This is Table Mountain

I climbed this.

Oh. Hai.

Oh.  Hi.  This is Chelsea.  I haven't posted in forever... well... I haven't posted since I got here... and that was almost two months ago.  I figure I can give you a rundown as to what life has been like since arriving in San Francisco.

These are all over the place.  People
ride them from building to building.
When they plan on coming back to the
bike they take the seat out so no one
else will take it. 

Okay.  So.  Lets see...  January was kind of a crazy month.  In the first week I had interviews for internships, among some visits to different companies.  We went to Google.  That was pretty neat.  I'm not allowed to talk about what we talked about... but I have some pictures.  So you can enjoy those.  One thing that I feel like I can talk about was this really cool monitor that showed where Google was being used.  There were different colors for different languages, and then basically you could tell time zones due to what was lit up versus what wasn't.

This was up on a stage in a cafeteria
that we got to eat in (the food at Google
was quite good, actually).

Hm.  After interviews happened, I got an offer to join Torbit for the semester.  They're a small startup in Sunnyvale, CA (so, you know, I'm down in Silicon Valley, and that's legit, trust me) that focuses on website optimization.  I've enjoyed my time here, and honestly... startups in general grow so fast.  It's a unique environment to be learning in.  I get to not only do my job (social media marketing and other random tasks) but I get to learn a little bit about other aspects of business... like sales and a little bit of the thought process of coding (I'm not a coder, but I may actually get a little bit of a background in coding in my time here... either by teaching myself, or by some help from some experts) just by listening to the goings on in the office.  We're all in one room.  My desk is next to the CEO.  It's pretty cool.

Random fun fact:  I'm a proud new owner of an iPhone.  It's black.  It holds all my music and many fun apps.  I don't know how I survived without it (and its wonderful map functions).  It makes adventuring in the city that much easier.  I'm a happy girl.

What else to talk about... hm.  Chinatown is actually really cool.  It's the year of the dragon, so there was a huge Chinese New Year Parade two weekends ago.  That was fun.  Obviously there were a lot of dragons.  Otherwise there were a lot of people setting off firecrackers and poppers in the street.  That was kind of insane actually (people were walking everywhere and setting them off whenever, even if that meant right in front of you).  Here are some other awesome pictures:

  

  

So... other fun things I've done:  I've hiked up to Twin Peaks, which has a great view of the city, and that is evident in this next fun picture:

And then I also went hiking in Muir Woods.  There were some fun views there as well:

    

That's the exciting stuff I've seen and done.  Or the gist of it at least.  I should work on posting once a week... but there's not a ton of exciting stuff to talk about other than my adventuring on the weekends.  We'll see what happens this weekend.  I may go see some ruins on Saturday.  However, Spring Break should end in some fun interesting tales... I have a lot planned -- Alcatraz, perhaps the San Francisco Zoo, some hiking, some museums, and whatever other random fun things I can come up to do.

So.  There's my life so far.  I'm sure I'm missing on other things... but if you want more updated stuff, follow me on Twitter (@chelseamaya) or check out my pictures on Facebook.

--  Chelsea

The Vasari Corridor

Colin -- Above the heads of all the tourists, joining Palazzo Vecchio with the Uffizi Gallery with Palazzo Pitti is the Vasari Corridor. It's a closed passageway that weaves it's way among the rooftops and upper stories of the area, even crossing the river above the Ponte Vecchio, like the secret entrance to Hogsmeade from Hogwarts. And while it wasn't all of my Harry Potter fantasies in one, the whole "real life" part of it more than makes up.

down below the plebs grind through their day

The Corridor is closed to most visitors, but Helen the superprofessor came through with a private tour. Well done Helen. So we saw the part of the corridor that the Uffizi uses to display its incredible collection of self-portraits from artists that extend from the Renaissance until the 20th century. Literally there were hundreds of paintings lining both sides of the wall, with a handful of marble busts in between.

my favorite portrait, I forget the artist

Meanwhile, back at SACI...

an ongoing project I just started

I'm going on a field trip to Mantua on Sunday, I'll see you all then.

EX3, EX3, Read All About It

Colin -- I went to an exhibition opening on Saturday at a gallery called EX3. I wasn't allowed to take photos, so I won't really talk too much about it, since some illustrations would help explain the concept. Basically, there was a single exhibition by an artist in the large central room, while a separate exhibition of many artists took place in the space that wrapped around the main room. There's some dogs at the show. The one on the left was intensely curious about the other, who was only interested in all of the humans around.

This is Aaron making an impressive shadow bunny on an art piece. That man in the projection is looking at a tv on the floor near where I'm standing. The work is basically an animated man displayed from a projector, watching a an animated image of a tv on an actual tv. Oh conceptual art, you slay me. 

 The night after the art show was filled with missing the bus back, walking around, eating kebabs, hanging out in bars, shooting darts, hanging out in people's apartments. Also getting pastries at midnight, which is why I posted this nondescript photo -->

At dead end somewhere, a man will appear from behind a sliding door. You hand him money and he produces pastries. You can't explain that. 

On the walk home it rained, which can only mean pictures of wet streets. Also, here's the door to my apartment complex, so you know what it looks like.

Finally, I picture of traffic lights that I'm proud of. Enjoy it. I'm going to bed now, goodnight all.

I'm 21

Mmm, quite.

Danishes in Denmark

By now you've come to expect matters of pertinent substance from my posts, and continuing that tradition is of utmost importance to me and my blog. Now look at these pictures of the pastries I've consumed since arriving in Denmark:

That is all, thank you for your time.

I Am Left Of Center

Colin - The week has been uneventful, I must say. It's been lots of reading and trying to stay productive. Instead of telling you about all the non-events I took part in, I'll just share some pictures from the past few days.

Reading Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities for my drawing course. It takes place in conversations between the emperor Kublai Khan and the traveler Marco Polo, who is entrusted to describe the cites in Kublai's domain. The descriptions don't lay out the blueprints of the cities (which are imaginary in any case), nor the beautiful architectures, nor any romantic exoticism. Instead, Marco Polo recalls the essence of the places he visits. Each city seems to be a physical representation of its basic function. Very short, very dense and very confusing, but a good read. I'll be looking over it more. Also, Chino cola. Tasty but flat.

I went to the Asian minimarket near my apartment and bought spicy ramen. Then I went to another market and bought Guarana Antarctica. I guess ramen is the same everywhere, except it costs about 10x as much (that's only about 1.10euro mind you). Guarana Antarctica is a wonderful drink from Brazil flavored with guarana. It's very sweet and highly caffeinated. Authenticity be damned, this lunch kicked ass.

Florence is having a chocolate festival until Sunday. There's chocolate kebabs and chocolate waffles and hot chocolate and chocolate liqueur and so many truffles and then just chocolate.
There's also chocolate salami, which is waaay less meaty than you suspect. In fact it has no meat. In fact it is just chocolate and cookies made to resemble cured meat. cool.
But I didn't buy that, I bought this, chocolate with salt. I'm uncertain why, but salt and chocolate go together like one bro with another bro, just hanging out. Salt is way more handy than I ever gave it credit for.

After a literal decade of not eating crispy m&m's, and two years of trying to accept pretzel m&m's as not the unwanted bastard offspring of Mars Candy, I discovered this little guy hiding at Tutto A 99 Cent. My favorite m&m's are still sold everywhere but America. The candy was oddly discolored, like the food dye had faded... like they had survived a long time in a warehouse somewhere. No matter, still got food. The package on the bottom is a Lion bar and it tastes like 100 Grand.

 This is just a knife in my kitchen, yearning for the window. I am an art student.

This is whisky and also oranges.

 This is our apartment's first effort to make a lot of chili. Holy god is this tasty. We were missing chili powder and cumin but we made it work. Beef, red beans, black beans, onions, garlic, beer, tomatoes, red pepper, black pepper, and salt. Every Tuesday we will do this.

My first print from serigraphy (screen printing) class. This is a cartoon of the Epiphany Celebration, which I mentioned a while ago. I'll post some on facebook if I can ever get a quality picture of it. Screen printing is fun. Once you have a design on the screen, printing is as easy as lining a paper up and wiping a squeegee across with ink. Much less hassle than printing etching or woodcuts, though I love all types of prints.

Just a food cart by Piazza San Lorenzo

That's everything for now.