Quickly...

Hi dad, still alive and kickin' although both of my phones are about to die. I will post again whenever I get back to England and have time. I'm in France right now. Taking lots of pictures. Barcelona is amazing and so is Paris. I keep getting my Spanish mixed in with the little French I've managed to remember, so now I'm really confused overall. Oh well. C'est la vie. 

-PYF

Hello/Hola/Bonjour

This weekend I went around sunny London, which was seriously enjoyable after months of terrible weather; the entire British public goes outside when the weather is nice. I went to Portabello Road Market, Marble Arch, The Victoria and Albert Museum, and lots of places in between. I also happened to stop by the exact place where the lovely Abigail, decided to pull a Madeline and try swimming a few years back. Not a good idea when its -2,000 outside, and besides, Madeline was in France, not England.

Upon traveling, the trains were really busy, so people sat wherever was available; in my lucky, lucky, case, that happened to be adjacent to a very talkative and slightly intoxicated Irishman, who although it was only 2 in the afternoon, was intent on teaching me about the economy through hazy eyes and lager breath. Then, as if I were being blown to pieces in a slow motion scene from a tragic action movie, "Creepy Wink" number one of the day struck. "Creepy Wink" number two came later, when I boarded the plane and sat next to the most amorous couple this side of the Atlantic(barf). Although already awkward, things went even more downhill when the wife of Romeo got up, and he chose to execute "Creepy Wink" number two of the day right at me in his wife's absence; a direct hit from the firing squadron of uncomfortable.

The only person I know well who winks is my friend Matt, blaming it on his "twitchy-eye", which, since it happens so much, might actually be legitimate. But in today's cases, the winking was definitely not the work of any so called twitchy-eye. If I were going to wink at someone, I'd have to scrunch up my face real ladylike and open the other eye as wide as possible, to even convey the slightest resemblance of a wink. In my case, the timing would be off and my wink would just end up leaving people to feel uneasy and question the meaning behind it. Kind of like most winks.

Anyway, I'm in Barcelona right now, listening to the sounds of vespas speed by, and although I've not gone many places yet, the architecture is stunning and my Spanish has definitely come in handy. I'm really stoked for tomorrow.

I didn't mean to take a photo of this guy.

Royal Albert Hall

So Long, Sweet Sewing.

Sadly, I finished my last design class on Saturday. However it was soooo fun. I feel like a little kid when I talk about it because all other adjectives besides "fun", "cool" and "awesome" apparently disappear from my vocabulary. For the last class we had a presentation day, and everyone in the class showed what they had or hadn't developed. After class I went shopping(surprise!). I ended up buying 10 meters of fabric at The Cloth House, which is where I took the next few pictures(of course I had to go to both stores). Unfortunately, that mass of fabric weighs quite a bit and carrying a laptop, two cameras, large presentation sketchbook, small sketchbook, posters, pencils, pens, and attempting to walk is quite an undertaking. So today I'm feeling the repercussions of this shopping adventure, in the form of puffy welts on each arm(and that was two days ago) and rope burn from the bags. What can I say, its pretty glam.

This is such a pretty shop! There's a student who works there who wears bow ties, suspenders and snappy casual sweaters, which makes me feel like I'm shopping in olden times.

This was before shopping.

I do like Chinese people. Especially these ones, they're amazing designers and they taught me all about Chinese New Year. I am born in the year of the Dragon, which apparently is a pretty awesome year to be born in.

Architect: Hey guys, lets build a large building with a hole in the center, then build a tiny squat of a glass gazebo in the middle of it and only wash the windows every 100 years. 

Client: Yeah okay! That sounds fantastic! Let's make sure we don't heat or clean the entire building either!

Our classroom(there are about ten more mannequins hiding in the corner behind where I took this)

8th Wonder of the World

At CSM; bike parking area between the library and the main building

Screen printing studio in Hackney. 

Well hullo thar father, as the saying goes, this Bud's for you(as the other equally well-known saying goes, ask and ye shall recieve):

Last night, the "Black Screen O' Death" appeared on my Macbook. Yes, that special time in every piece of technology's life when it decides not to function, usually at the worst time for anyone needing said piece of equipment. Fast forward to 8Am, when work was looming impatiently above my stressed out cerebrum and my GPA bacon was slowly becoming fried.

Cringing in pain as I unsuccessfully attempted to use one of Lindsay's computers, I needed a program that wasn't available, and the actual computer moved like a snail(with dislocated ankles) and didn't have a French keyboard option; that was only before the interweb ceased to live. 

Nearest Apple store: London, one hour travel time each way, no time to make the trip. On a whim, I hopped on a train and ventured to what is advertised as just an Apple "reseller" in nearby Basingstoke, and with fingers crossed and little hope left in my bleeding heart I groveled to the nearest employee for assistance. Lo-and-behold, said "reseller" happened to have a technician on hand at the time, who, looked at my computer for t-minus 3.5 minutes and fixed it on the spot, for just three hundred pounds. 

Just kidding! It was free.

I wanted to hug everyone in store and leap around clicking my heels, singing operatic renditions of "I Believe I Can Fly", however, considering I'd never met anyone there before and didn't want to give them any funny ideas, I restrained my joy. Sheer joy. 

Now, I can punçtuaté my with éasé.

In other news, I've been sewing like Martha Stewart on house arrest. My professor really liked the first example shirt(toile) I made for my line so I bought some fabric today in order to create four more pieces of design genius. By Saturday. We'll see if that happens. The presentation board is the bulk of the project, and I'm not completely finished with that yet, but I will be tomorrow.

And now, a little something special to file away in one's photographic memory...

 Yes, that is me last summer with none other than, *deep in-stereo voice* Titanium Jesus. And Creepy Face Mary. Just t r y sleeping tonight...