spoon fights, meteor showers and more!

well, here we are in mid November already! i can't believe how quickly time has flown. i'm already registering for my next semester classes and i'm still trying to process first semester.
anyway, i was able to take a quick trip home last weekend so i could get a quick visit with my family.
the adventure started here in good ol' Santa Barbara, as i waited for the train. let me tell you, you see some pretty interesting people riding the train. every time i'm at the train station i think how cool it would be to make a photography project out of it, but i don't want to offend anyone by taking pictures of them. hmmm...we'll see.
when i arrived at Union Station, my entire family was there to pick me up; Gary, my mom, Betsy, Katie and Justin. it was great. that was the first time i've seen Betsy since August. we all went out to dinner in L.A. at a pretty nice seafood restaurant. though the food was good, the desert had to be my favorite part. we accidentally ended up ordering five deserts (yes there were five of us eating them, but we were just going to get three and share them, since they were pretty large). we initially ordered a chocolate multan cake, peach cobbler and a slice of cheesecake. Katie then kept telling the waitress she wanted a cup-cake and the waitress felt bad and brought Katie the largest cup-cake i've ever seen. so, naturally, we all had to help her on that. then, none of us realized that a crem brule came with Betsy's meal and so that was added to the plethora of sugar piling up on our table. the mass quantity didn't stop my family from finishing them all though and we actually all got into a spoon fight over who would get the multan part of the chocolate cake. it got pretty messy with all of us knocking pieces of cake off each other's spoons. man, i love my family...only we would do that in an upscale LA restaurant.
after dinner we took Betsy back to USC and then went on home, where we had to set up more Christmas decorations. our addition this year? a giant 5ft nutcracker that lights up and plays music from an ipod. Gary want to have it play rap...
the rest of my weekend with the family was good. i got to spend some time with katie and with my grandma, who i had dinner with on saturday night. i went back to Westmont sunday afternoon and spent the rest of the evening doing homework.
monday night, as some of you may know, there was a meteor shower. a few friends and myself went down to the field, laid out some blankets and watched it. it was a blast! and apparently we were really loud. haha
this week has been lots of homework, but still lots of fun and i get to go home again tomorrow. since some of my classes were canceled for the monday and tuesday of next week, i decided to simply skip the others so that i could be home for Katie's family birthday get together on sunday and get an entire week off for Thanksgiving. i'm looking forward to being home for a long period of time.
anyway, gotta get to class.
hope you all have a fantastic day!

Drawing Projects

these are some actual projects i've completed in my class. i really have gained a whole new appreciation for drawing. bottle done in charcoal...i'm not really sure i like this one, but hey.pumpkin also done in charcoal and conte (a bit more dense than charcoal).


this project had to incorporate organic materials and man made objects, so i used a necklace my cousin, jamie, made for me and some cloths pins. our only restriction on this was to use spoons somewhere in the drawing. i just added a bunch of everyday objects and even included two pictures i've taken (the leaf and eye) and a picture of me and august with an umbrella in Washington D.C. and also a picture of my little sister washing her toy car. it was a really fun project to work on, but very time-consuming.

this one is done on an old page of a Spanish dictionary and I was experimenting with negative space. i then filled in the branches and such though. i think i'm going to frame this one.

:)

Just a Few Sketches

here are just some sketches that i've done for my drawing class in my sketch book.

this had to be an emphatic line (basically using line only) drawn upside down in order to get the right brain engaged, so we could depict what we actually see, not what we think the object should look like.
there was a Rembrandt exibit in our art gallery of his etchings, so i went to sketch some of them.

these were my two favorites.

parents weekend

i believe i forgot to mention that last weekend me and some friends attended an Anglican church just to see what it was like. i don't think many people know this about me, but when my mom and i used to live in San Clemente, i went to an Episcopalian school. the Anglican church service was much like the services i had attended every morning at St. Michael's, which was the name of the school. if you have never been to a service like the this, the best way i can describe it is ritualistic. it's a bit of a step down from the Catholic church in the sense that they don't pray to the saints and the virgin Mary and all, but they still rely much on the traditional practices and hymns. in a way i find it fascinating and refreshing. instead of the preacher telling you what you need to do to become a better follower of Christ, they pull from traditional books and show you. I'm not saying I'd want to attend every week and make it my main church, but it was different and a nice break in a way.
this weekend was parents weekend, so my Mom, Gary and Katie came up to visit. Katie was very excited to see me and give me a small lotion she had picked out at target for me. it was really cute. my mom attended my communications class with me and then both my parents went to chapel, where my women's choral sang. after chapel, i showed them my dorm room; Katie loved my bed, especially since it is the top bunk. we then went out to lunch and just hung out the rest of the day. went on a short hike and i ended up staying at their hotel that night. i slept on the couch in the sitting room. yesterday i had them take me to the grocery store and then we went out for a nice lunch at this Cajun place, which was good. they left around 2:00 and i relaxed the rest of the day, watching the office reruns and working on some drawing home work.
oh, and i finally have my camera, so I'll be posting some pictures of my drawings up soon:)
stay tuned for some more posts to come in the next few days.

Halloween Hike to Tangerine Falls

what is more perfect than a hike on a beautiful halloween morning? not much. after the choir festival on friday night (which went very well and was quite fun, minus the fact that i had the worst headache of my life) my section (clark K) decided to get up and go for a hike up to Tangerine Falls. it was an absolute blast! and look i even have some pictures to go with it...you can all finally see the people i've been talking about :)

this is barrett, me and allison (barrett's roommate) looking very forlorn about taking the wrong trail.just kidding we are still happy to be there...well i am at least. barrett looks confused and allison, angry
one of the highlights of the hike was barrett falling off a bolder. below, i think i am telling the tale of it, as she made her way up the safer route. she was trying to climb the bolder instead of going around it like the rest of us. shea was behind her and wanted to spot her, saying, "even though i probably won't help much, it still makes me feel better to try and break your fall, if you do fall." barrett is hanging onto a branch at the top and as i extend an arm to help her up the rest of the way, she lunges for it, misses and slides a few feet. shea and i both think she is going to catch herself, but she doesn't and continues to slide off the rock face towards shea's open arms. instead of catching her, shea ends up punching her in the face on the way down and barrett ends up crumpled in a pile of leaves. at first i didn't know whether to laugh or not, but then saw she was okay and completely exploded with laughter. the only thing that was hurt and bleeding was her lip, where shea punched her. oh, man! the rest of the hike we didn't let shea live that down, saying "please do not try and catch me, shea" aw, poor her. but so hilarious!
reggie, me, barrett and shea after the fateful event :)we eventually made it up to tangerine falls all of the group in one piece and this was the beautiful view. the picture doesn't do it justice. barrett, reggie and i weren't satisfied and decided to climb up to the peak, where the waterfall starts. let me tell you, it was a pretty intense climb. i wouldn't even consider it a hike, since it is pretty much all vertical rock the whole way up, with a pretty nasty drop, if you slip. we did make it and got to sign a paper that is up at the top. this picture is from the bottom, looking up. it doesn't look super high, but it's definitely a ways up there. our group members looked like little dots of color from up there. so amazing! i should have some more pictures to come at some point, but that is all for now. gotta start a communications paper.