II’s the night before we embark on our 2nd journey of the term, to Valencia, and I want to recap on the past week. Being here for the past month has been a dream, the art, the culture, and the food is all incredible.

This past week was amazing, we spent 5 days in Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a gorgeous city, the architecture is beautiful and there is so much art and culture to learn about. The museums we went to were so cool! We went to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh, Museum, the  Kroller-Müller Museum, and the Stedelijk Museum, focusing on Modern to Contemporary.

To break things up a bit, this is a group blog, and being visual artists, we'll let the images, and drawing, for the most part, speak for themselves. The vast majority of photos are taken by Thomas.

European Art Classroom teaches each student how to be an avid traveler, as we are constantly immersing ourselves in various cities that hold new cultures, languages, and cuisine. As Florence, Italy was the third and final weeklong trip, each of us had the routine down to a tee.

Growing up in rural New Hampshire, with occasional trips to Boston being my only true city experience, I was certainly not the most equipped of our group to take on Paris. 

The more time I spend on European Art Classroom, the happier I am that I decided to apply. As the group gets used to routine, we slowly move forward from the 'honeymoon phase' when we first got here.

And so we’ve come to our final week in the oh so wonderful pan flat, burning Hellscape of Casa Grande, AZ, and our final week of high school classes. There could have been no more perfect way to finish it off, everyone scrambling to complete a final project before leaving for Santa Fe on Sunday.

We’re sitting across the kitchen island sketching each other’s portraits. It's 1:37 a.m. This is the first time I've had my portrait drawn. I’ve had a lot of firsts this past week.