What's New?

It's the start of a new school year at college! My Junior/Senior year? I don't know what I am, credit wise Junior, but i've been in college for four years so I say that I'm a Junsenior. A lot of things have happened in my life for the good, I'm living the dream life as of right now. I couldn't be happier where I am in my life travels. I feel accomplished and I'm surrounded by supportive parents and friends.
This past summer I had a job at the Kalamazoo Nature Center as the Art Teacher. I was in charge of coming up with the art project of the week which reflected the theme of the week. So I got hands on experience as an art teacher before even getting the professional training. I am so blessed, I worked with amazing people and how wonderful to be in nature at the same time? I could not ask for a better summer job.
Just got finished with the first week of classes and getting back into the swing of things. Side Note: I've picked up Swing dancing this summer thanks to a KNC co-worker who took me to Grand Rapids Swing society. Western has a Swing RSO so guess I'll be able to get into the swing of things quite literally. This semester is going to be fun, but tough too. Taking my first Art Education class, Wooo! There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Painting 1 - interested, not too excited though. Writing about art - have a feeling it is going to be tough, but seems like the professor is a level minded person. And then the highlight of my classes is Ceramics, of course. Good line-up, I hope I can be successful and also have some fun with friends in between.
I have reestablished my relationship with the Schultz family, especially Melisa and we have a little group of us that has gotten together to hang out. All I wish was that we all were able to eat dinner together like my first year at WMU with my other group of friends. I really hope we can stick together, because I really like our friendship group, it is hard though when two live in dorms and two live else where.
Bronco Bash tomorrow!

The Start of My 5k Run Training

I finally committed myself to beginner's training for a 5k run with a professional, which is probably the best option in my case. Running a 5k is on my 30 things before 30 list and just a healthy activity that I think would be enjoyable. I think Jogging is just a fun and beautiful thing; you are outside with nature, using your whole body, you just feel a sense of wholeness and makes you feel awesome.
My goal is to run to feel good and have fun. Not necessarily that I want to lose weight; I am happy with whatever body I have as long as I am keeping my body content.

Day One Of Training

I have training twice a week, Monday & Wednesday 5:30pm-6:30pm
Today I learned the four simple steps to good form.

• Posture
• Mid-foot
• Cadence
• Lean

And then we did a one mile run on the big track outside the student rec center. I must say I was slightly surprised at how out of shape I am to run. I went around the track one time and had to walk half of the track on the second round and then i'd run all the way around and then walk again for half of the track. I went around the track a total of 4 times, which is a mile. My lungs and body were just working against
me, probably saying something along the lines of, "What? What are you doing Sloan? We are not use to this, slow it down!" I have a long way to go in six weeks, but I am hoping that this beginners training will pay off and I will be a 5k champ and run with all my other cool friends and my body will thank me after.  

Tummy Rubs for Mussina

Tummy Rubs for my little fluffy dog, Mussina. My family and I are pretty positive that she has a tumor again in her abdomen :( taking her to the vet today.

Update: confirmed that Mussina has a tumor in her lower abdomen. Vet took some blood work to see if she can go into surgery to have the mass removed. Mom and Dad have to have a discussion tonight if they will pay for the surgery again or just let Mussina live out the rest of her life with us without and just give her tons of love and support.
It seems to be the same kind of tumor she had last time, but we are unsure if cancer has spread, which the blood work the vet took today will see if it did. We'll have the results by tomorrow of the blood work. After surgery last time they gave her 4-6 months to live and she lived 2 years, so we’ll see what my parents decide if we’ll do the surgery again and see if it doesn’t come back again. Poor baby girl. Mussina is six years old.  

Journey to Europe: Day Six The Borghese Gallery and Gardens

Itinerary

• 1:00 – Lunch
• 2:30 – Borghese Gallery tour
• 5:00 – Garden tour
• 8:00 – Dinner

A fountain in the park

Accordion player

Sunday, day six we got to sleep in and eat breakfast. We actually walked to the Borghese Park from our hotel wandered for a bit and then sat for a bit-watching people in the park. Then we got sandwiches at a little food stand, like the stands you see at like art fairs, and had a picnic in the park listening to an accordion play Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 and other recognizable classical songs. That was probably my favorite lunch the whole trip; eating in the park, watching people, and listening to an accordion play classical music. 

Alec in front of the Borghese Gallery

Bernini's The Rape of Proserpina. That is made of
marble...

After lunch we headed into the Borghese Gallery for our tour. The Gallery was a very strict gallery, no camera, and no bags policy. If you needed to have something with you, you had to put it in a see through bag, even if it was just a water bottle. So we checked our bags in our tour group locker.

 It was fun learning about the Borghese family, seeing beautiful sculptures done by Bernini, and paints by artist I’ve heard of. Our tour guide was really good; she was Canadian, but now living in Rome with her Italian family. She told put so much excitement into her stories while talking about the sculptures and paintings, we hung on her every word.

Bernini's Apollo and Daphne
All Bernini's pieces had some kind
of exciting story to tell.

"Lake" in the park. What Italians consider a lake,
we Michiganders consider a pond.

A Passion Flower our tour guide found that reminded
her of her grandmother.

Immediately proceeding the gallery tour we took a tour around the park or gardens. There is a secret garden at Borghese, but it is not open to the public, but we got to sneak peaks of it through the iron fence surrounding it. It was just a short tour, where our guide would just tell us what a couple things were and pointed us in directions of where to go. We ended at a spot that over looked Rome and where most newly weds come to take photos, which a couple was up there.  

We walked down to the Piazza del Popolo to see a church that our guide pointed out to go see that had a famous painting inside, but we got lost, because there has to be over a hundred churches in Rome and near this Plaza there was probably five churches and it was a Sunday. The church that we thought it was in there was a mass going on, so we didn’t want to bother. We trekked back toward our hotel passing by the Spanish Steps, which surprisingly had a Marching Band of some sorts playing music on it. It was kind of cool, but still way too many people.

View of Rome

Following having dinner we went to walk around the Colosseum, we were going to go that morning, but found out there was a workers strike and was not able to go see it in its entirety. Thus we walked around it, walking there we saw some archeological site, of things workers found while working on the new metro line they are in progression of, Line C. Once we got to the Colosseum, we got a surprise, that night the moon was full and bright as ever. The pictures I took do not give it justice, but it was a beautiful scene. Being able to take picture of the moon peeking through the Colosseum was a great end to the day.

Journey to Europe: Day Five Pompeii

Itinerary

• 7:40 – Tour Bus to Pompeii
• 10:45 – Pompeii Walking Tour
• 1:00 – Lunch
• 3:15 – Leave Pompeii
• 8:00 – Dinner

Mt. Vesuvius

Early morning start with taking the metro to where we needed to meet up for our tour. Sadly, we were unable to have the complimentary breakfast that our hotel provided, on a Saturday breakfast started at seven. So with empty tummies we went to the meeting point for our tour, which wasn’t really a tour, but a bus that would transport us to and from Rome and Pompeii.

The trip to Pompeii was a little over three hours with a stop midway to use the restroom, stretch, or get a little snack to eat; so we didn’t go hungry for too long. Riding to Pompeii we got to see the Italian countryside, making it all the while. Beautiful rolling mountains with cute little Italian villages perched on them and farms and vineyards. What was also interesting to see a long the highway was a few fields covered in solar paneling, sort of like the wind turbine fields we have in the mid-west.

Tessera Mosaic Floor Design- reads "Beware of the Dog"

Mt. Vesuvius actually looked like a normal mountain other than it had some kind of white smoke around the top of it. It was pretty large over looking the city of Pompeii and Héculean. I don’t quite understand why anyone would want to live in a city at the base of a famous volcano, even if it was inactive.

Tessera Mosaic Floor Design 

At the ruins my family decided we would not go on a guided tour, but get two audio tours that were like a radio that you typed in the number of the site or building you were at in the ruins and hold the radio up to your ear and listen. It was an okay tour, but we didn’t know what to go see or where anything was. There was a map, but it only had names of places and their number. Another thing about the audio tour was that the audio guide dragged on and on about the stories and buildings a little too much. Pompeii is defiantly a place of ruins, it is cool to an extent, but after awhile everything looks the same.

A Fresco in the Villa of the Mysteries

The Most disappoint thing about the Ruins that I heard so much about was the things archeologist found buried beneath the layers of ask from the volcano that had been preserved. Also the process the archeologist did by using the ash that had harden, creating a mold around actual people who had been caught in the ash and had died of suffocation. They poured plaster into the ash molds to unveil what people looked like, what they wore, the tools they used, what their culture was like, and what they worshiped. But all of the findings were not there, there was only a few things locked up in a room that you could peer through, most of it is in Naples, Italy at the Archeological Museum. I found this to be very disappointed after learning about how cool the findings were in Art History and other history classes I had taken in the past.

We had lunch inside of Pompeii at the cafeteria they had there, which was packed with people and overly priced food. Once you leave the ruins you cannot enter back in without having to pay again. So we watched for tables that were leaving like vultures, because by that time our feet ached and we were all sweaty from the hot Italian sun. When we finally got a table, the people left a mess and we had to clean it off. While cleaning off the table mom accidently bumps and empty glass beer bottle someone left and it shatters all over the floor of the cafeteria and over a dozen eyes turn to stare at us while we try to sweep the glass shards into a pile with our feet until a employee finally comes over to clean it up.

Vases and man laying down found buried beneath ash

a person found crouched, maybe praying.

In the end Pompeii was okay, but I rather have gone to the Archeological Museum in Naples. My favorite part of Pompeii trip was the ride to and from on the bus, watching the country side of Italy than the hustle and bustle of Rome.

Dinner we ate on top of a hotel terrace, where I had pasta with prawns which was very yummy. 

Hot Doggy