CARNIVAL!!

This week was Carnival, which is a giant drunken celebration of some Christian something that I don't think anyone knows about. The celebration is five days long and it's rediculous. Everyone is dressed up in horrible costumes and people are drinking on the streets at like noon until 5AM. There was a big parade on Saturday which I caught a glance of. A Canadian exchange student, Kathleen, and I went out on Friday and went dancing. It was really fun not too crowed. Then on Saturday I organized a little party at my house for all the exchange students. So we hung out and had a couple beers at my place then we went out. Since it was carnival I had to dress up but I didn'thave much so I wore my short shorts and sunglasses so I guess you could say I was a tennis instructor but whatever. I was cold has all hell. But it was fun. The group ended up getting split into two withing 15 minutes and we didn't see the other half for the rest of the night, they ended up going home after an hour (lame). So it was just four of us dancing until 3Am but it was really fun. So that was carnival, a good first weekend.



The main bar street


The dutch LOVE their bikes


and their beer


and I love my short shorts. I am so pale

First week of classes

On Monday all the exchange students got an introdution to the school and tour. Possibly the best thing is the one touch automatic coffee machines that will make you a good cup of coffee for 0.35 euro. I think there are 12 other exchange students from various European countries and a girl from Vancouver canada. It was a bit ackward at first, which is to be expected. I got an e-mail that night saying that I had homework for the Kompas class that I chose. So there was going to be a special three day workshop to kick off Atelier (the Kompas department I chose, they do artsy stuff). We were going to be planning and throwing a going away party for a retiring textiles teacher at the academy. So on Tuesday morning we were broken up into 3 groups; food, table manners (which I was in), and interior. It was a really good way to start the semester because we started brainstorming right away and the Dutch kids had no problem with speaking english for me, I think they're use to it because a quarter of the school is international. It was pretty much everything I was expecing. Whenever someone put out a pretty crazy idea noone shot it down and said we can't do that because..., whih would not happen at RISD. So we quickly had a pretty good vision of what the party was going to be by the end of the day. A couple of my ideas were used in the party, which felt good. Me and another girl, marijke (who's name took me two days to learn), worked on a textile/gift for Wendy (the teacher). We only had a couple of things to go on from the first e-mail as to who Wendy Doodson was. She likes birds and chololate, she's allergic to flowers and she's British (oh is she British). So the theme was high tea, with birds being the main feature. So we strung 100 tea bags with wings from the ceiling and people took teacups and brewed their tea by holding the cup up to the tea bag. The tea drippings fell onto the textile that Marijke and I made, which reveiled a hidden pied de poule pattern that we had printed with a clear acryic ink. So the tea stained only the places that we didn't print and this textile became her present and a rememberance of the night. It actually worked pretty well. The food was great and was on plates suspended in bird cages. It all turned out really great and I got to meet a lot of people.

In my design module within the man and well-being department the theme is Objects of Rememberance (Nancy you'll appreciate this). So in one class I'm designing and making a urn (yeah ceramics) and in another I'm redesigning an object of rememberance. It's still pretty vague at this point but I think it should be good. Apparently they do a lot of ceramics in well-being, what a coincidence. So that was my first week, really exciting but it'll be a lot of work because I have 5 classes and the building is only open until 10 every night and the shops are closed on the weekend. OMG they have a decent shop but not enough tools for the amout of people there. They have two tablesaws, one of which is used for plastic half the time, I can just imagine that shop during finals. Well that's all for now.


The food in the bird cages

The tea cups complete with paper cranes and chocolate bird shit

The tea bag birds. Wendy is the one on the right.

The center piece with flowers in balloons to protect Wendy form the flowers

Eindhoven

My House, nothing special but it's good


The Witte Dame where the Design Academy is

The train

I got into Amsterdam at 7AM on Sunday and I flew through customs. They didn't ask me any questions and they didn't check my backs. It's really easy to get into this country. I took the train to Eindhoven, the station was conveniently located in the airport so I didn't have to haul my 70 lb. box far. The train was empty in the morning and it was very nice. I took a cab to the address but the place didn't look like much and the phone # I had for my roommate didn't work so I was starting to get suspicious. The cab driver was super nice and helped me find his real number. It was the right place and erik, my roommate came out and met me. Apparently the house use to be a sex club 6 months ago but it's been cleaned up since then. I'm staying in a small room temporarily until we move my bed into a bigger room, which I don't know exactly when that's going to happen but that's ok because the room I'm in now has really good light and a nice feel. Erik showed me around Eindhoven and showed me the Design Academy. Everything is closed on Sunday so there was absolutly nothing going on. The next day I went grocery shopping and when I got back our power was out. It stayed out for two days, which was awesome and I did my first homework assignment by LED candle light, which is dimmer than normal candle light. It was a knitted chocolate bar cozy by the way, which segways into my next post.

HI

hi friends and family I'm starting this blog so you can see what I'm doing in the Netherlands. I'll try to post as often as I can about what I'm doing and anything interesting that's going on. So check every week or two for more info. love you all

kevin