Learning to draw a labyrinth

Saturday from 9am to 3pm I had my last meeting with the art therapy block seminar group, an experience which was just as was calming and insightful as expected. I learned a complex labyrinth design that, when used with typically-developing older kids or adults can be very a meditative internal process. An embellished/decorated version of this that I drew and stuffed in a letter for my friend Norman is below. We drew them with pastel chalk and then used clear baby oil to trace the path.


We did a lot of clay excercises too, for the sake of knowing how to implement them with children in the future. Another activity was one that is apparently altogether common in German elementary schools: felting, which oddly enough is done with wool. You take polyester or cotton as a base and roll it into a ball before affixing colored wool onto it, which magically sticks. Once you have formed a giant fluff ball, you soap your hands and wet the whole thing, gradually decressing the size and giving it a more concrete shape. After some time, you add more wool and create a distinguishable form, such as a fish or flower.

(eyes currently pending: will be sewn on later)

It's really an enjoyable experience and the creation process serves to relax the individual, allow one to open up and learn to properly recognize actual goals for a project, albeit in a simplified manner (e.g. making a fish out of wool), but it's a start. Saturday was also brilliantly sunny and I sat outside of my favorite Munich tea house, writing letters. A few friends and I met up, intending to go to a "trendy" (Munich is far too stylish/hip and ridiculously self-aware of this for it's own good. I often prefer the blunt, brash nature of Berlin) vegetarian restaurant but landed in a great, previously frequented Indian restaurant instead.

It is nice not to work this year - although my work during the school year has never consisted of more than unpaid internships, grading papers and babysitting and it was more during the summer that I got serious 'real world' experience - but I will enjoy the regularity and insignificant yet nonetheless helpful amount of money of a job next semester.

I have made an admirable attempt to enjoy the sun's warmth before the recurring storms these past weeks. It has been raining like crazy and even more intensely than in Portland, which is unbelievable. The frequency is not as great - except for during this month, when it pours three times a week. The pounding and thunder are just absurd, as if the weather needs to exaggerate in order to make its presence known. It pours straight down, too, like in films, rather than in the natural diagonal manner. The only prior experience I've had that holds a candle to it is monsoon season in Arizona, riding in a truck with enormous tires, wading through the flood in a fervent mission to reach an open mic night performance in Phoenix. Seeing the likes of this rain again is somewhat overwhelming in Bavaria, which is not a desert by any means.

Taken during the train ride.

Some compatriots relaxing at Ammersee.

Recent undertakings have included finding multiple ways to cook eggs (see below), making earrings out of old stamps, trying to draw a proper penny farthing, narrowly avoiding the purchase of things on Etsy, buying significantly cheaper Voxtrot albums on iTunes instead, meeting and chatting with German boys, working on the zine and going to Ammersee with friends to sunbathe, picnic, drink wine and swim. It's all been pretty wonderful, too.

Huevos