Hiking

Yesterday, my study abroad roommate, Miriam and I went on a hike around Cold Spring, NY which is about an hour north of NYC.  We took the train from Grand Central station about 11am, and we were on the trail about 12:30.  We hiked for about 3 and a half hours, and I can feel every minute of it today.  All the pain today was definitely worth it though...there were beautiful views of the Hudson River and it was a perfect weather day, so I'm glad I was out there to enjoy it.  We also got the opportunity to experience the Cold Spring Depot band who plays every Sunday from 12-4.  The three older gentlemen played a little bit of Jazz, a little big band music and then closed out the set with a sing along of "In Heaven There Is No Beer."   A nice little Sunday, if I do say so myself.

  

U.S. Open Tennis

This past Thursday, I went to the U.S. Open with a friend from school.  It was a great time.  We watched two matches,  Maria Sharapova won the first match and Novak Djokovic won the second match.

The most interesting part, however, wasn't the tennis.  During the men's match, about ten rows behind us in our section, was the "U.S. Open Fight" which has been featured on several national news shows.

Long story short, there was a guy who was yelling at the players between plays and evidently this woman (who was clearly crazy) didn't like that, so she started a verbal argument with the guy.  It was verbal until the woman slapped the guy across the face.  The guy didn't do anything back (besides asking her to hit him again) and just as it seemed to be calming down, the woman's elderly father went up and starting punching the guy.  The guy stood up and both the old man and the guy fell down about three rows of seats.  It was super dramatic.  It stopped the tennis match and the cops had to come.  Lucky for us, my paparazzi instincts kicked in and I got a few snapshots of the showdown.  Here's the beginning of the action (they're right in the center of the photo):

Angry lady: "YOU'RE GOING TO GET EVICTED"
Guy: "EVICTED FOR WHAT, EVICTED FOR WHAT" (picture that in a heavy NY accent)

REGIS!

At the end of July, my roommate Erin and I took a morning off work to go to Regis and Kelly!  We got there about 8:15am and watched them tape 3 shows which made both of us late to work since they didn't let us leave until about noon!  They were apparently going on vacation for a few weeks in August, so they taped their show ahead of time.   Unfortunately, we didn't win any prizes from the trivia game, but it was still a good time!

Becky and Stephanie in NYC

In July, Becky and Stephanie came to visit me! We had an action packed 4 days and I have to say that when they left, I was exhausted. I think we saw more tourist attractions in our four days than most people see in a week and a half.  I'm also pretty sure they came on the hottest 4 days of the year. The temp outside was about 100 degrees and inside the subway it was about 150. We definitely burned off our first meal at the Shake Shack by just standing outside!

The heat didn't stop us from having a good time though!  We went to Times Square first, where we ran into the Naked Cowboy!  He really liked Steph and Becky...

We also went on a double decker bus tour around Midtown and Downtown.  It was perfect timing, since we were on the bus while it rained for about an hour. 

It's the Empire State Building!

Becky hailed us a cab to go home!

Monday morning, we got up at the special hour of 5 AM and went to Rockefeller Plaza to see the Today Show!  We had a great spot on the plaza and saw Matt, Ann and Al.  A little boy standing in front of me was the Today Show's biggest fan and wanted to be Al Roker when he grew up, so everybody came over to talk to him, meaning we got some great close up views of the hosts!

 Monday afternoon, we went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island!

Then, the very last thing we did before they went back to the homeland was to go to Carlo's Bakery in Hoboken  a.k.a  The CAKE BOSS!  We were not the only ones there, to say the least.  It only took us 2.5 hours to get in the doors and another 30 minutes to get our  baked goods.  At least the canolis were good!  

Praha!

In June, I went on my long awaited Study Abroad to Prague, Czech Republic.  I had no idea what to expect, but in the end, it was a really great trip.  I was a little out of my element, but by the end I think I can safely say I am an amateur artist, or let's just say I at least have the skills to pretend to be an artist.

My new musician boyfriend: Vladimir Pinta.
He plays the saxaphone in the Old Town Square 

There were about 15 students on the program and we spent the first week in Prague, checking out the city and the art inside the city itself, but the majority of the program was spent about 3 hours south of Prague in the countryside at a place called Artmill (www.artmill.eu)  Artmill is an old mill that has been renovated by an American artist and her Czech husband.  They have programs for university students and then at the end of the summer, they have a summer art camp for kids.  It's a really neat place.  They're working on becoming completely self-sustainable, so in addition to learning about photography, I learned a lot about gardening, herbs and butchering small animals.  That's right, I watched two rabbits be butchered for tomorrow's lunch.  It was an experience to say the least.

This is Artmill. The building is the old mill and then the Artist and her family also live on the property in a house attached to the mill.  You can barely see it, but there is a huge wire sculpture of a horse in the yard.

"Um, guys, where did the rabbit go?"

The Artmill Lake

We actually stayed about 10 minutes away from the mill at a place called Krutenice.  It is a hotel/horse stable.  We stayed in the summer camp rooms above the horse stables, so I woke up every morning to the sound of hooves hitting the sides of horse stalls and sound of the neighbor's rooster crowing incessantly.  A couple of my classmates and I got up early almost every morning and went to help the horse trainer with feeding the horses and shoveling hay.

We worked on our art project for two weeks at the mill.  I chose to do a project in photography, but I didn't use my digital camera.  I used a Pinhole camera that I made.  It's a very basic camera made of an oatmeal canister, black paper, duct tape and uses my hand as a shutter.  I had to put a piece of photo paper in the canister, "take" a picture by exposing the paper to the sunlight for 10 seconds, and then had to immediately develop the photo since, if I took my hand off the camera, it would ruin the photo.  I chose to do portraits of all of my classmates and people around Artmill and I think my project turned out pretty neat.  It was amazing how clear the photos were considering there was just a pinhole as a lens.   I can officially be a photographer in the year 1812 now.   After our time at Artmill, we went back to Prague and set up a gallery show of all our work alongside the work of some Czech artists.  We had a gallery opening and everything...it was very ritzy.  

Here's the camera.  The black square is the "lens"

The finished product.  It has a really creative name: "Artmill Portraits"

After we set up the gallery, we had some free time, so I forced everyone with me to go on a boat ride on the Vltava river, which I think they secretly enjoyed...even though it was about 250 degrees outside.

On our last night in Prague, we went back to Old Town Square.  A huge screen was set up so people could watch World Cup games, so we went to one of the outdoor restaurants and watched the game from our table.  I'm pretty sure it was the best way to watch the games, besides actually being in South Africa.

I'm Baaaaack!

Hello to the four people who read this blog.  I'm finally back from my several month long blog hiatus, so there will be a lot of posts coming at you...I had a good time this summer, and it all started with:

OPRAH WINFREEEEEEEEY!

In May, I went to the Oprah show at Radio City Music Hall.  It was the 10th anniversary of her magazine.  I went with a friend from school and we were in the very back, but it was still great!

I'll try to make sure I post about all my summer events by the time my last semester of classes starts on Tuesday.   Then I will talk to everyone in January when I'm done reading the million pages of reading assigned for all of my classes.   Althooooough, come to thing of it,  I am taking a speed reading class in 2 weeks, so maybe I'll be blogging a lot since I'll have a lot of free time after I read all of my assignments at turbo speed.