life’s not a paragraph

prague was incredible. i am sure you can see from the pictures that it’s a beautiful city. the architecture is amazing. the cobblestones are charming (although they are incredibly dangerous if you are wearing heels). the food is great. coffee was so delicious. czech people… ehh not the best first impression. but i met a few nice ones! overall i had a great time, and i always stayed super busy. i was all over the place… all the time. walking in old town, painting in the classroom, eating lunch, taking pictures, going shopping, making day trips. i think i packed more into those three weeks than i have in any other three weeks of my life.

even with the awful weather. i was there for about three and a half weeks, and there was probably about three full days of sun. i’m not exaggerating. unfortunately, the whole goal of painting beautiful czech landscapes didn’t really get accomplished. we actually attempted to go out one day and we got about two hours worth of painting in when it started to downpour… on our paintings. the effect on the paintings was cool, but not really what we were looking for. haha we did do a lot of stuff inside though. i got two portraits done, a still life,  a drapery study, and two half finished landscapes. so not too bad. and i’m a slow painter. haha so i have a had to do a bit of finishing up since i got home but that’s ok. and i am not nearly as bad as i worried i might be! hahaha i actually love to paint. it’s frustrating. tiring. dirty. but oddly satisfying. even when i have no idea what i am doing, it’s so great to experiment and get something right!

i really learned a lot– about painting, about prague, about eastern europe. it’s amazing how things are so different (and sometimes so similar) depending on where you are. i learned so much about history. i’ve realized that i really didn’t get enough european history in school. luckily i have a strange talent of remember random historical things, so i was able to follow along when people mentioned some of the more major historical events, but any more detail and i was lost. as a result, i learned some eastern european history. i didn’t learn that much czech though… it’s a really hard language. haha

it was a great trip. i really wouldn’t mind going back. haha but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. my classmates were some of the greatest people so at least i have them and we can reminisce whenever we get a little prague-sick.  🙂