ABBEY: "Look how cool, he's blowing the glass through that tube." JEN: "Um, yah - that's why he's called a glass blower." ABBEY: "Oh... Right."

The glass blowers, hard at work.
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For our Law and Development class, we are all broken up in to four groups of 10; instead of the entire class doing the entire reading for the course, each group reads one article and then two members give a presentation for the rest of us.

We really like this system, since it means less reading for us each day!

Jen's presentation was today, she went with our friend Geoff Gross (Abbey wanted to take pictures during the presentation for the travel journal, but decided that it was a little unprofessional for her, and a lot embarrasing for Jen).

He twirled this thing like a giant baton - and we were thankful that the vase didn't come flying off of the stick in our direction!
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They were really funny, of course - lots of good Hetcher and Dana Dalton jokes in there that kept us all on our toes.

After class, we had another field trip, this time to the island of Murano.

The island is world-famous for glass-blowing, which it has been doing for centuries.

Originally, the glass-blowing all happened on the main island of Venice.

Jen, Abbey, and our professor Randall Thomas.
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But, because of fires from the hot furnaces required, the workshops were all moved to the island of Murano.

It had been raining in the morning, but it was only a 10 minute boat ride so we didn't really mind it.

The entire island of Murano is covered with glass shop after glass shop.

Most of them offer a free show and then give you a sales pitch (which, Abbey knows about, as her parents did purchase some beautiful glasses last time they were in Venice).

Vanessa, Abbey, and Jen - with a vase just like the one that the glass blower had made for us! (Abbey is trying not to think about the fact that she is holding a $3,000 bowl in her hands).
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For our trip, we didn't go to one of those workshops.

Instead, we went to a shop that makes more artistic pieces than glasses, chandaliers, and touristy knick-nacks than the others.

The workshop was called "Venini" - and their pieces were beautiful!

When we got there, we learned a little bit about the ancient art of glass blowing in Venice and Murano.

The Venini gallery, the glass-blowers that we visited.
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We learned that this particular factory was started by a lawyer (good to know there is hope in case, god forbid, we don't love practicing law after all if this!) who wanted to combine the art of glasss-blowing with artistic designs by artists who knew nothing about glass blowing.

The results were beautiful - the colors were so vibrant, and the designs were really original (though, some were definately really tacky as well).

We got to go in to the workshop where the furnaces are, and watch the glass-blowers in action.

The furnaces were so hot, even though it was pretty chilly outside that day - we couldn't imagine working with those furnaces in the summer.

The glass-blowers made two vases/decorative bowl things (at least, we think that's what they were) while we watched - they didn't even talk, they just knew what to do.

It was pretty incredible.

Afterwards, we walked around the gallery downstairs.

If you've been reading the travel journal, you know by now that Abbey and Jen love to take pictures - and of course, this trip would be no different.

We asked the tour guide if we could pick up one of the pieces to take a picture with.

Jen was too nervous, knowing it cost a ton - but, he told us to treat it like it was only worth $3, so we would grab on to it and not worry (and, forget that it was really worth $3,000).

Abbey took his advice and grabbed the vase (the girl taking the picture said: "I can't believe you just did that!"  Jen's response was, "obviously you don't know Abbey that well.")

We also took a picture with our great professor, Randall Thomas, who came on the trip with us as well.

After taking the boat back to the island, we headed back to school to get some work done - we have to keep reminding ourselves that we have homework to do!