The Lou is currently occupied.

Sorry familia! (and others) I've been very busy lately, too much so to be writing a blog post. But seeing as I'll be in Berlin for the next 4 days, I probably should get this done before I leave. Lately I've been busy from 9 in the morning till 12 at night. Every day we go out to some small town and draw and paint till about 5, return home and eat dinner, and then go out after dinner around Essen-Steele (Sh-tay-la) and then return home when it gets dusk around 9, and then work on Art History and Color Theory till around midnight (sometimes later) then it's straight to bed to only get up and do it all over again the next day!

The most recent adventures have been quite funny. A few days ago we went on a laundry adventure. Aside from looking ridiculous due to the lack of clean clothes I had (I just threw on random stuff, I had two huge bags full of laundry, so I'm sure I was quite the sight to behold walking down the street. We also got lost and ended up walking with our bags for half an hour. Then we found a laundromat that was in this weird part of town (nightclubs/indian restaurants/bars) and started washing our clothes only to find out that we didn't have enough coins for the dryer! So me and Nicole went to find someone to exchange our money with, but it soon turned into trying to find a bathroom. We avoided scary places, and places that would make us pay to pee, and so we went into this super nice red carpeted theatre! The bathroom was upstairs and we walked right through this really nice restaurant (white tie event and all, and we walked in in jeans and sneakers and hats and weird shirts...) and we get to the bathrooms, and the only labels that were on it were a 'D' and an 'H'.......

I didn't realize how much I relied on pictures on bathroom stalls. So we took a stab at the 'H' door first. Yeah, that DEFINITELY wasn't it. There were no guys in there, but once we saw the urinals we knew that wasn't it. So after choosing the correct bathroom we went to a tanning salon to exchange our money, finished our laundry, and got on a train that (conviniently) was right next to the laundromat (wished we would have known that to begin with, but, we didn't) and got on the train. There were some guys on the train playing guitar and a didgeridoo and singing. We struck up a conversation and they asked what part of America we were from, and we said 'Utah' and their response was 'OHHH! UTAH! Where the Amish people are!!' ha ha ha ha ha ha! Needless to say, we died laughing. Then we went home.

So yesterday we went to a steel refinery that was turned into a park in Duisburg. It was so cool! The toxic gas holders/chambers were turned into a diving tank, and the barracks were turned into a rock climbing gym, and there was a childrens park with an awesome slide, and you could climb up on the tallest tower! So anyway, I sat down to paint, and after about 10 minutes, these German kids came up behind me to watch me paint. So I turned around and started to paint them. After a while they started asking me a question in German, and I didn't understand, so I called my teacher over, and he interpreted for them and they were asking if they could paint also. So I lent them my paper and paintbrushes and paints, and they painted and chatted. We couldn't really communicate, but I found out their names (Niklas, Chelsea, and Shirin) and they lived in Germany and they could count to 30 in English (they were quite proud of this) and I tried to count to 20 and they laughed at me and helped me out past 15. I told them I was an art student. And I told them I spoke english and they were like 'from England?' and I said nine and then they said 'from Africa?' and I said 'America' and they said 'is that right below England?' and I laughed and told them nope. And they asked where my parents were and I told them they were at home in America. And just random fun stuff like that. They stayed and painted for like an hour and a half! So after we were all done, I took pictures with them! Then we left, so I said goodbye to them! It was a really fun day. One of my favorites here!

So those are my most recent adventures, but now I have to go to bed. I will write again this weekend after Berlin. Tschus! Liebe euch alle!
-Lauren

Shirin, Niklas, Me, and Chelsea

Awesome Steel Refinery!