London Baby!!!

DALI

June 4th - Friday - Day Twelve

Dali. that says it all. we went and saw the dali museum today, it was amazing his work was just breathtaking. before that we went and saw the Moulan Rouge and it was pretty cool. Ooh and we went to Hard Rock Paris! it was awesome! i had a watermelon bacardi lemonaid and a shot and got mom and josh adn shirt. then we went to the souvinear shops after so kacie could get a tour de france shirt for her dad. and i got souvanears for my family. it was pretyy neat. 'cept i now have blisters on my blisters and it sucks. my left foot has a HUGE blister that keeps getting worse and i am to scared to pop it, the one on my right foot popped and it HURT the next day it doent feel much better today. Jen, Hanna, and Abbie went to disneyland paris, they had fun. Matt, Jeremy, Kacie and i went off on our own today and saw everything. we didnt go to picasso because it was to expensive. but all in all we had a good day.
easton, dani and armon went to versi and they saw joe montania from law and order, easton got a photo of him i guess. after we all got back to the hotel we hung out in jer n matts room playing games like scene it and catch phrase, and drank from the mini heinekine keg. pretty fun. tomorrow we take the eurostar to london! woot woot! i am so excited.

i just hope we have the internet so i can talk to my family i am really starting to get home sick for the familiar and to be with people who love me and want me around. it seriously feel like a burden on everyone here becasue i am so slow, becasuse i got those damn blisters. i wish my feet didnt hurt or that i had stronger meds to kill the pain. i hate always casuing everyone to lag behind, i hate it alot but i just cant make my feet feel better.

the trip is half over, which is werid to think it doesnt feel like 2 weeks have gone by. its crazy fast paced here. and the days are sooo long, its crazy. it doesnt get dark till like 11, it is throwing us off. oh and while we was playing games we heard loud music outside and we went to look and it was like hundreds of roller bladers decked out and rave style. it was pretty cool. fun to watch.
ok well i am done for now we have to get up early to head to the station.
Love,
Natasha

LONDON BABY!

June 5th - Saterday - Day Thirteen

Today we traveled by the Eurostar to LONDON BABY!!!! Hell yea i love it here already! It is so pretty, and it nice to understand what the natives are saying again! oh and the TEA! so much tea its fantastic! a few thinks i noticed about france that i forgot to mention, or i did and i dont remember. first thing europe in general is very dog friendly and dogs are so well behaved here! their crutches are very interesting, not like ours at all, you would need much more forearm strength to crutch it. finaly paris never sleeps! it would be 4 am and it would still be crazy noisy outside! and it was so hard to tell time in paris, i mean in ks we are used to judging time by the sun and how close to dusk it is, in france it was the oppsite. it would be 11 at night and sunny! it would really mess with your head! oh well now that we are in london we are 6 hours ahead instead of the 7 we was in france. the internet is super expensive here as the exchange rate sucks (1.51 US dollars per one english pound! wtf?!) so their will be 2 - 3 days where the internet will be paid for by the program and thats when i will upload somephotos and this blog. we didnt to much today asside from travel and go to a authintic indian resturant....i had chick peas n curry something or other with garlic naan and streamed veggie rice and most of it was excellent. a lil spicy but excellent. and we setteled in to our hotel, which we are staying at the entrie 2 weeks we are here, so only traveling i have left to do is home in 2 weeks. i will be going from london to chicago then to wichita for a week before returning to manhattan. hard to believe we have been in europe for 2 weeks! and that we only have 2 weeeks left! crazy stuff this is.

well i beleive i will crash for the night. not sure what is in store for tomorrow but i will be sure to blog about it!
Love,
Natasha

Best Day EVER

June 3rd - Thursday - Day Eleven

OMZ. Today was the best day of my life. we got to the museum super early and got right in and went straight to the mona lisa before she got crowded, i didnt expect much becasue i had been told it was so much smaller that you image and you never get that close blah blah blah, but OMZ OMZ OMZ she was the most beautiful thing i have ever laid my eyes on. we got all the way to the front, about ten feet from her, and she looked awesome. a little aged or dirty but a little bigger than i expected becasuse i was expecing to not get that close, but just as beautiful as i had always imagined her. i took a video just for my mom. and i decided that i am going to save money and tell my parents and in laws to save money and in 5 years i am bringing mom here to see her. it just has to happen. and i believe karen and gary will like paris it is such a neat city.
Also in the Louve was more Di Vinici which was all just as beautiful as you can imagine. we got so close to the Madona of the Rocks we could have touched her. it was freaking neat to look at his shading and brush strokes and his use of shadow and light. just amazing. we saw so much today and i am literaly over whelmed with what i got to see. i took 400 images today. 400.
Oh and we saw the medievil moat, the greek stuff, and Aphrodite known as Venus de Milo and she was pretty cool too. we also saw a ton of egyption art and artifact which was bad ass in its own right. Seated statue of Ramses II and the seated scribe. just so much stuff i really could spend another day just talking about it! but i didnt get to see it all, so i will have to come back and mom and i can spend 2 days in the louve so everything gets ample admirance.
after the Louve we went to Champs-Elysse which was pretty neat. huge, and covered in carvings but neat but the group lost Jen adn i cuz we went to sit in the shade while they walked across to get some more photos and when they came back they never saw jen and i so we took the metro to the palace to get a cool shot of the tower then we walked over to it. i didnt go up it for many reasons,number one being that my feet where kiilling be at this oint and there is NO way i am getting on a elevator that goes THAT high. NO WAY. lol. so the group found us and 1/2 went to go up the tower and the other half walked back to the hotel. i chose to walk back cuz i am exaused and i wanted to go over my photos and relive what i got to do today, tomorrow is a free day and i hope to go to the Picasso and Dali museums we shall see!
Love,
Natasha

Speos

June 2 - Wednesday - Day ten!

So after i graduate from KSU with my bachlors, i think i am going to go to Speos here in Paris for my masters. it is the most amazing photography school and program i have ever seen! 42 weeks and you will have your masters and a job, crazy huh? we had a tour of their school and talked to the creator and director of the school, who happens to be the same person who rediscovered niepce's house and bought it and is restoring it in to a museum. they restored everything back to the way niepce had it according to the some 300 letters he wrote to his brother in london. he was a pretty neat cat. then we walked a little but and saw the inside out building, i dont remember what it was called exactly but i remember armon making a big deal of how they buikd it from the inside out so that the outside looks like the guts of a major structor. then we saw the european museum of photography. pretty interesing stuff right there, my two favorite photographers where Philippe Perrin and Mimmo Jodice. and if you look them up you will see how drasticly differant they are, but both very cool peices of work.
Tomorrow is the louve, and i am really exicted. we are getting up extra early so we dont have to wait in line forever to get in. i hope it works.
oh and i went to the market and got some sandwich stuffs, crissaunts and soem shortbread cookies. i ate a crissaont and a short bread cookie. after about 30 minuts i started to notice a familiar rash growing on my skin, not super bad but highly concentrated in a few areas...and it puzzled me becasue i had not been around strawberries at all. so i look at the labels of the food i bought and wouldnt you know it the shortbread cookies had stawberry butter in it. no whereon the cover did the word Fraise show up, but in the ingrediants list it was the second one. lucky for me i only ate one. but still its annoying. oh well nothing is stopping me from tomorrow. Louve, Effile tower and Champs-Elysse!
Love,
Natasha

Tourisy Day!

June 1 - Tuesday- Day nine

Today we saw Notre Dame, Saint-Chapelle and Musee d'Orsay. d'Orsay was my fave! It had VAN GOGH! and i cired, again. I just LOVE LOVE his work. i also saw some Monet, Manet, and a few other impressionist painters. it was just breathtaking. since we got there with one hour till closing we got in for free :) Oh and Hamilton was on display as well, we learned about him in out History of Photo class. Oh and the Churches where AMAZING. Notre Dame was just MASSIVE and so detailed it was increditable. I got my second souvinear for family from there, bet you'll never guess who its for! lol. Oh and Saint-Chapelle, all those stained glass windows! O-L-E COW! beautiful! sadly some of the windows where under restoration but it was still awesome.
i finally figured out what my project for the trip is going to be like, i am going to try and do some macros, but in an abstract kind of way and also do some panoramic shots as well and put them together. and the subject matters are going to mimic the advancement of subject matters in photography. we will see how that goes!!!
Today i am starting to miss my family a lot, not neccessarily home sick persay, but missing the familiar just a little bit. and being able to call my hub or mom at the drop of a dime. its going on ten days since i last legit talked to family and it kinda sucks, well i vid chatted with maw maw for about ten minutes so that helped a bunch. OH and I am missin my puggies something feirce. its werid not having them around. is it to early to start a count down?
Love,
Natasha

Nicephone Niepce

May 31st - Day Eight - Monday

today we woke up in Lyon and headed to the train station so we could go to Chalon Sur Saone, where Niepce lived and studied. We saw the museum Nicephore Niepce, which housed original cameras and prints from famous photographers. Including "Steerage" by Stieglitz, which made me cry. it was so beautiful. The Museum Niepce had some of the first 3-D cameras and photos as well. It was so breathtaking, and as if that wasnt enough we got to go to Niepce house. and i am still literally overwhelmed with what i got to see. We saw his home, his lab, the location where the first fixed photograph was taken, the camera that was used as well as his personal study room. I am one of at least ten of the luckiest photographers in the world who had seen this so far as the house is under renovations to create a museum, and we got to see it. It isnt quite open to the public yet, and when it does become open they are not goign to allow photographs to be taken, and we got to take them. I saw his chem lab, the chemicals he used, his "photo studio" which housed the tripods and head vices he used to make portraits. I swear gettign to see his house and his work with my own eyes is by far the best part of this trip, it is so intense. We are currently on the train to Paris! and first thing in the morning we are going to the Louvre to see all that art. which is pretty awesome.
the train wasnt to bad. luckly for us the hotel was right next to the station, and easy to find. there is a metro down the block as well for our future endeavours. tonight is mostly chilling and getting situated for the week. this hotel is so awesome! its like a 5 star but its the holiday inn! lol. we learned that unlike every other museum in the world, the louve is closed on Tuesdays, go figure. so we are going on Thursday and tomorrow we are going to Musee d'Orsay and Noter Dame.
Love,
Natasha