well, it's essentially final time over here.

a little different though.

Because I currently only have TWO classes to do work for.

NOW. Before you get all huffy about how I get to take a walk down easy street, let me just say that it really isn't what it would seem.

Between these two classes I am BOOKED in terms of work.

but... it's ok, because both of the classes have me doing stuff that I enjoy. The puzzle is coming along well for the block class, and I'll probably get the wood cut out tomorrow to shape into the blocks.

And for my illustration class I'm doing three 13" by 19" illustrations. Done with two (almost, still have a day or two of touchups to do on them) and still have one left to go.

Aaanyways, life is busy for me... but I'm almost done with japan! And I don't mean that in a "yaaay" sort of way, I mean that in a "holy CRAP! Time goes fast!" kind of way.

wow.

so crazy.

anyways, I'm going to post some pictures now.






Yeah, so this is what I'm currently working on.

Had to redesign the cube thing a bit, but it should work pretty well now. Also these two pictures aren't totally done yet, still need touchups and details added. Still the bulk of work on them is fairly finished.




This is the older design GIVEN FLESH.

Happily and sadly it showed that it was not yet perfect, but as previously stated I believe I fixed those problems. I hope. maybe. please.

anyways...

So I'm currently deliberating something.

I bought an L lens that covers the 80-200 range very well, and I bought it very cheaply too. I could sell it for *quite* a bit of money and buy myself a newer lens that covers the same range, and would have image stabilizer and be quite a bit lighter too (the L lens is like, 16 years old and made of what seems to be reinforced steel. Heaavy.)

And, the thing is, the L lens isn't SUPER sharp or anything, which seems to be the measurement of how good most lenses are these days.

But... when I take pictures with it, and after a bit of tweaking afterwards, they usually turn out really good. I don't know.

It's a hard decision to make, because if I give this lens up I know I'll never get it back again. siigh.

oh well, here's some pictures taken with said lens from around where I live.











I like it so much... but it's so damn heavy and has no image stabilization. le sigh.

Well.

my time here is coming to a close.

It's interesting, musabi certainly was different than pratt.

I believe that this environment allowed me to self teach myself alot more than pratt did, but did this at the expense of structured lessons.

In many ways I feel like I might have matured a bit? Well, in any case I go grocery shopping over here. haha.

The students here also have a wonderful sense of patience and I've YET to see anyone complain about having too much work or gripe about school problems. (although I'm sure they do gripe about work and school, in any sense it's much less than back home. I mean, hell, I gripe about work and school at the time even here...)

A really wonderful thing, and completely unforeseen, is that my time over here has done some pretty fantastic things towards my relationship with veronica.

I had worried that by going abroad for so long things would get fractured and seeds of discontent would have started growing between us, or that one of us would do something we might regret, or any other number of relationship harming might have happened.

But absence and heart growing fonder and such, instead, by getting to talk whenever we could, and sending e-mails when we couldn't talk, I've found that this time apart has actually strengthened the relationship to a point that I've never experienced before, or even knew I could achieve.

I feel like I could go on at length, but I'm going to resist the urge. I'll just say that anyone who's willing to wait lovingly for their daydreaming boyfriend to go galavanting off halfway around the world probably deserves more than anything that boyfriend can give to them to make up for it when he returns. Although he's certainly going to try.