midterms

This past week was pretty wild school-wise. I had a critique and 3 tests to take as well as a project due in production. It wore me completely out. Friday was such a huge relief...I took most of Saturday off and hope to take most of today off as well.

I would say the past few weeks have completely worn me out. It seems like there is just never enough time to do everything I need and want to do. I've had a couple of days these past couple of weeks where I realized I hadn't eaten a meal in over 24 hours due to the busyness of my schedule. Needless to say, this lack of eating has resulted in me being pretty hangry at different times. I feel like my patience levels have dropped a lot the past few days and I feel rather despairing at times. I had a few moments this week where I was ready to crack. I was at school till midnight on Monday and having horrible luck with what I was making for my critique on Wednesday and I was so miserable. I wondered why I had to pick a major that made me feel so incredibly bad about myself. I sometimes equate being a ceramics major to being in a bad relationship (which I've never been in so this comparison is only based on what I've heard) where you do all the giving and ceramics does all the taking and it's never enough. Nothing I do is good enough, nothing works out the way I intend it to and I feel like an unappreciated failure. You might argue that I'm taking this too seriously. I probably am. My sister told me I'm a workaholic, but are you still a workaholic if the whole time you're busy you don't want to be working? Cause seriously, all I've wanted to do this week is sleep and watch movies in my bed and eat fall-ish foods.

The whole week wasn't awful though. Aside from being really stressful and exhausting I've had quite a nice weekend. On Friday I went to a friend's apartment and watched Inkheart and Stardust which was fun. And yesterday I had lunch with a friend and walked around Old Navy and the went home and napped and watched the Lion King with 2 of my roommates and some friends. It was so relaxing and nice to be with the girls all weekend. I'm really sad that the weekend is almost over and I still have Chinese homework to do. :(

I think I need to make it a point to get out of the studio more and relax on weekends. I feel guilty and irresponsible if I don't spend all my time working on things and I think I need to lose those feelings and realize that rest and down-time are important. I feel so much more refreshed and ready to go back to school when I make time for fun. I've been trying to convince my professors to start a school-wide "Professor skip day" so we can have a long weekend. It's not really working, but maybe if I suggest it enough they'll jump on it. Especially with the symposium happening this week...maybe they'll be so tired they'll want a break next week.

On top of all that I find other things to worry about. Family, school, future, etc. It gets me really down and I feel like I bottle things up and it just makes everything worse. I've been doing a Bible study that has been really good and helped me with my perspective and also kind of teaching me how to deal with stress and anxiety (cast your cares on Him for He cares for you). It's a work in progress, of course.

Anyway, so that wasn't a very interesting or light-hearted post, but it's what's been up lately. I'm hoping for a calmer week ahead...the symposium starts Friday morning, so I sort of doubt it will be that much calmer, but at least I'll get to see all my Chinese professors and watch them do demos and give lectures. It should be fun. :)

new recipe...

My roommate, Mandy, made gluten-free peanut butter cookies for us one Sunday and they came out really well! I was surprised to find out that there was no flour in them at all.

Basically they are made of 1 cup of brown sugar, 1 cup of peanut butter, one egg, 1 tsp of baking powder, 1 tsp of vanilla and chocolate chips. Sooo healthy, right? :)

Bake at 350*F for about 10 minutes.

Super easy and actually really good.

Sneak peek...

Porcelain...with slip...awaiting bisque firing and glazing. Keep your fingers crossed that this turns out better than my last firing did!

Hopefully I'll have more successful results to show soon!

Wood kiln and pottery stuff

We fired our wood kiln last week. It went much better than any other firing I've been a part of, but it still didn't work out perfectly. I think I'm a curse to the wood kilns. You know how it was considered to be bad luck for women to sail on ships? Well I think it's bad luck for me to put work into a wood kiln because every firing I've been involved in has never made it to temperature all the way.

Anyway, we still got some good stuff out of the kiln. Most of my work was ruined though because I dipped almost all my pots into a bisque slip before I glazed them and did not know that glazes don't adhere to bisque slip very well so almost everything I made has big crawling spots on them. Some of them have glaze cracking right off them. See exhibit A:
Bad, right? Can you hear the sound of my heart breaking? All that work and almost all of it was RUINED! I think we're going to try to fire the wood kiln again in about 3 weeks. After all that trouble I still feel like I should try again. Maybe someday I'll figure this stuff out. I managed to get some sort of decent work out. These are my more successful pieces.

I threw some more little things and am trying some new decorating ideas on them. I've got the slipwork done, but I want to trail some glaze in the slip work and then allow for flashing and other glazing around the painted stuff...I'm having fun thinking about it. :)
I've also been trying some new handles. Tom gave me a little handle-making demo which was pretty cool. I was given the book 500 Cups before I left NC this summer too and that has been quite inspiring also and I'm getting some fun ideas from that. I'm really hoping to see a lot of improvement in my work this year!

Tonight was the first night of our Bible study with our church. Next week we will start hosting it at our apartment. I'm really looking forward to it! I think it will be really good!

Okeydokey...I'll end here tonight. I am going to try to get to the studio pretty early tomorrow to work on some pieces before my class so I should probably get to bed soon!

whew!

So...in almost a month I haven't managed to post even once! Shameful! Would it help if I said I've been reeeeally busy? Although I know I've been no busier than anyone else I have felt like I've been run off my feet lately. Part of that is good. Part of it not so good. Classes keep me extremely busy and I've managed to squeeze in a couple of fun activities like swing dancing classes at the Rec center on Tuesdays (soooo sooo sooooooo fun!) and Bible studies and other activities with friends. Unfortunately I've been feeling really under the weather for the past week and am now finally feeling a bit better. On top of a sore throat I've been having a lot of body aches and fatigue. This week I fell down a couple of steps on my way down to the PRT and scared myself. The first thing I thought when I hit the ground was "Oh my goodness...did I break something?" As a ceramics major if I broke a bone, especially a hand or arm, I'd most likely have to drop out for the semester. You just can't take 3-6 weeks to heal a broken bone...there's no time! I'm very grateful that nothing was broken, but I twisted my ankle and the next day I had to go to classes for 8 hours and fire a wood kiln until 9 pm. I was worried it would be really bad with a sore, slightly swollen ankle, but it went alright. In fact it was quite enjoyable. Jeremy and I took the 4-9 pm shift and at one point Erica brought her class down to watch us stir and stoke the kiln (which was about 2000 degrees at this point) and when we opened the box door and flames shot out the kids all said "whoa!!!" and as lame as it sounds we felt pretty cool for dealing with all that flame and heat and impressing the 240 class. Jeremy was a good wood-firing partner and he didn't get mad at me for asking a billion questions about what we were doing. I just hope that the following shifts were able to get the kiln to temperature. I have yet to be a part of a wood firing that makes it all the way to temperature...maybe this will be the one.

So far this semester art school has been kicking my hiney and I feel exhausted all the time. And physically sore either from lifting heavy items or from dropping wood onto my feet while moving wood or firing a kiln, smashing my fingers between heavy objects while moving things, etc... Not only am I exhausted I'm tired of feeling like I look like a 35 year old male construction worker at the end of each day (not that I have anything against 35 year old male construction workers...I'm just not one of them and I'd like to feel more like a 22 year old girl). I find that on evenings and weekends I wear lots of skirts or cute shoes and things like that to compensate for how icky I feel during the school week. I don't remember feeling quite like this in past semesters...this year has been particularly dirty so far.

All in all I feel like this semester is good in that it is pushing me to see how much ability I have to make quality pieces in a short amount of time, and it is making me look forward to the day that I (hopefully) have my own studio and run my own schedule. I also feel like it is reminding me that my whole life isn't just ceramics. I have passions and interests outside the studio that I want to develop and friendships that I want to build and maintain and my appreciation for them is greater now. Chinese class has been great. I am really enjoying it. I got an English partner from Hong Kong. She's awesome! I think we're going to be friends. :) She helps me with my mandarin and I'm supposed to help her with her English, but she's pretty fluent already. I think if I wasn't a ceramics major I might want to be a Chinese studies major. It's pretty great. Swing dance lessons have been a huge highlight of each week and when I leave the meetings I feel so happy and can't stop smiling. I'm so grateful to be back at my church and involved again. It is so lovely to see families and work with kids and alongside adults and see families and people of all ages instead of only college students. My roommates and I are going to be hosting a Bible study at our apartment through our church this semester and I'm really looking forward to that as well. My roommates are both encouraging and inspiring to me. They're such godly women who are so intelligent and kind and have different interests and goals. I couldn't ask for 3 better girls to be friends with and live with.

Of course there are obstacles too. I feel quite discouraged a lot. I feel insecure about what I'm doing...but I'm trusting that God allowed me to be here and will use this time and degree in some way in my life. I'm more convinced that life is all about serving God regardless of your degree, job, location, etc. I read Ecclesiastes this summer and feel like I'm watching it played out before my eyes. I also miss my parents and sisters and wish I could see them more often.

Anyway, all in all the semester is going by rather well and although it has its share of things that wear me out and drag me down it also has its share of encouraging, lovely times and people. I am trying to choose to be grateful for all of it.

So maybe my next post will include pictures of things I'm doing at school and around town. And maybe it will not be a whole month before I get to another posting. :)

Happy weekend, folks.

Tomorrow!

In about 22 hours my classes start! I'm both excited and nervous! I've got butterflies and feel restless and I'm hoping that by the end of tomorrow or Tuesday at least I'll feel better about what to expect from the semester.
2 of my 3 roommates are here! I'm looking forward to spending the fall with them. I missed experiencing fall in America last year so it will be fun to see the colors and do fall activities. I must say though that part of me feels like I should be getting ready to go back to China. September 7th will be a year from the time I left the States to go there and part of me wishes I could go back to Jingdezhen. It kind of brings up some mixed emotions since so much has happened in that time and although it seemed long at times the year really has gone by quickly.
I think this year should be interesting too though. I had a meeting with 2 friends and our pastor this week to talk about starting a Bible study home group for college and career age folks. Although there are lots of campus ministries here it seems that a lot of them focus on the freshmen and getting them settled and providing an alternative to the party scene that our school is known for. And that's great and they provided a lot of encouragement to me. But we're hoping this will be something that offers more in-depth study and discussion of the Bible so hopefully something great will come of it. If we can get it going it should start toward the end of next month so we have to get cracking on planning and such. It's exciting!
Yesterday one of my roommates and I went to the new location our church is leasing to help paint it and get it ready for services. Our church hasn't had a permanent location up till this point and they have finally found a place to meet more permanently but it needs a lot of work to get finished. Some folks from out of town came in yesterday to help paint too which was so kind of them. I was there for about 3.5 hours and boy was I tired and my arms hurt later that afternoon. Maybe that means I should go down there more and help out and build up some stamina. :)

Finished...

As I said before this silly drawing was inspired by a conversation with a friend about being single and waiting to find Mr. Right or Prince Charming or whatever. And we decided that maybe our future husbands are still in the process of scaling (metaphorical) mountains, braving forests, slaying dragons and cutting their way through thickets while trying to find us too so maybe we should chill and be more patient instead of being sad that we don't know who our future husbands will be.
I wish we could wear pointy princess hats while waiting though. ;)