Return to the Prosaic

I’ve been told that I’ve been missed by my vast readership, so here I am, trying to write over the past month and a half.

I’ve gone for two runs since I returned to the US on the 6th, and I’ve started a large book, and generally kept a low profile, since I needed a vacation from my vacation.

I finished the term, and was glad to have that done. My studio partners and I submitted our project to the competition, despite many last minute revisions and extreme difficulty with the printer. The moment of truth came when I was helping Michael cut his presentation boards during the long wait for my boards to print. I held the ruler as he cut – and in his sleep deprived state, slipped and sliced my finger. The cut opened up the floodgates, and everything that seemed wrong about our studio, and about our trip to Finland, and really, about the world, just hit me and, in typical fashion, I lost it. Then, eventually, I stopped crying, and we sent off our project, which did print in the end; we made a lovely model; we had a fun send-off party; the cut, which wasn’t actually very deep, healed; and I think that after all, the experience let me get over some of the silly things that weren’t ideal about our trip and enjoy just how worthwhile and once-in-a-lifetime it was.

We set out after Finland on our travels. We visited Stockholm, Copenhagen, Bergen, Oslo, and the Lofoten Islands, with boat, plane, train, and automobile. The overwhelming feeling was that everything was much more expensive than we’d expected. We saw many fascinating things, despite our attempts to economize, and of course, many pictures will eventually make their way to Flickr. Highlights include going to the Louisiana Museum in Denmark and pretty much all of the Lofoten Islands/Norway.

If there is some sort of overwhelming reply of curiousity about the trip, I can add more details, but since I think I can pretty much count on sharing stories personally with most of my vast readership, I’ll leave it at that. These experiences will undoubtedly surface in the future as they’re now a part of me.

Three more overall highlights from the academic portion of the trip – the lecture series we had was wonderful; our model of the sauna we measured at Kiljava was archived in Finland’s Museum of Architecture; I learned AutoCAD in two days thanks to my studio partners.

So, now that I’ve vaguely covered that vast and interesting part of my life, I’m once again on solid ground to keep reporting to you the prosaic and mundane…thank goodness.

Not What I Expected

Life rarely is.

Didn’t expect to measure a smoke sauna – it makes you smell like smoke, and it might get you a little grubby with soot, and you’ll likely have a backache by the end of the day.  Smoke saunas are dark, so you’re also likely to feel some eyestrain.  Makes you wish you’d have gotten the chance to take a smoke sauna after all that work…

Didn’t expect to upset my boyfriend by drawing – it turns out that when you’re so much of a perfectionist that you can’t let anything happen differently than you envisioned and you can’t admit that you’re making life impossible for those around you, you can really bug people.

Didn’t expect to eat great meals all week on 30€ – including homemade ice cream sandwiches and a meal of grilled salmon, reindeer and lingonberries, mashies, cauliflower, and mixed berries with cream/ice cream.

Didn’t expect to want to be with the aforementioned boyfriend significantly more after our long, tense discussion of many of the things that often come between us.  Then  less when he seemed unable to consider forgiving my aforementioned stupidity about the drawing.  Then more when he showed himself more than capable of that forgiveness.

Didn’t expect to read Harry Potter so soon to its release date – did expect to enjoy it, and succeeded, despite feeling quite guilty as I repeatedly slipped away from social time post-dinner and post-sauna.

Didn’t expect to get to go to Rauma’s Lace Week, let alone the Night of Black Lace – and didn’t succeed, since the tourist book printed the wrong date for the event, and the city of Rauma turned out to be almost a ghost town because everyone had partied too hard the night before.

Didn’t expect to be quite as disappointed as I was by The Simpsons Movie.  Don’t know why.

Didn’t expect to have a delicious desert of Buckthorn sauce over ice cream at a fairly fancy restaurant in Rauma at the end of the strange day of finding ourselves a day late for the big party.

Didn’t expect to miss out so completely on Gingerbread building.  Or to be so enchanted by the Turku castle.  Or to spend so much of the time thinking about past places and people.  Didn’t expect to forget the name of the street I lived on in Brattleboro (Elliot St.) or the ones I lived on in Oberlin (Pleasant and Cedar).  Or to be so nostalgic about both places during such a supposedly exciting trip around the world.

Didn’t expect to ever be so confused about so many things.  Still awestruck by life, though, so don’t worry too much yet…

Blog from Michael's

It’s sunny today, and I’m yet to head out, but soon I will go do something outside in order to gather up the rays. Or maybe I’ll go to the mall.

It’s the final weekend of lots of sales here in Finland, and I need a new bathing suit. Tomorrow morning we’re heading for a summer cabin, where we’re going to measure some saunas so that we can make scale models of them in wood, and bake gingerbread so that we can make scale models of famous buildings out of it. We’re going to be working hard, I tell you. So, add to my shopping list a scrubby brush, and maybe a pair of pants that’s another size up.

We’re actually going to be working with a professional model maker and photographer, and the gingerbread models are for a new book of his in which we will be credited. I’m quite excited because I’ve always wanted to make overly complex gingerbread houses, ever since I first saw O.H.I.O.’s gingerbread displays. Also, because when we get back to Helsinki, we’ll be using the posh model shop to create high-quality wooden models of these saunas, so I’ll get some actual instruction in model making and be able to make some high-quality models for next term’s project when I get back to Eugene.

This past week we toured around Jyväskylä and environs, taking in some of Aalto’s earliest works (including a small church and the Worker’s Club) as well as some of his master works, like the Säynätsalo Town Hall and the Expermental House. We stopped in Tampere along the way and saw a hideous library and a lovely church, done by the same husband and wife team. Needless to say, the sketching regimen was somewhat intense, and my camera slowly drained out of batteries and got overstuffed with photos. Of course, the first thing that we did upon returning to Helsinki was to visit the Viikki wooden church and the experimental housing and teacher training college that were also in Viikki, in order to take photos and sketch a lot more. And after that, we went to the Rock Church (yes, it’s carved into the bedrock of Helsinki) for a little more sketch and shoot. Today, no more of that.

Actually, today I’ve been planning the trip at the end of the term and writing emails. Got a email from Ellen, my room mate at Duke the summer after 8th grade, which was really exciting. Replying to her sent me off on a little trail, and I emailed 5 Chicagoans in all.

So, I’m off, and what the hell, maybe I will head to the elementary school in Leppavara to sketch and shoot, since it is so nice outside after all.

Finland in a Funk

Studio has kicked in, and I’m in a funk. There’s a huge amount of program, and it’s quite difficult to understand because of translation issues. It’s also difficult to pull out the kind of conceptual basis for the school that I’d really like. My partners and I have made some progress, but a lot needs to happen before tomorrow’s review.

It’s been a rainy weekend, and I’ve sort of laid low. We grilled out again on Friday night, then I went out on the town with a couple of the other girls. The night started out well, with a fun band and good drinks, not to mention getting out of the 6€ cover. When we headed down to the second bar, though things got a bit rougher, so I headed home, but not early enough to avoid having to pay for the night time train charge of 5€. So all I really did of note this weekend was to head to the National Museum, where I wore my shoes thin looking at everything. This weekend, more than in a long time, I wished I had a good novel!

The past week, though, we headed to Turku. On the way we stopped at Paimio, Aalto’s TB sanitorium, and at a couple of chapels. My favorite was the Chapel of the Holy Cross, a concrete building that used several daylighting elements to acheive a space for mourning that seemed much more moving to me than the other funeral chapel that we saw. I also decided to prepare my case study on the recently completed Turku Library, and my partner Erika and I are hopeful that we’ll be able to talk to the architects (the firm that I mentioned last week, JKKM) about the process and the final project.

So, I posted photos from last term on Flickr, and Michael has posted photos from Finland up to this point. I’ve also uploaded my final presentation from last term, that shows my furniture Twist. It’s my intellectual property, so don’t go getting any ideas!

Ok, I’m going to go make lunch then light a fire and get some studio work done.

To Estonia and Back

Hey, it’s been a while, but I’m back on the blog.

I’m on Michael’s computer (we got back together a couple of months ago – shortly after the last blog) in a building built by Alvar Aalto, in a University partially designed by him, in a city that’s right across the bay from Helsinki, in Finland. Yes, I made it to Finland, safe and sound. Travel went fairly smoothly, with just a short delay in Amsterdam due to windy weather; although I landed in Helsinki with less than 15 minutes to the bus departure, I still caught the bus I had planned to take way back in the U.S.A.

When I got to my apartment, I found out that I had one of the smoother trips, as some people had lost luggage, or had to put down a deposit on the supposedly pre-paid apartments, or had significant delays/reroutings in their flights. It took a day to get the keys to the room, so I spent a night sleeping in the hallway on the chair pad from a housemate’s room, but no harm done. Unfortunately, we’re not all at the same site, and some of my classmates have housemates who are from different programs, including Michael. I think that would be great if it were true for all of us, but as it is, it sort of seems like an extra stress for those classmates who aren’t going to be quite as clued in to what’s happening in the program.

A few more quick gripes – really, everything is expensive, it’s no joke. Luckily, there are store brands and a cheap lunch at the University, plus on Tuesday we should be able to get transportation passes so that we don’t have to keep shelling out for each trip.

Also, we haven’t yet gotten internet in our apartment, which we are apparently supposed to have right off the bat and for free. Like many things, we’ve run into bureaucracy in solving the problem, which wouldn’t be bad except that in general, it’s inflexible and unhelpful and everyone’s on vacation.

Now, onto happy things – my apartment (and everyone’s in fact) is quite nice – one big window in each bedroom, and a balcony off the kitchen. There’s a shower room separate from the bathroom that has it’s own heater. That way you can turn off the water as you lather up and you don’t get frozen. Our fridge was a moldy, smelly mess, but we cleaned it today. Unlike in London, there’s plenty of space for everyone’s food in the fridge. Above the sink are the traditional drying racks, which make for a nice clean countertop since you don’t have to have a dish drainer hanging out. My housemates are great, and I think we’re going to head out on the town tonight…which is going to cut this posting short.

That’s probably a good thing, since I’ve got lots to tell about the end of last semester (at this rate it may never get told, but that’s ok, too) and even more about being here in Finland. But right now, I’m going to sign off, and be here.

Suomi, Here I Am

Hey, it’s been a while, but I’m back on the blog.

I’m on Michael’s computer (we got back together a couple of months ago – shortly after the last blog) in a building built by Alvar Aalto, in a University partially designed by him, in a city that’s right across the bay from Helsinki, in Finland. Yes, I made it to Finland, safe and sound. Travel went fairly smoothly, with just a short delay in Amsterdam due to windy weather; although I landed in Helsinki with less than 15 minutes to the bus departure, I still caught the bus I had planned to take way back in the U.S.A.

When I got to my apartment, I found out that I had one of the smoother trips, as some people had lost luggage, or had to put down a deposit on the supposedly pre-paid apartments, or had significant delays/reroutings in their flights. It took a day to get the keys to the room, so I spent a night sleeping in the hallway on the chair pad from a housemate’s room, but no harm done. Unfortunately, we’re not all at the same site, and some of my classmates have housemates who are from different programs, including Michael. I think that would be great if it were true for all of us, but as it is, it sort of seems like an extra stress for those classmates who aren’t going to be quite as clued in to what’s happening in the program.

A few more quick gripes – really, everything is expensive, it’s no joke. Luckily, there are store brands and a cheap lunch at the University, plus on Tuesday we should be able to get transportation passes so that we don’t have to keep shelling out for each trip.

Also, we haven’t yet gotten internet in our apartment, which we are apparently supposed to have right off the bat and for free. Like many things, we’ve run into bureaucracy in solving the problem, which wouldn’t be bad except that in general, it’s inflexible and unhelpful and everyone’s on vacation.

Now, onto happy things – my apartment (and everyone’s in fact) is quite nice – one big window in each bedroom, and a balcony off the kitchen. There’s a shower room separate from the bathroom that has it’s own heater. That way you can turn off the water as you lather up and you don’t get frozen. Our fridge was a moldy, smelly mess, but we cleaned it today. Unlike in London, there’s plenty of space for everyone’s food in the fridge. Above the sink are the traditional drying racks, which make for a nice clean countertop since you don’t have to have a dish drainer hanging out. My housemates are great, and I think we’re going to head out on the town tonight…which is going to cut this posting short.

That’s probably a good thing, since I’ve got lots to tell about the end of last semester (at this rate it may never get told, but that’s ok, too) and even more about being here in Finland. But right now, I’m going to sign off, and be here.

Now I Know That it's True

Michael and I broke up last week, and it’s hard not to go visit him each time I leave my studio. I don’t know where I stand with the whole thing, so I’m sure there will be a development of some sort in that storyline, but as much as I want to write about the whole thing, I’m not sure that a) there is much to write and b) that I’m ready to do anything of the sort.

So much for a memory a day. Let’s see if I can think of a good one for today at least.

I remember that on the old playground at school – the one that was inside of the U of the back building for Kindergarten – I used to pretend to be a unicorn when we were basically playing tag, and William Barley and Durham Barnes and I would all run around, except that since I was a unicorn, they couldn’t really get me. A year or two later, I learned to do penny drops there, and before that, I learned cartwheels and roundoffs in the part of the playground that we weren’t really supposed to play in. We’d watch the shuttles go off down by the lake, and you could see bald eagles in the trees nearby. I remember those Kindergarten rooms surprisingly well-I bet I could draw a reasonably accurate plan of them.

Good news – we have a subletter for the house, so I can rest assured that I don’t have to pay rent for Eugene while I’m living in Finland. Furniture studio is coming along, and today I felt like I have a chance of making this work for midterms. Not so sure about Product Design class, but I’ll just have to keep pushing on that one.

Speaking of which, I should get back to work, or at least to sleeping.

Dazed

I just came across an old draft of a poem that I will now share with you despite the fact that it should probably never have seen the light of day again:

There is a space — within the heart
Where dappled sunlight drifts –
Accumulating dense and thick
Til summer’s burden lifts

And lets the soul once more resume
The comfort of the cold
Alone — enclosed — and justified
of prejudices old

It’s from my recipe book, when I was in the Emily Dickinson class at Oberlin. Wouldn’t be half bad if I could do something better with the last line.

I’m looking at recipes because I’m supposed to make something for the potluck that my studio professor is hosting tomorrow night. It’s supposed to “tell about me.” I could bring ice cream, but I don’t want to make it. Could make one of my fallback favorites, shortbread or peanut butter fudge or lasagna, which come to think of it, I might make the lasagna. Could make the grapefruit cake I’ve been making recently, and just change it around to be an orange cake so that it’s a bit more straightforwardly Floridian. I’ve sort of been thinking that I’ll make the Mac and Cheese that I made on New Year’s, though, since I’ve been craving it ever since. It requires a blender, though, and I don’t have one and I’m not sure I want to attack the cottage cheese by hand with a wooden spoon.

I’ve sort of been wondering about in a daze the last week or so, maybe even further back. When I’m in school I’m pretty focused, but I’m not that focused otherwise. Perhaps it’s in part due to the fact that I’m still up in the air about what classes I’ll be taking this spring. I was originally going to take a Product Design class along with Children’s Furniture (my studio) and Architectural Context (a required class). But then I got into a Daylighting class and had the thought that it would be great because it would be something architectural to balance out the object making in studio. Long story short, I missed the first Product Design class, but then realized that I had missed it and that I really did want to take that even more than the Daylighting class – basically thinking that the studio and product design class would reinforce each other more and the daylighting class would add more to a semester when I was actually designing a building – so I found the prof and begged and I think I’m in the class. But I’m not really sure. In fact, so not sure that I’m still going to the Daylighting class and still thinking that I need to do the work, which is problematic, since the work is done in pairs…

That and the fact that I’m still needing to figure out Finland tickets and travels, and the fact that it seems like Michael and I have very different schedules this semester, and the fact that there are still things like making a portfolio page for last term that I didn’t do over spring break that I sort of want to do, oh, and the fact that studio is still entirely open ended and I have no direction to start exploring yet are all making me feel quite dazed. At least it was a drop dead gorgeous day today and I got to spend a good bit of it outside, running and reading, and wandering around aimlessly in a daze.

So, I should really go to the grocery store soon, because whatever I make probably should be made tonight, but I do want to promise pictures of the little centerpiece that I made in studio yesterday, complete with the story of how it came to be. Good things are going to come out of this studio, I’m sure of it. And I’m definitely making the orange cake. Tomorrow.

Spring Breakin'

I’m currently enjoying the most laid-back spring break I’ve ever experienced. Michael (the boyfriend) and I were originally going to head down to San Francisco, but for many and various reasons, we changed our plans at the last minute and have been hanging out in Eugene doing very little of anything. We’re going to head up to Portland for the weekend, which is particularly exciting since Emily, my friend from Oberlin, is visiting the West Coast and will be my main attraction to Portland.

We just got our studio assignments for next term, which for my little ever-forward-thinking brain is super exciting. I’m in the Children’s Furniture studio with Professor Hagenlocher, which was my first choice. I was a bit concerned to take an Interior Architecture studio for my first studio but it seems really exciting and I’m sure I’ll be able to follow up with a lot of good architecture studios later – especially since I already know I’m heading to Finland for the summer.

Speaking of which, yesterday, I bought two travel books to scope out things to do in Finland and beyond. I’m trying desparately to figure out what travel dates make the most sense, since tickets are going up, but it’s pretty difficult to try to plan for the trip. Right now I’m thinking that if I fly out of Chicago to Finland I can get pretty good prices – then I can get a cheap flight from Portland to Chicago, hang out for a few days there, and on the way back jump down to Florida at the end of the break. Just have to figure out what sort of time is appropriate at the end of the program, which of course means making an estimate of the cost of being there, which of course is very difficult to calculate for one such as I with little to no understanding of what I would like to do there.

Anyway, just a quick update from the semester. I passed with flying colors from my studio, literally, with a Pass Commend. My professor really liked my work, as did I, and I hope you will too. I made a little set on Flikr for those of you who who’d like to see some of the highlights.

Hmm, it’s 3:45, and Michael and I are going to get some lunch. I’m going to see if I can convince him to take a little trip to the hotsprings. Oh, and maybe I’ll get you a picture of him soon…

Excuses, Excuses

Pitiful. It’s the 18th and I haven’t posted yet this month.

Reasons? Despite having “lots of free time” because I dropped my ECS class, I actually have very little free time. Ok, I might have, right off the bat, but things have ramped up. I don’t know how I would be handling it if I were in ECS, actually. But also, I’ve been taking some time to do nothing, which means nothing, including typing on the computer. Oh, and I’ve also been taking a little time out with someone special. Happy valentines day. I have my first boyfriend ever.

Good things are happening – the murmur on the street is that summer travel to Finland looks positive. I’m about to put in my application for a Graduate Teaching Fellowship (GTF), which, if I get it, would give me more teaching experience and would pay tuition for the terms during which I would teach.

On V-day, I helped put together a review for the undergrad studio, and I was very proud, because it went so well. The day before, I rounded up a bunch of friends from around the department and convinced them to be reviewers at 8:30 the next morning. They did, and they were excellent – all the undergrads felt that they got solid reviews, which is more than I can say for myself in many of the reviews I’ve been to.

And yesterday was just gorgeous. I spent much of it in the sunshine, in my tanktop no less. Despite some rearranging, I ended up making the hike up Spencer’s Butte. I went with a bunch of the second year boys, and enjoyed the change of company. It felt like my efforts to get to know more than just the folks in my year were really paying off. The three time a week workouts (with a little gang that goes straight after studio) also seemed to pay off.

So, I’ll post a pic from around midterms, which happened a week ago, because I meant to do it a while ago. This past week I floundered around, trying to make a facade for my building, and had great difficulty. Didn’t get to work much on it this weekend, but I’m sure I’ll get there before the final review. Just have to restrategize…

[The building from Ankeny Street (one block South of the Burnside bridge in Portland). The right is the "wall of action" where all the meeting and training rooms are arrayed. Behind it is the "alley" where bridges connect the wall to the rest of the building. There, a double height volume (blue) houses the shared office space, and a one and a half height volume (yellow) houses the library. All the way to the left, behind the stair tower, is a little pocket garden.]

Oh, and I’ll also say that I’ve been feeling almost constant reminders of various friends from Oberlin and Vermont, wishing I knew what everyone was up to. I think this coming week I’ll try to make a few calls, write a few notes. If you don’t get one, it’s probably not because I don’t love you, but because those best laid plans just never happen.

Something totally random, thanks to Lyrica:
create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Anywhoo, I’m back on track with the blogging. Ready to go again. Missed it. Happy now.