The first picture is of St. Patrick’s Cathedral as we are driving by it. The other building is the sketchy “airport” outside of Paris where we left. It looks more like a redneck bowling alley to me than an airport, but whatever. The other pictures show my fascination with the steering wheel being on the other side of the car as well as the cars driving on the other side of the street. It doesn’t take much to amuse me.

This is me in Venice (per request of my mom who wanted to see a picture of me instead of my boys) trying to find out where to go using a photocopied map out of Lonely Planet travel guide. If you know me you know I am stubborn enough not to get a real map that might actually have street names on it, and if you know CBQ you know he is annoying enough to turn around and comment about my certainty of our location every five seconds, which explains the look on my face (just kidding hun ).

Casey, Becky and I are going to Dublin tomorrow morning (I have to wake up at 8 a.m. on a Saturday, eeeek!) on a sketchy airplane leaving from an airport that we didn’t know existed in Paris. It is probably the middle of some man’s field that he rents to a couple of small, but prospering, airlines on the weekends. Anyhow, we don’t get back until Tuesday morning, if anyone might wonder why they haven’t heard from me. I know that no one is worried; otherwise they would have called me! So just to make sure that you all know, I am fine and having the best time in Paris, and getting some work done as well. Have a great weekend

So I tried to escape the wonderful Christmas atmosphere by going as far east as possible, but alas, Vienna was as far as I could get. They are more Christmasy than anywhere else in Europe I think. But it was really fun and relaxing. The markets were great, the palaces were great. This market is in front of city hall(that is what you see in the background). Other than that and walking around in snow while my foot was trying to kill me, we watched movies and slept late….the perfect vacation (besides going to Italy avec mon petite amie). I had a hard weekend and now I am preparing for the next one (I know I use this always busy excuse for not updating my website often enough, but I promise I will get better). So ciao, until next time.

p.s. sorry these pics aren’t really in chronological order either.

Wes at the Christmas Market in Vienna, Austria, drinking his warm orangen drunken punchen (don’t check my spelling on that)

Which just so happens to be due today in class, so I decided to post my conceptual work and pictures for you guys to look at. I won’t write much this time, because I have received criticism about my run-on sentences. Plus there is more to read if you click on the dossier link.

Free time has been few and far between this semester, which has only lasted two weeks by the way. I am hoping that this is an aggressive beginning because I hardly have time to think right now, and most of you guys know what I am like when that happens (you should see my room right now, yikes!) I really miss studio in Atlanta. Now that I have to work in my bedroom, I realize how great it was to have other people in the room working on the same project as you and having an extra space that was there for the purpose of production. You can throw scraps on the floor because there are janitors to clean it up, and supplies are readily available. I have so much cardboard, plastic, and utensils on my floor right now that you can barely see it, and I don’t have the time to take to clean it up, because I need to do more drawing, and it would look the same again tomorrow anyway.

So hope you guys are all doing well. Sorry for all the complaining. I like being under pressure anyway, because I get more organized, in my own way ofcourse.

This is a series of pictures from yesterday, my first official day of Chirstmas break and my first day being home alone. I almost decided to go to southern Italy with Casey and Jessica but I decided to have some Jodi time and save money instead. Plus, there are a lot of things that I want to do in Paris by myself. So here is what I did yesterday in chronological order, starting with shopping outside of Les Halles after I dropped Becky and her two ton suitcase off at the metro to go to the airport. There is a special Christmas market set up outside in the streets. People from all origins are here selling their stuff. I got some really cool gloves with no fingertips and detachable mitten-things. They are my new prized possession.
Next I walked towards the river and saw this old man painting on the side of a cafe and I decided to take a picture. Then I went to Notre Dame to take some pictures because the weather was so nice…you could even see a glimpse of the sun. After that I derived in the direction of my house, walked down Rue Cardinal Lemoine, the street Hemingway used to live on, and made my way to the Pantheon where they had these pitiful Christmas trees set up for decoration. There is also a good view of the Eiffel Tower in the distance from there.
Then I made my way back down Rue Mouffetard, the market street close to my apartment and did some wine tasting and shopping. The very last picture reminds me of my friend Catie because she loves this little white man that is painted all over Paris doing different activities. Becky has pictures of Catie chasing after pigeons, which really made the finding perfect.
So day two of JODI’S HOME ALONE PARTY is not quite as interesting. I will be cleaning up and working on projects that I have been wanting to do for awhile. It is one of those stay-in-your-pajamas-all-day days (I have been having quite a lot of those lately, but I leave the house anyway). Have a great lazy Sunday everyone.

I took this picture for a project for my visual arts class, and as you can see I was in the process of ripping it up when I noticed that it is the best picture of this type that I have ever taken. I have tons of ID’s with horrible pictures where I don’t know whether to smile or not and by the time the camera has flashed I was somewhere in-between. But when I run to the picture booth in the metro right before it closes to get this picture to do a last-minute project, it comes out really well. And then I have to rip it into pieces and glue fragments of it together to make it totally unrecognizable as a good picture….aaahh, oh well, at least the project is over and my semester is basically over and next semester will be easier. And then I have to enter the real world and get a job! NOOOOOOOOO! 19-year-olds aren’t supposed to get real jobs…..

These are more pictures from my field trip. This is another building by Zaha Hadid. It is a restaurant located in a desolate part of Germany. The setting is much different than I imagined from the pictures, but it gives it a very surreal presence. Next door to the restaurant there just happened to be this really really cool artists’ atelier (studio) that was made out of an old farm mill. It was the coolest work setting I have ever seen. There was an installed turn-stile(is that how you spell it?) serving as the entrance and a series of interesting stairs that went above the building to give an incredible view of Zaha’s building plus the rest of the landscape. The picture in the bottom left corner of the ramp that runs on top and past the length of the building is one of the reasons that I have become so ramp crazy in my design lately, just to let you know.

These are more pictures of the Zaha Hadid building in Germany and the studio adjacent to it, plus a random picture of me that Carl took when he was using my video camera.

My week is over, thank goodness. It was a pretty hard one, but they are only getting tougher from here (but that is ok because I do much better under pressure -hee hee). Hope everyone had a great thanksgiving…I know I will probably be eating leftovers for awhile. I will post Thanksgiving pictures soon, so look for them…