Pumpkin carving & Letterpress. <3

Wednesday night Amanda, Jo and I introduced Ester, Rosa, David (Spain) and Holly (Australia) to the experience that is pumpkin carving. They always say they've seen things like this in the movies, but are surprised we really do them. We had 2 pumpkins and everyone took turns scooping out goop, drawing eyes, noses, mouths and carving. It was so funny to watch the newbies reactions, but I think they really enjoyed it—especially sticking their hands in the goop! For the experienced ones the smell and feel brought back so many memories—ahh the smell of childhood. Jo's flatmate was excited to be the only flat with jack-o-lanterns displayed in their window. I love 1) sharing our cultures with each other 2) that we have become such a family here.


Yesterday we went to our first letterpress class. The teacher is an old, jolly grandpa type. He speaks only German, but is quite helpful with us. It's always exciting when we have a (primitive) German conversation and we both understand each other. Because I have a little knowledge about letterpress already it was much easier to follow and understand in German than my other design classes. (We also talk numbers and points a lot and my German numbers are solid :P ) Our new friend, Dennis, also translated for us. This is the first time I felt like I was really part of the class and knew what was going on. That and my deep burning love for letterpress made yesterday a good day!! We all set our names, addresses and email addresses in lead type. Amanda, Dennis and I used the 16pt Akzidenz Grotesk Kursiv drawer. Then the Prof. put them all together to print. A few of us made mistakes.. Darmstabt instead of Darmstadt.. So we fixed them then each printed a sheet ourselves. I'm going to really enjoy this class!

Woo Hoo! I am finally caught up with what I have been up to in the past 2 months. It's a lot to digest at once, but I will have more frequent shorter posts from now on. I hope people enjoy hearing about my adventures. Feel free to leave comments, questions, whatever :) I have put a ton of new photos on Flickr, captions are coming soon. Check out the following new sets located in Europe 2007: Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, Florence, Pisa, Cinque Terre, Venice, Oktoberfest, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Paris, Marburg, and of course Darmstadt is continually updated.

PS Happy Belated Birthday to my sister Kayla. I have tried to call but your number doesn't work... Hope your day was fabulous and you enjoy your gift. Ich liebe dich. <3