chill week down unda — design to explore

3.20-22 reminder, im a student! After the Melbourne excursion, it was time to come back to a (sweet) reality back in Sydney. Since father constantly asks about my studies, I figured I would give you all an update of some of the projects I am doing in class.

First, my painting with color class I completed my first project which is this color wheel. Looks pretty simple, but would you believe me if I told you I made all 72 of those colors just using red, yellow, blue, and white? Because that’s what I did, and it took over 15 hours… and it still isn’t perfect according to my teacher oh well, still pretty proud as it look cohesive and pretty correct if I do say so myself. I also made a landscape painting to go with it, but I forgot to take a picture of it before I handed it in....

Second, my photography class. The class was titled “Photography: The Place and Everyday”, so I was under the assumption that this class was all about landscape and day to day street photography, (in a Donald Trump voice I internally scream) WRONG. In this class, we are learning large format film photography, quite the adjustment having only shot digitally my entire photography career.

Regardless, there was quite the learning curve, but I actually am pretty decent at film photography. We use this ginormous camera that literally weighs 20 pounds and takes about 30 minutes just to set up, but I feel like im back in the 1900s making historical photographs. But instead, its 2017 and we’re just a bunch of hipster art kids taking pictures of our shoes (because I forgot that we had to bring in objects). So here’s the negatives and screenshots of my first film photograph ever, my 8 year old converse, looking rugged and great, honestly this could be an advertisement for converse if I do say so myself.

My third art class is a visual communication class, I’m doing a project about drinking, so I’m just gonna wait till I finish that one before I put it up…. And then my last class is a history/philosophy class about computers, brains, and minds. Most of the time I sit in class and just get my mind blown by my Australian professor who talks about all this stuff about consciousness and what is a soul, what is a brain. Very deep stuff, but very interesting nonetheless….

3.23 exploring Sydney

After having my friend Lindsay show us around Melbourne last weekend, I decided that I needed to get better aquainted with Sydney the city. So mid day, after some homework and emails, I ventured into the rainy city to explore. I started off by walking through Hyde Park, and there are these beautiful fountains and buildings, and my plan was to just sit in the park and read (like I do in Union Square back home) but literally the second I sat down, it started raining a lot, so a change of plans was needed.

I ended up just walking in a random direction down a street that I didn’t recognize and I eventually stumbled upon the Strand Arcade. It’s basically an alleyway full of all these fancy shops, and I just walked in upon this really old Victorian (?) style building and the inside was literally beautiful. I ended up walking through the entire building just looking at all the details in the architecture because it was so stunning.

After I toured the building I met up with Eva, and I took Eva shopping, showing her the ways of Helen and Juli…. We worked up quite the appetite shopping so we decided to get some dinner, and again, we stumbled on this random place call Chef’s Market, and it had this INSANE chinese, Asian food. Since I was crazing fried rice and dumplings that’s what I got, and they were the best fried rice and dumplings I ever had! Eva got lamb and noodles and it was also pretty delicious. And for the finale we indulged in these emoji buns because how could we resist NOT ordering the emoji buns…. (although I got too excited to eat them and burning hot custard came out and literally burned my hand and left a mark haha if this isn’t class Juli I don’t know what is)

That night, as it continued to down pour, we had an impromptu karaoke night in our living room with some beer, it was a good time

3.24 a quasi beach day

Today it was cloudy with hints of sunshine peaking out here and there, so we decided to go to the beach! I also forgot swim suit bottons, so yeah lukcily my underwear matched my top today....We just hung out for like 45 minutes after getting lunch at Bondi, but it started raining L

That night, all our friends from Coogee beach came over and drank with us before we headed into downtown Sydney to a place called Star Bar. We ended up dancing the night away, and left our booties on the dance floor, I would call that my workout for the day for sure

3.25 paddington markets!

Today Monica and our new friend Hannah, ventured into Paddington, a town between Sydney and Bondi Junction (where I live) to go to the markets. It was really similar to the Queen Victoria Markets, but smaller and less repetitive, so I liked it better. I bought a fresh bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich before following up with an acai ice pop. Both two winners and both completely satisfying. The markets were super cute and had adorable stands with hand crafted art, clothes, and random things that were fun to look at.

The weather wasn’t too great, but I did gather up the energy and motivation to go for a run! I went and ran in Centennial Park, this park is like 5 mins away from my apartment, and whenever I run I try to explore a different part of the park. Today I found a little alcove by a pond, and decided to sit and relax (and made a futile attempt at doing an ab workout here) before I ran back home.

3.26 A REAL BEACH DAY

IT WAS THE FIRST COMPLETLEY SUNNY DAY IN THREE WEEKS, I REPEAT IT WAS THE FIRST COMPLETELY SUNNY DAY IN THREE WEEKS. So we went to the beach. And that was about it.