Day Six

Yesterday was a busy day! The bus came to pick us up at 9am to take us on a boat tour of the Delta Plata River and the Tiger River. The Plata River is the wides river in the world. It looks like an ocean! In fact, it felt like an ocean on our ride home... the weather turned cloudy and windy making large swells in the river. What would have been an 45 minute ride was 2 hours long. We saw lots of wind surfers and kite riders too!

Here is the Delta Plata River and a view of the north part of Buenos Aires.

Our group.

The Tiger River.

Doesn't this door remind you of a Disney movie? He is yawning. :o)

We took a tour of the Tiger Art Museum. The building was absolutely beautiful!!

I should have gotten an upclose shot of this bridge (the white pointy thing in the background). It is the same bridge they are going to build over the Trinity River in Dallas. Very cool looking!

And this is the Pink House... it is their white house. This is where the president lives. Their current president is a woman... the widower of the former president. There just happened to be a protest of some sort going on while we walked by the pink house so there were police men everywhere.

Today we are taking a tour of La Boca neighboorhood. A very interesting and old part of town. There are people on the side of the road selling arts and crafts. So to those I promised leather gifts... today is the day I get them. Sorry I won't be able to send you a picture before I buy... I guess you will just have to trust my judge of taste. :o) I will upload pictures of our trip a later tonight.

Have a wonderful day!

Day Five

I'm tired... here are some pictures from today.
Good night! :o)

Day Four

So first of all I will say that today I had the best steak of my life thusfar. It is a young life so I cannot say there won't be others. But previous today, Ruth's Chris steakhouse was my best, and that stuff is good. But this was better. Almost or maybe at or over... who really knows? a pound of pure unadultrated beef! And the best part... it only cost 42 pesos... which translates to...$12.35 dollars. AWESOME! :o)



Today was a hard work day. We were in the studio all day working on our images. I've got my first one set up and ready to start printing on our next work day... which just happens to be Monday. Our schedule is so pack this next few days, it is crazy. But that also means lots and lots of pictures! Today, since we just worked I only have a few images from yesterday. This was on our walk around town to find a good resturant to eat at. As far as what I am printing... you will all have to wait until Feburuary when we have our gallery exhibition from our Argentina trip. :o)
Enjoy the few photos.

Miss you all! I will soak up all the sun for all you freezing people.

LOVE YOU!

Day Three

Today was basically a work day. We got familiar with the studio and the process we are working with. We will be doing a waterless lithogrpahy process. It is really neat. I'm super excited to get started.

I don't have very many pictures to show you today. I haven't taken very many since we were at the studio all day. But I do want to show you what I believe that I will be working on. For some reason I am really attracted to all the graffiti on the walls. Actually that reason is because my last seires of paintings have been all about my unique mark as an artist. They are very gestural, flat, black, and graphic. This seires was greatly influenced by Japanese calligraphy. Well... these marks remind me a great deal of graffiti. I also really like the idea of personal expression and making your mark on society. So here are just a few of the snaps I've taken walking around the city.

These are my two images that I have so far... I may change things up or go out and gather more images. What do you think?

One thing I wanted to mention is the food. It is amazing!! We've treated ourselves to some nice resturants (easy to do when 4 pesos = $1)... the beef is some of the best in the world!! I wish I could take home everyone a thick slice of steak!! Mmmm.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Love you and miss you all! Wish you were here!

Day Two

So today we started our day with taking a city tour of Buenos Aires. Now of course this was an abbreviated tour seeming how Buenos Aires is a city of 13 million people... there is a lot to see in this city! One thing that has caught my eye is all the grafitti.
I love grafitti! I don't know why but it just seems interesting to me. Not just the regular tagging of walls but there are some amazing work out there just spray painted onto public street walls. This picture however isn't one of those beautiful works... but it is russian! It actually says "I love you" in russian. I thought it was funny, so here it is.
















Our first tour stop was at a new public park. Here they have recently installed a moving sculpture of a tulip. This has now become the symbol of the city of Buenos Aires. It is huge! And it opens during the day and closes at night, just like a real flower.

Our second stop was at the largest cemetary in the world! Now this isn't your typicall cemetary with all the tomb stones, this cemetary is full of these large beautiful mosoleums. Now of course when we talk about largest... we also have to consider not only the square feet on ground but underground also!

Of course only the rich and famous could ever afford a mosoleum in this cemetary. Anybody whos somebody in Argentina is buried here... including the ever famous Eva Peron.

I like this photo just because its interesting... this is us looking into one of the mosoleums... there is beautiful stain glass inside the glass doors.























Our next stop was on of the most famous bookstores in the world. It was converted from the old opera house. There are a ton of books and lots of places to sit and read... thats for sure!

















We also stopped at one of the largest and most beautiful Catholic churchs in the area. It was amazing, not only for the architecture but because of something else. I was so used to being a tourist at this point, I didn't realize that people where actually there to worship! There were people sitting and praying, singing to themselves and gazing upon the statues of Jesus. I was so taken back at one point it just about brought me to tears. I was so wrapped up in my little art world with my liberal art buddies that I almost forgot really what it was all about. I followed around this one woman who went room to room worshiping at each statue, listening to her sing, and praying to herself. Watching her I was able to refocus myself and take a moment to say a prayer of thanksgiving for the blessings God has showered upon me to be enjoying this experience and knowing what it really is all about... despite all my extremely liberal classmates.

Here you can see the woman's reflection as she is raising her hands to Jesus. There is also a little hole in the plastic case the wraps around Jesus so you can touch his feet while praying.

I included this last little picture because I love this older couple walking and holding hands. Such love! :o)





















Tomorrow we start our first day of working in the print shop.
What an amazing thing to experience and what a blessing God has given me. What a blessing He has given us all... His love and mercy. Keep that in mind to give you perspective. I know I will... when I am grumpy, missing home, tired, culture shocked (which I have been every single one of those today). I have been blessed.

Day One

So this afternoon, after settling into our cozy hostel/hotel:

We set out to walk part of the city, explore, and get a bit to eat. After walking a good distance, past all the yummy looking resturant district mind you, we searched high and low for a pizzeria for lunch. After wandering several blocks we finally came across a little resturant and ate lots of bread, pizza, orange fanta, and malbec wine (Argentina's famous type of grape is the malbec). We probably annoyed our waiter... being the loud, non spanish speaking people we are... but we will get the hang of it soon.

We did have a funny/scary moment today. After lunch we proceeded to walk around some more, talking pictures as we went. One of my fellow students saw a license plate he thought was funny... so he decided to snap a picture. All of the sudden a woman jumps out of the car yelling at him for taking the picture. Of course neither one of us knew a word she was saying... except for photographia and polica... YIKES! I just couldn't help but laugh... it was only our first day and someone almost went to jail! Or at least in maybe some seriuos trouble. Of course the lady wasn't happy at us...we tried to explain that we were students and the photographer deleted the picture, but she still wasn't happy. Of course it probably didn't help that I was laughing the whole time. So I finally called over our "expert" spanish speaker to help clear things us. We got it sorted out... mostly. She did call over he husband... who flashed us his police badge... whoops! Apperantly it is a big deal to snap pictures of license plates... its the way that people steal cars here in Argentina. Who knew?!? It was all cleared up in the end... but I still laugh thinking about it. All this trouble just because the license plate started with the letters VEG. Ha.

On our way back we stopped at the Gelato shop.... mmmmm gelato! It was sooo yummy!

A few of us old people headed back for the hotel to relax and take a nap... and thats where I am now... about to fall asleep... at 6pm.

Tomorrow we have a large day planned and hopefully there will be a lot of picture taking. Until then, enjoy a few from today.

And these are for my fellow Twilight fans!

I have made it!

I am in Buenos Aires, Argentina! We got in this morning around 8:30am... which is 6:30am for y'all back in Texas. It is only a 2 hour difference... however, the nice thing is that it is the beginning of summer! Forget that 30 degree weather... 70 + and sunny for me and the next 2 weeks!

I promise to get some pictures up a bit later tonight. I discovered today that I made an uh-oh. In all my time searching and debating over which electrical outlet converter to buy... the cheaper one or the more expensive one... I ended up getting one that my laptop cannot use... and it was the more expensive one!! It only has two prongs and my laptop requires 3. So, while I either see if any of my other classmates have one I can use or go out and buy one... you will all have to wait.

Hello to all my friends and family. Wish you could be here. It is beautiful in it's own unique way. More to come later!

Love you!