Abroad in Baltimore #8
Falling Leaves, Spooky Treats
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Now that the weather has finally caught up to match the season, we can start to look forward to all the fun Fall things we’ve missed! Here in America, Fall is usually spent picking apples, solving corn mazes, and enjoying all things pumpkin flavored.
With Halloween only a few days away I’m excited to celebrate this spooky holiday at home for the first time in two years! Luckily Halloween falls on a Sunday this year so I’ll be able to dedicate the whole day to watching scary movies with friends and collecting some candy. I’ve invited the exchange girls over for some good old fashioned trick-or-treating and movie night, so who knows what hijinx we’ll get up to!
I’m at the point in the semester where things are going smoothly and I’ve gotten into a good rhythm with all my classes. Of course, I can’t get too comfortable as now that midterms are over my professors are quick to remind us poor students that finals prep is on the horizon.
One bright spot in my week was finally sitting down to enjoy the TV show sweeping the globe, Squid Game! I laughed, I cried, I clutched my pillow in horror, I can’t say enough good things about this show. It’s interesting that Korean culture has become so popular as it certainly was not when I was younger and bringing my mom’s homemade kimbap to school. Unfortunately, this is not a blog in which I review Netflix shows, so suffice to say if you haven’t seen it already, I highly recommend it.
Another fun adventure I took myself on was making a second trip to the dining hall. While I’m a big advocate of cooking at home (follow @pcacooks on Instagram for homemade meal recipes!), I went with a friend during our mid-class dinner hour and was pleasantly surprised at the abundance of choices! I played it safe with a slice of pizza and a salad mix but there were an almost overwhelming amount of options for the type of pizza alone. Pepperoni, cheese, veggie, I think I even saw one with pineapples.
The only opportunity I have to go to the dining hall is in the middle of my 4-10pm Anatomy Drawing class on Thursdays when we break for dinner. We get a solid hour for dinner but it goes by so fast, I blink and I’m hunched back over in front of my drawing pad trying to separate leg muscles in my head. It’s the best kind of pain though, the kind that bonds a class together and helps you grow. By the time 10pm rolls around, I do feel like someone just chewed me up and spit me out.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned since coming to MICA and even attending art school in general, it’s that you have to enjoy the struggle. Often, we struggle and fail much more than we succeed so you need to have a lot of resilience in order to keep moving forward. As artists, most of our time is spent on the process so we have to get good at enjoying it. Of course I’m still learning this myself, and some days are better than others. Hopefully if you’re here you’ve also come to realize that we’re never done learning!