written il 9 di settembre

Two days ago, I guess that was Monday, we had our first desk crits with the four professors. It was a group “desk crit” though, and all that happened was confirming for them which areas of research we were going to each be working on. And we also presented them with a proposal for our entire group: “we want to activate a NETWORK of functional spaces to mark and connect people to their ORGANIC setting.” So, each of our areas are close to each other and connect in some way. Allie is working on the intersection that is right next to my courtyard area, which overlooks Kristy’s “jungle” area, a flat area near the road that is covered in vines, which has access to Rachel’s beach tunnel. And if you go further down the beach, Ana, Claire and Fernando are working on the pathway to the beach, which leads to Alex’s area where all the boats are currently stored. So they’re all connected in an "organic network."

After our “desk crit” we had time to work or sketch. Nino suggested going to the beach….so we did! It was an awesome afternoon on the beach, except for when I got stung by a jellyfish, and at 5 we came back for Antonino’s lecture.

After the lecture, my clan got some bruscetta to go, and went up to the look-out area to eat and talk about possible hypotheses for each of our areas (how we were thinking of “remodeling” the space). It was nice to talk about it amongst ourselves, and get ideas from everyone. And today we have another round of desk crits to talk about these hypotheses.

Yesterday, we traveled by train to the towns of Tusa and Cefalu (cheph-a-loo). In Tusa, we went to a beach and some of us sketched while the others swam. And then we toured this wonderful hotel that is right on the beach. Eventually, it will have 40 rooms, right now it only has 28.

Each of the rooms is individually designed by an artist, and they each have a different theme to them. They are really cool.

When we got to Cefalu, we sketched this area where historically people washed clothes. And just as we started sketching, it started raining! Fortunately we were able to sketch under cover , but the rest of the afternoon it was raining, and my umbrella is still in Rome and I’m too stubborn to buy one, so I tried staying in the doorways. We saw this awesome cathedral in the Piazza Duomo. I tried sketching, but every time I walked out from cover it started sprinkling, getting my pages wet.



Around the time we had to meet for the train, it really started pouring. Andrew had a bigger umbrella, so the two of us took off our sneakers, rolled up our jeans, and jogged to the station under the umbrella. We made a sight, splashing through the streets in the rain. I got soaked, but it was great fun. Little bubbles of laughter kept coming out as we were running, just because it was really funny. The train ride home was miserable for everyone because the air conditioning was on full blast and the train would stop randomly for long periods of time, so we didn’t get home until much later than expected.

Most of the girls from my clan went out to dinner when we got, to La Lampara. I had a delicious pizza called Tricolore, which had pomodori, cipolla, rugola e scaglie di grana (tomato, onion, arugula, and shaved cheese). It was sooo good. The only bad part was halfway through dinner, I realized I left my sketchbook on the train. So all those sketches from all over Sicily are gone. Marcella said she’ll call the train place, but that it is unlikely that I’ll get it back. I feel like someone removed a body part- I miss it!

I’ve had such bum luck since I’ve gotten here: missing luggage, dropped clothes, lost sketchbook, Adobe products not opening because of licensing issues, AutoCAD license expiring, losing 10 euros somewhere in Sicily, bad internet connections. Aaah! It’s a saga that’s almost funny. What will be next? Fortunately, most of these issues have been resolved…all except the missing money and sketchbook so far. And the AutoCAD, but I can’t work on that until I have internet.