Saying Ciao to My Social Life

Conversely, The Time I Danced with a German Pop Star.

...underneath the sunrise...

It's been a few weeks since my last entry.  I had every intention of recapping my first week of classes, and that was 2 weeks ago.  I feel like I might actually be dying of stress.  A little bit each day.  This semester I'm taking 4 classes plus the first part of my thesis requirement, which I somehow thought would be a bit easier.  Not the case.  On tap for the next 3 months:

• The Exhibition Process
• Collections Management
• Art Theory and Criticism
• Fundraising and Proposal Writing
• Thesis Research

on the beach in sanremo

In other words, the agonizingly painful demise of my social life.  After Week 1 of classes I had my last moments of social freedom when my friend Sabina came for a few days from Brighton, England.   I gave her a proper tour of Turin and we popped over to Sanremo with my roommates to see the beach for a day.  We relaxed on the stones for hours, then in the evening we had dinner at a restaurant in the main piazza.  There was an accordion player serenading us, children running around a centuries-old fountain, and the faint sound of the surf in the distance.  I even ordered spaghetti with clams that night, which was good but still kind of grossed me out.  The evening continued at a nightclub where we danced the night away.  We encountered a group of Germans, one of which turned out to be a German pop star who came in 2nd place on their version of American Idol.  Needless to say I kind of danced with a German pop star and it was wunderbar.

getting serious about schoolwork on Fancy Tuesday (international roommate tradition)

But alas, once I got back to school on Monday I had to get serious and start on some impending projects for the semester.  I am organizing an exhibition from start to finish using a proposal I created for my Project Managment course.  I will be cataloguing an entire collection at the university.  I am reading 5 articles a week on philosophy and art theory to the point that my brain hurts.  I must develop a funding agenda and analyze the strategic plan for an Italian arts festival.  Oh, and I need to hone my thesis topic, develop a reading list and do some massive research.  So I pretty much want to crawl in a hole and die.  Though I do enjoy the challenge, and actually everything I'm doing I already find very interesting and beneficial to my professional development.  I just hope my mind doesn't implode.

new haircut from 3 weeks ago, you guys approve?

Now that I've accepted the fact that my days of galavanting across Europe for weekend adventures have come to a halt, I've found a few ways to relax myself and keep my sanity.  One is a new workout routine I've organized with my roommates.  The girl I share a room with, Fatemeh, wakes up before sunrise to pray, so we decided we should do exercises in the AM before classes, and we'll see if that lasts.  Debatable because I love sleeping.  I also have been trying to learn Farsi from her and so far I can conjugate 2 verbs, tell someone I love them, and declare it's a wonderful day.  Yesterday I took a break from reading Kant to paint my nails with a fun method I found on YouTube for a newspaper effect.  I used a German newspaper my friend sent me in a package recently :)  I think I'm doing well to keep my mind healthy!

can't see very well, but it's a cool newspaper effect!