i do not enjoy cold vacations.

hello hello.
so we left dirty and hot athens for berlin. i am very happy to have left athens, interesting and blah blah blah and im glad i got to see all those ancient temples and shit, but god what a shit hole.

but we arrive in berlin and it feels like a Seattle December. what the fuck. not what i was expecting. Berlin is beautiful and has such history. we rode one of those hop on and off buses and im so glad we did because we really got to see the entire city and hear all these facts about it. we saw the memorial for the jews killed in the holocaust. it is these giant stone pillars rising from the ground. i took lots of pictures. we saw the last part of the berlin wall left standing too.

but its cold. very cold. we were going to travel eastern europe for a bit, go to vienna, prague thru germany, until we realized how far away they are from each other and how cold it is in september. everyone is wearing gloves, scarfs, tights and winter coats. so we booked a flight to barcelona instead. hahaha.

so we fly out to barcelona for the next for days, spending two days in amsterdam and then one night in london then i am home and all of your lives will be whole again. rejoice for i return in... 8 days. god that seems so soon.

lovejordan

athens.

athens
dirty. smelly. hot.
acropolis is not something you should see at noon.
very very wonderful to see though. makes me think of history and what it was like 1000s of years ago and of my rhetoric class. and philosphy class.

but im excited to head to eastern europe.

and santorini is one of the most beautiful places ever.

ill be home so soon, it weird to think how quickly and slowly everything seems to go when im over here.

santorini!

hello hello
currently stealing internet from somewhere near my hotel in santorini. we found this amazing hotel that overlooks the caldera . our room has two balconies and an upstairs loft bedroom. its like a 15 minute walk to the main part of the city. where we are in fira is mostly all hotels. beautiful ones.

yesterday we spent our day walking around main part of fira. we took a... cable car like thing down the mountainside to see the little port of fira, had some lunch, bought postcards and took pictures. and then on the way back up.. we rode fucking donkeys. it was awesome. they stopped so many times and you sit there trying to goad them up that damn hill... but it was hillarious. moms kept trying to rub her against the rocks. and yes we have lots of donkey riding pictures.

today we are going to try to rent a moped again. you need an international license which we do not have... but hopefully we can get one anyways.

i love it here. its so beautiful. its everything i wanted and hoped for when i imaged greek islands.

i cant believe i will be home so soon... only two more weeks.

kos... what can i say?

so mom and i are on the island of kos, which is actually about an hour ferry ride to turkey. kos.. is an interesting place. it reminds me of a greek version of mexico and pasco mixed together. so imagine that. we got a flight out here and thought it would be easy to island hop. and that it would be nice. i guess i was expecting something completely different.

as we grabbed a taxi to take us to kefelos the taxi driver said he knew a good place. but personally we wanted a nice hotel resort like thing. we ended up at the far end of the beach strip a few streets back (if you can even call them streets) at some family owned place. it was fine... but not what we were expecting.

we had a wonderful day spent laying out and swimming near the old club med complex, now deserted and dead, where there was greek ruins just hanging out near the water to check out and a little island with a church to swim out to. which i did and rang the bell.

it was nice and quiet and ended up going well.

we took the bus to kos town, on the other side of the island and got a room and a ferry ticket for tomorrow night. from there, we will catch another ferry and should be in santorini tomorrow or the day after. def going to spend a day or two in athens before leaving greece. kos town seems nice.

florence was fun too. mom and i stayed 3 nights there before heading to the airport. i kinda spurlged on myself.. on a leather jacket. i love it. goood. its wonderful. we shipped back all our purchases and presents home.

my time is almost up on the internet.
much love.

when things work out.. they work out.

currently me and mom are residing at the marriot hotel by the rome airport. our room was 270 euros, but we paid 100. this man had booked two rooms, but had his flight change so he didnt need to stay overnight but had nonrefundable rooms. so he cut us a deal. a goooood deal. and me an d mom are staying at a very nice hotel now.

we bought a ticket to kos, greece tomorrow morning. we are gunna do the islands then athens then fly somewhere else. who knows where right now. actually i should know. i should be looking that up.. but instead im uploading pics. ooops.

i got to talk to dad and mage last night and tara this morning which was wonderful.

cinque terre

so me and mom are spending our last full day in cinque terre in the city of vernazza. we had an... issue with our last place. hahaha. god i dont even want to talk about it.

but i said goodbye to everyone on the siena group, we all showed our final portfolios, had the final dinner, had a dinner party and did lots of campo hanging out. i cant believe its over. i made some really wonderful friends and it was so nice to be with all these people with the same passion for photography. i miss them!

cinque terre is beautiful. ive been swimming every day for at least an hour and mom and i went kayaking to this beach only reachable by boat. i like kayaking. we got really huge waves from a giant yatch and i was so afraid i was going to go under, but it was really fun.

i wish my sisters where here though. mage would love it here and i know tara enjoyed it. actually anyone who can buy a plane ticket should come. its fun. its worth. you know you want to.

almost done with present buying. im shipping it all home when we get to florence. and hopefully me and mom will go on a wine tour from florence.

love you all!

so close to the end!!!

i cant believe i only have a few more days of this class. im going to miss quite a few of my friends from this class, but i am excited for when mom gets here tomorrow.

we are working on creating a portfolio now, and im waiting to meet with claire. we are going over what i have, what i should add, what i should take out. so far i have like.. 7 really strong images that goes with the theme and mood of the portfolio. im going to make a few more portfolios for other things, but this is my main one. im happy with it. but i do not like writing artist statements. they always sound slightly pretensious, and as much as i like to be pretensious, its for fun, not something serious like an artist statement. hmmm. we will see.

in january will be the huge exhibition of everyone's work. we might even make a book. we will have to see but its all very exciting. things are going better. i think everyone is really tired, but really wanting to make these last few days amazing... so mostly good.

we had a free weekend so julz, garrett and i decided to go to elba. it was a five hour journey from siena, about 22 euro one way, but we finally arrived around 3ish. we spent about two hours trying to find a hotel, gave up and went swimming instead. the beach was all pebbles and garrett found pebbles that looked like birds. he was thrilled.

we got dinner after that, super tasty. and headed back into the main town part and basically just walked around until 1am when we checked for the earilest ferry out of elba (530am) and went back to the pebble beach and i slept on my damp town with my dress, my nightgown and shorts on, and garretts shorts on my shoulders. it was pretty awesome. sleeping on a beach sounds romantic and fun.. but its really not that exciting. more like cold and irrating. hahahaha.

but we got on the ferry and went back home. got some really good night pictures of the ferry dock which i added to my portfolio. i really wish i had reservations somewhere (saw the coolest little hotel on the beach!) and had a few days to spend and maybe not in the town we were at and i wish dad was there! since that was one of the places we were going to go. but it was a good trip minus the shitty parts. hahaha.

we have been cooking dinner lots at our house. usually luke, dean and/or corrina come join us too and everyone brings something and its really nice. i really enjoy it. its like a really mellow hangout time. we spent most nights either hanging at each others house, or in the campo.

the other night we found a democratic party thing which had a live band that did bad covers of american music, like rage against the machine, nirvana and foo fighters. we left soon after for the campo.

mom gets here tomorrow and i still cant figure out how to use my stupid phone card!

hopefully i can post pics soon, but we will see.
love jordan.