lot and my shoes are all really wet and smelly.  This weekend I went dancing again which was really fun and went to Porta Portese and bought a really colorful sweater that sort of looks like my paintings. My parents and brother are coming to visit in one week and i'm super excited!

balliamo molto!

MOST IMPORTANT: I'M SO HAPPY THAT OBAMA WON! THE ENTIRE WORLD IS SO HAPPY THAT OBAMA WON. I no longer feel slightly ashamed claiming my nationality while abroad. 

This weekend was really really fun. I still, in general, don't love Rome that much but meeting other foreigners here makes everything  more exciting.  On Saturday Meg and Patrick and I met up with Phillippe and Thomas, 2 french guys from Provence, that I was in touch with through couchsurfing. Phillippe and Thomas are so much fun and they made fun of our wine and we went to a really great bar and met some people dancing to Oasis outside the Vatican at 4 am. 

Last night we met up with Thomas and Phillippe again and some of the people who danced in front of the Vatican. We went to the same really great bar and then went to a dance club called Rialosantambrogio. It was a huge warehouse-type building with good electronic music and video installations of people putting hot peppers in butts  and it was advertised as "amica della queer" or "friend of the queer."  We danced until 4am then went to the 24 hour bakery and got Pizza Rossa for breakfast and went to bed. 

Today the opera singer Andrea Bocelli  performed for free in Piazza del Popolo so Meg and I went and it was packed with people and was sooooo Italian but I really liked it. Seeing Andrea Bocelli in ROME!!  wonderful. 

my italian is getting a little better. 

probably other exciting stuff happened as well but i forget and now this weekend has made me really tired and happier.

Io sono malata per 2 giorni

blegh. i'm sick and it's raining and Rome is depressing lately. 

On sunday i tried to go to a mall with some friends in attempts to buy cheap clothes but some trenitalia employee misinformed us and we ended up going to Tivoli instead where Hadrian's villa is. Tivoli was a stupid town. Everything was closed and there weren't very many things there. We did see a place where lots of homeless people hang out and an otter and a footbridge and some people that looked like they were trashy philadelphians. then we went back to Rome. 

I'm getting anxious to leave this city! The people all seem so miserable here. I think my general decision about Rome is that it is a good city to visit but not to live in. I spent a lot of time during my sick day re-reading some Rome guidebooks trying to find some places that i haven't walked around yet and I'm going to to try to go to those places by myself when I feel better.

My parents and brother are coming to visit soon and I'm excited. and i hope everyone voted for obama! my roommates and i have been watching msnbc.com all day and crossing our fingers!

qual que volta mi piace Roma un peu

Being back in Rome is slightly depressing because it has been raining a lot everyday and the people are still unfriendly and Rome is not Istanbul.  Right now there is some political unrest in italy because the government is trying to privatize public education and cut lots and lots of funding to public schools. There have been massive protests or manifestazioni but most of the people at them sit on the ground in nice clothes and smoke cigarettes. Walking around piazza del popolo and down via del corso the other day was nearly impossible because of all the protesters. 

Last night I braved the rain and went out dancing with some friends at Circolo degli Artisti (circle of artists) it was lots of fun and some people dressed up for halloween. They played weirdo american music but there were not too many americans there. Today is a holiday (all souls day) so everything is closed. 

I'm a little sad to be away from the United States now after watching youtube videos of what Philly looked like after the Phillies won. I don't even care about sports really but I feel like I missed something important. Plus it would have been exciting to see a bonfire in the middle of broad street. 

Also being abroad for the election is kind of odd. The whole world is obsessed with who is going to win this election. Everytime I admit to being American while I'm here I am immediately asked if I voted for Obama or McCain. Sometimes I get extra apples from the apple vendor for answering Obama. 

ISTANBUL NOT CONSTANTINOPLE

I got back from Istanbul recently and I believe it is my favorite city that I have ever been to. I LOVE IT!!! The people there are so friendly and hospitable and fun and honest and I wish I would have studied abroad there instead of stupid Roma.

Some things I saw/did:
Hagia Sophia
The Blue Mosque
Rode the ferry from the european side of Istanbul to the Asian side lots of times
walked everywhere
took off my shoes when I went inside
ate lots of dried fruit and nuts
ate doner (!) and durum and drank fresh squeezed pomegranite juice
made lots of turkish friends
made lots of austrian friends
made lots of german friends
saw the sistern basillica (and undergroud basillica)
drank Raki (traditional turkish liquor that tastes like death)
went to the spice bazaar
went to the grand bazaar
went dancing
couchsurfed with Emre, Emre, and Samil.

Why Turks are nice than Romans:
one time a family squished onto a bench with me and didn't speak any english but kept smiling at me and then they got up and bought some sesame rolls from a cart nearby and specifically bought an extra one for me

anytime adam and I looked a little bit lost some turkish person would run up and ask if we needed help and where we were going and always pointed us in the right direction

another time i was sitting on a bench outside of the spice bazaar and a turkish man sat down next to me and we talked for almost an hour about lots of stuff and I found out he was vegetarian also (and I think he may have been the only one in the entire city!) and realizing how much trouble i had avoiding meat in Istanbul proceded to feed me dinner that he has just bought at the market!

there are a lot of blind people in Istanbul and every time one of them looked like they were having navigational trouble or headed for a deadly set of stairs one or many people would grab the blind persons arm and take him/her wherever she needed to go.


Istanbul was everything all at once: asian and european, modern and traditional, enormous but tiny. Walking around in Taksim felt almost like 5th Ave in New York but I could hear prayers being chanted in Arabic from all the mosques nearby next to the clicking of fashionable women's high heels on cobblestone.

And here are some pictures:

this is Zurich, not Istanbul... i went there for a few hours on my way home and it was kind of a ghost town but there were these people playing horns. very swiss.

This is outside the spice bazaar in Eminonou

also outside the spice bazaar

people preparing doner in Taksim square near Emre's house


Lots of spices inside the spice bazaar

dried fruit and "turkish delights" in the spice bazaar
view of the city from the european shore of the bosphorus


some lady selling pigeon feed in Eminonou

Fish market near Sirkeci

taken from the Ferry to the Asian side.

stray cat inside Hagia Sophia. stray cats were everywhere in istanbul.

byzantine mosaic from Hagia Sophia when Istnabul was Constantinople

Inside Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya)

inside the Basillica Cistern (medusa beheaded)

Asia

Turkish couple in the park

the outside of Hagia Sophia

a rooster and some other fowl at an outdoor pet market

a man selling pigeon feed in Eminonou

fishermen on the golden horn

view from Karakoy
Islamic cemetary at some Camii (mosque)
the fountain and courtyard at a mosque in Eminonou
lady selling pigeon feed in Sulkhametet and a man carrying a cart of stuff.
Istanbul Unversity!

inside the Grand Bazaar

I guess I didn't really take that many pictues. And what I enjoyed most about this city was meeting lots of people. I don't have any pictures of them unfortunately.

Ok write me emails please I want to know how your life is!!!!