A Trip to Turkey

Bwah. THis is my first blog post in 2 months. Talk about slacking! Anyways here's some videos!

The first batch is from Istanbul.

First Night in Istanbul

A Cool Cafe in Istanbul.

The Aya Sofya. It was SO amazing!

This place that we went to had the BEST baklava ever! It was amazing!

The Entrance to the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.

Inside the Grand Bazaar.... after the power went out and everyone had to use generators.

We went to Bosnia last year and first heard the call to prayer there, at sunset. I think this is one of the most amazing things I've ever heard.

A beautiful view of the harbor.

The most amazing fish sandwich that I've ever had in MY LIFE!!!! They actually caught the fish about 20 feet from where we ate it!

Jake and I decided to get a haircut in Turkey. Here's Jake getting a Turkish style haircut. It was quite an experience!

Bwah! I have no idea what this was about but it was cool!

The haircutter also used an old style razor! It was pretty cool! It was pretty smooth too!

Then it was my turn for the fire!

This was the final result of an almost 2 hour search for these amazing sweet treats. It was well worth the time that it took. It turns out that they were an old style treat in Turkey, which meant that they were almost impossible to find!

Next up.... Pamukkale

Nothing to really say here. I think the videos speak for themselves. You can really see how beautiful of a place this was. The water was so warm and clear. IT was a truly amazing experience!

Cappadocia.....

This was, by far, the most difficult part of the trip. It all started with a series of troublesome, and expensive bus rides. Each person we asked along the way insisted that finding a bus to our destination would be easy. However, we ended taking many buses out of our way and paying out the nose for said bus rides. It was a nightmare even trying to find a bus that would take us to a place near Cappadocia. However, afterwards the time that we spent there was quite enjoyable. I even got a chance to try doing some Yoga, which was actually pretty amazing!!

This is how our bus trip started out after we were basically stranded by the bus company.

However, things chilled out and started going a lot better.... kinda....

Here were some amazing trees that we found on the side of the road.

Goreme

Goreme again

And finally, on the way out of Cappadocia we saw this mountainside village.

This was our trip to Turkey. Hope you enjoyed the videos!

Remembering 9/11

So, I'm sitting in bed and looking at pictures of the terrorist attacks from 9/11. I still get choked up seeing them. I hate to think that anyone is even capable of doing a thing like that. However, I'm also happy to see how everyone has united to remember the people that died. I think this is a day I will always remember for the rest of my life, as if it happened yesterday.

It's strange that here they can talk about it so casually. I don't think that they really truly understand how, as an American, that I feel about this. I hope that they never have to know either.

Phhhheeewww...... ok here we go

Time to catch up on this blog. I have been seriously busy but I finally made some time to get this done.

First up....

First up is one of my new CGI projects. It's a cat shaman. It's pretty much done and I'm happy with how it turned out.

This one is a demon for a scene that I'm going to make. I still have a lot of work to do on the scene but yeah....

Well, I guess that's probably it since I can't seem to find any of my videos so I'll have to look for my camera... : /

Fail and Epic Fail :(

Soooooo.... This is bad.... really bad. I haven't updated this blog in a REALLY long time. I have a good excuse though! I've been busy..... that's a pretty lousy excuse... but it IS true. Well anyways, I'll do my back entries for all the videos that I've taken. There's been a LOT.

Well, on to the present. We went to a wine festival today and it was really fun. It was in a place called Skanzen. We had some wine, but not too much, and then we enjoyed some electrofolk music, which is amazing. If you haven't heard it, check it out! This is a short entry but there will be more soon!

(This is a quote from our tour guide in Mostar. to give it some context, he was refering to how nothing in the world is what it is. There is always some reasoning behind everything.)

This past trip was probably one of the best we've ever had. It was relaxing, exciting, beautiful, and thrilling all at the same time. Sarajevo was, admittingly, not the best part of the trip. The real beauty and adventure was in Mostar, which was surprising, given it's size. However we had a wonderful time there!!!

View of the countryside from the train.

A short tour of our hostel. It was perfect! If you go to Mostar, you MUST stay at Majdas. The people were so amazing and Bata's tour is well worth the trip alone! Not to mention that Majda is the sweetest person I've ever met :)

The Islamic call to prayer at sunset. It was so beautiful!

The waterfall that we got to swim in!!

A small castle town, far from civilization!

The old bank building. It was apparently used by snipers during the war. It's pretty eerie. It was totally abandoned but there were still many things in it, ranging from old files from the bank to bullet shells that had been fired by the snipers. Creepy!

Well, that's all from the amazing vacation that we just got back from. It was an amazing experience, and to be honest it was Majdas Hostel that was the main cause. If you go to Mostar, this is the only place you should stay at.

Working on a Portfolio

There hasn't been too much to update lately. Things have been busy, as usual. Worl is work and life is life. We've been doing things but It's very hard to find the time to wait for videos to upload to the internet. Especially more than one. On the good side, there are many things coming up soon so hopefully that will give me an incentive to record and upload. However, I'm starting to get really into animation again since we've been having kind of a lul. Annnnnyyyways, Here's 2 projects I've been working on. Both were made in a combination of Maya and Mudbox. Both unbelievable programs! The first is the head of a type of alien from the video game StarCraft 2. I had a fun time making it and learned alot from tutorials that I watched on youtube.

Protoss bust.

The next is a character that I drew in my sketch book. I think the modeling came out pretty well and I'm glad that it came out as well as it did. He's kind of a forest spirit guy that I thought up a while back.

The Forest Spirit. The face is like a wooden mask.

Well, that's all for now. I'm excited to get back into modeling and doing something towards getting into grad school!

Happy Birthday to Me!!

It's a little late but the 24th was my birthday! It was a really good one too! I got presents from some of the teachers, some of the students, and everyone wished me a happy birthday! It made me very happy :D. Unfortunately, it's at times like this that I really miss home. It makes it very hard not being able to see everyone that I love and care about. I miss everyone so much!

On a second note, I worked on a project for our friend Jake. He wanted an intro video for his videos so here it is.

Not too much else has been going on. I got some more videos to upload from our trip to Serbia.

Today.... is a sick day. Val and I have been feeling like crap since we got back from our vacation yesterday. Val wasn't feeling good since Saturday and it really started hitting me on Monday. Blech!
On the bright side, I'm now able to post updates to my blog! Huzzah!

First update: The Buso Festival. This was a crazy holiday where people dress up in demon costumes, scare people, befriend children, and sexually assault women.... and yes it was as weird, and as fun, as it sounds.

One of the first busos we saw.

baby buso!!!

Buso parade!!!!!

Busos starting the bonfire!!!!!!!!!

and last but certainly not least....

The Buso bonfire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Although we walked around for 8 hours, and felt like our legs were going to fall off, it was an amazing time and it was an easy festival to get sucked into. Eveyone had a great time and I think that most people would enjoy it. Even the kids, oddly enough, were delighted by the Busos. Weird, wacky stuff!

Ah. The Ski trip. What a crazy, amazing, wild, fun, and disorienting trip. See, a couple of weeks ago we were invited to go skiing in Austria. We of course said yes. Well, we got some AMAZING pictures and videos!


It was super foggy. Which was really strange. Actually, to be more accurate, it wasn't foggy but cloudy. We were at such a high altitude that we were in the clouds!

This was a ride up one of the main ski lifts.

There aren't many videos from the trip but there were a LOT of photo opportunities!

Val in Ski School!

The view from the top of the red. Breath taking!

Relaxing at the top of a red run!

It was so cold that Val's hair started frosting!

Old Christmas Videos

I've been really falling behind on blogging! Sorry to everyone who looks at my blog. I'm gonna try and get better about it!



Anyways, I forgot to post videos of when we went to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, so here it is now! Better late than never.

This first video is of some blacksmithing! It was really cool and it was nice to get close to a heat source since it was so unbelievably cold!

Along with the blacksmithing were some carols! It was great. This was a rendition of "When You Wish Upon a Star!"

Lastly, there was this street performer with a puppet. People loved it and he drew a huge crowd. It might be hard to see in the video but the "puppet" got mad when an old man walked accross his stage. It was pretty hilarious!

I loved Bratislava and I think it was a nice place to go for a day trip.

So fast forward a bit and we find ourselves at the day filled with adventure. Jake, Val, and I explored the town and discovered many new and interesting sights! The first was the top of Castle District.

the castle and the Fisherman's Bastion!

These were some old ruins accompanied by a little dialogue from my self and from Jake!

This was part of the underground hospital. They were selling gas masks for 1500 HUF ($7.50) and that was WAY too good of a deal to pass up. We had a lot of fun afterwards taking pictures and videos wearing the masks!

Well, now we fast forward to the recent past. Val and I's friend Amy recently had a birthday party and she invited us. It was Mexican themed and she invited some Hungarians to join in the festivities as well. Great fun! They all loved the tacos that Amy made and Val even made some sopapillas that everyone loved as well!

Otkert

Ahhh what can I say about this wonderful place? It's the MOST amazing place in Budapest and our favorite place to go. This place has it all, good food, amazing decor, and the friendliest staff I've met anywhere in Europe. If you go to Budapest, you have to go here. I've been agonizing about posting about this place because it's so amazing and I don't want people knowing about it, but my kind nature made me change my mind :). If anyone wants us to take them there when they're here, let us know! (Not that you'll have a choice) :)

Otkert on Google Maps!

The Speaking Test!!!

This has been the craziest week that Val and I have experienced yet! It seems that everything is falling on the same days. For instance, this week we had everything happen! The new teachers from CETP arrived this week and we stopped by to say hi, My kids had a practice speaking test (That they all did great on!) and Val and I started our Hungarian lessons this week as well! It has been crazy, but mainly exciting!

To everyone that I haven't talked to on Skype, sorry about that. This week has been absolutely packed with things and I've had a hard time managing all of it.

The Christmas market

I had gotten out of the habit of posting anything for a while so this is very, very late. Well, you know what they say 'better late than never'. Here's some videos of the christmas market. It was amazing while it was here and I'm so glad that we saw it.
The first thing you see in this video is a stage where they held a bunch of performances. It was really great and we saw some pretty amazing performances.
This was a stand that was selling these amazing smelling things. They were delicious smelling and everyone that walked by stopped to smell them!
They even had some blacksmiths that were selling hand made crafts. They were very nice but very expensive as well.


Well, that's all for the christmas market. :D