American Consumerist...

Hey gang!

Hope all is well with you since i last posted.  Yet again i sit by my balcony stealing wireless internet and being blasted by my new awesome fan.  Its pretty sunny and blazing hot...which may i add is quite perfect for my new found desert friends.  I purchased three cactus plants and they now reside on my window sill.  They are cute...  (Lauren would be so proud)

First things first, if anyone decides to call me. This is my phone number here: 13416100829. If you would like to call me, remember that to make any international calls, you must dial 011 and the country code for China is 86. Therefore to call me you should do the following:

 

011 + 86 + 13416100829

 

Don't worry about taking up my minutes because (lucky for me) I get free incoming calls! Which means that I can talk to you as long as your calling card holds out! If you want to know what time it is here this is what you do: add 3 hours to the time at home and make it the opposite. Example, if it is 3:00 pm in Cali, it will be 6:00 am (of the following day) my time. 

So, i made my title of this post quite proud in the past two days.  I have been supporting the economy here quite well and aspire to keep doing it for this upcoming year.  Our new friends Alex and Gertie have been showing us around and getting us situated to the way of life.

Yesterday morning Gertie took us to Guangzhou University which is about a 15 minute walk away.  There we ate some fried duck over rice and it was delicious.  Afterwards we went and purchased phones and sim cards.  The phones here are prepaid and with minutes it came to about 60 dollars (NOT BAD AT ALL).  After that we went to a huge Wal Mart type store that is underground and resembles a bomb shelter.  It was very large and we were able t pretty much buy everything we needed there.  Gertie was quite embarrassed with my shenanigans and tended to walk ahead of me...apparently carrying a broom on your backpack is not fashionable here.  We headed back to our rooms and rested for a while before our next adventure.

Mike, Maria, and Spencer are the former students from CSULB to study at GAFA, they were friends with Alex.  Alex has been kind enough to take us under his wing and pass on to us some of the past exchange student's belongings.  They left us a bike, tea sets, and a bug zapper.  The bike was a perfect fit for Jessica, but what about me!?  Alex took us to the painting department and the village.  The art department is very impressive with many talented representatinal painters.  It is a bit intimidating, but a higher caliber will make me work harder.  The village is a small community that has art shops and restaurants.  We ate there again.  Beef, vegetables, and rice...and it was terrific again.  Alex was having his bike worked on so i went bike shopping and found a beauty.  It was 235 Yuan with a basket installed.  That comes to about 35 dollars.  This spray painted second hand beauty stands tallest around all other bikes on campus.  They had to raise my handle bars and seat to the highest point.  We stopped at some art shops and i picked up a Lucian Freud book.  We then biked back in a hurry to meet up with Gertie again.

Gertie took us to the pool that is about 200 feet from our dorms.  I have a feeling that Jessica and i are going to be visiting it often...and many small Asian people will scurry in fear of my hairiness.  Again she took us for a walk and we saw a small temple as well the rest of the village.  It is full of fruit stands and restaurants.  I picked up some cactus plants there and then we had dinner.  Pepper chicken over rice.  Spicy and amazing again. 

So today we returned back to the store and picked up some last things.  I am almost completely settled into my room and only need some art supplies.  once my room is all organized i shall load some photos.

 

China!

Hey there all!

Hope all is well in your neck of the woods.  I am currently on my balcony of my dorm room in Guangzhou at the Guangzhou Academy Fine Arts (GAFA).  I have my newly purchased 108 Yuen fan blasting air on my sweaty back.  It is muggy here, its about 85 degrees and moist.  Behind my blog window i have a pirated version of The Hulk 2 playing and all the students are hard at work playing basketball downstairs.  So, bounce, bounce, bounce in the morning and at night.  Jessica and i had an 11 hour flight to Tokyo then another 4 hours to Guangzhou.  We arrived this morning at 2 am to the dorms.  We crashed out and woke up pretty early to catch some wonderful breakfast at 7/11.  We had awesome dumplings and rice wrapped in leaves like a tamale.  It was pretty scrumptious and nothing like the junk at our 7/11's.  We spent most of the day cleaning, these rooms were left in pretty bad shape.  We had a bit of an orientation with Ms. Li today and tomorrow we are going to get a sim card for my phone.  Like i said earlier we picked up a fan at one of the neighboring colleges from their shopping center, which is fantastic and huge.  We are on the University Island that houses 10 different Universities.  So nothing too exciting has happened yet, but school does start on the 1st and a new adventure is at hand.  Here are a few photos with more to come...

Its hot all the time...this is my China face

These are the dorms...

This is the view right outside my window...

If anyone has skype or aim then contact me!

skype: Luiseltarugito

aim: goass15

Later!

PHOTOS!

It took me a while but I organized them a bit and here they are..

Florence

Fun NIghts in Florence and the Final Gallery

Lucca

Cinque Terre and Portovenere

Siena

Roma and Silvio's Studio

Venice

Travel and Misc Stuff

Rome has been good to us...

Saturday we went to the Colosseum and it was really spectacular. I sat there for a few hours with my ipod on and stared in awe while I sketched and painted. Earlier in the week we ran into Olga Macaluso when we shorted out the power in Silvio's Apartment. Olga is also a successful painter and theatre performer like Silvio, her website is: http://www.olgamacaluso.com

With Marsha translating at her side, she took us out to the nicest dinner all four of us have had this entire trip. We had an amazing feast and even though she did not speak english she made a wonderful effort to try to get to know us through translation. Afterwards we went back to Silvio's and she looked at our paintings and drawings. She gave us some wonderful and strange feedback. I am really excited that we have made these wonderful connections and i hope to return to Europe and study with these talented artists.

Yesterday Trina, Travis, and I went to the Modern Art Museum in Villa Borghese and it was amazing! I wrote down to many artists to try to compress to this small paragraph. It was worth my 9 euro and i spent all day there.

Today we are off to see the Academy here in Rome as well as some other galleries. We might go to Pantheon, then tomorrow we head back to Florence to catch our flights back to the real world!

I am ready to go home and take care of my visa for China, then i am off to Mexico for a week or so...

CIAO

ROMA

Rome is a pretty intense city. As soon as i stepped off the train, it felt more different than any of the other places we had visited. I had mentioned before that Florence felt like a cleaner safer version of Guadalajara, well Rome feels just like Guadalajara. Its fast paced, event filled, and there are always people everywhere.

We are staying right next to the Piazza Popolo where Santa Maria del Popolo is located...that houses two Caravaggios. Again, we are staying at Silvio Benedetto's Studio in Rome, he is the artist from Argentina that we met earlier in the trip. his website is : http://www.silviobenedetto.com . He is a pretty amazing guy with an even more amazing, creepy, quirky home. His home is definitely an artist residence and it is like a small museum, we have been drawing inside there for the past three days...

Yesterday we went to the Galleria Borghese and today to the Vatican. I have been slammed with art these past days...some of the highlights were: Caravaggio, Corregio, Da Vinci, Bernini, Bacon, Orozco, and of course that Sistine Chapel.

Tomorrow we go to see ruins with more stories to come...

Ciao

Siena

It was pouring today! We got slammed with rain on our travel day from Riomaggiore to Siena. After three confusing transfers, we finally made it to the train station here. Trina, Jess, and I hopped on a bus and got to see an accidental tour of the countryside. The bus we got on was the correct one, but we just didn't wait long enough, so we got off to early and ended up walking twenty minutes into the city walls. This city is like a playground, so many stairs, hills, nooks, and crannies. We took a walk around and grabbed some dinner. We are in a wonderful hostel that houses students from the UC System that study Italian here. It has a roomy bathroom and a common room where we are watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith in Italian. We have free internet and an awesome view....a slice of heaven. Tomorrow we are off to paint in the morning.

CIAO

So like wow...

My companions on this trip are Jessica, Trina, and Travis. I am quite lucky to have them here and we make a wonderful, awkward, dynamic group. There is a muralist an mosaic artist that works in Cinque Terre and Jessica went to investigate him while he worked on one of his murals. His name is Silvio Benedetto and he is from Argentina. Aside from being amazinly telented he is qute kind and offered us his studio in Rome for us to stay...yes that means a free place to stay in Rome for a week...did i mention it is in the center of the city? Aside from that he also invited the four of us to participate in a 3 week mural workshop starting on the 20th of this month. Although i won't be able to participate, i may come join for the first day then return next year to participate for the full program. It sounds amazing and i can converse with him freely with my spanish, but Fiesta is coming up, a potential Mexico trip in the coming weeks, along with the move to China on the 24th of August.

I am now in La Spezia on my way up the hill to Portovenere to hike and swim!!!

CIAO

Luis

Lucca to Cinque Terre

So our current location is Riomaggiore and it is epic.  It is one of the five towns of the Cinque Terre.  These warm colored buildings are layered on the coastal rocks and so is our hostel.  We have been going swimming and i now have a tan....first time ever.  Two days ago we hiked all five towns in about 4 hours.  It was the most physically strenuous trek i have taken this trip.  The group stayed together and we sweated it out.  The views were amazing and i can't wait to show off these photos...

more to come from Siena

CIAO

Luis

Yes i am that guy.....

I am that guy who does not update his blog because he gets caught up in the exoticism of said country... i am sorry!

Well right now i am in an internet cafe in Lucca and it is the most amazing little city ever. It is smack dab in between Pisa and Florence. It is very compact and impossible tog et lost in due to its walls that enclose it. These walls were built for protection from enemies whent the city was first built...now it serves as a wonderful place to take bike rides on. We looped the whole city on our bikes in about 20 minutes. We spent all morning in the train station because we bought tickets at the automated machines to go to Pisa, we soon discovered that the train workers were on strike and spent an hour in line getting our refunds. Our friend Travis Parker was supposed to be in Switzerland today, but ended up staying with us tonight again due to the train situation. The strike is supposed to end at 9 pm tonight, which is wonderful due to our reservation in Cinque Terre for the coming days.

On a side note, i still cannot upload photos here. I just attempted it here on blogger as well as on myspace and cannot find success in either...so i must wait until i return to upload these suckers.

The three week study program was pretty amazing. The first week we studied tempera painting with Granchi, the second we studied watercolor with Steinberg, the third we studied oil painting with Cretara, and the last was life drawing with Scolini. Like i said before, every morning we would go to museums and churches. The highlights for me. were the Academia and the Uffizi. Michelangelo's unfinished sculptures of the prisoners escaping from the marble were breathtaking. At the Uffizi were so many paintings and drawings that i cannot sum up in a paragraph. I liked the Michelangelo, Del Sarto, Lippi, Rembrandt and Titians...i did soem sketching in there and got some bad stares for standing so long in front of paintings.

Once we were done with the program and we set up our artwork in the rooms and the teachers chose our work for the gallery show. There was a mess up apparantly, i was supposed to have 3 pieces in the show, but only got two in....bad communication i guess. At the show we all acted obnoxious by taking millions of photos and said goodbye to the amazing group of people that enhanced this experience so much. Domenic Cretara also announced the 10 art pieces that were chosen to be displayed at the CSU Chancellors office for the year. One of my landscape paintings was chosen and will be displayed for a year, along with it getting framed and printed in a little catalog book! I am pretty happy about that and if anybody is in Long Beach, you should go see it.

Well, for right now i cannot think of anything else...if anybody has questions then drop me an email and i shall try to reply. Luiseltarugito@gmail.com


CIAO

Status!

Hey all!

First and foremost, Florence is beautiful and I absoloutely love it here. I have not quite figured how to upload photos on the Internet Cafe computers...but I hope to have some up soon.

My days have consisted of breakfast in the hotel, a museum, food, nap, class then eventually some sleep.

On Sunday Nick, Travis and I went exoploring all day and just walked until we got tired. We didn't go to any specific locations, but just roamed and got a feel for the city. That night we had orientation on the CSU Campus then were fed quite a nice dinner at one of the local restaurants. We all ended up in our hotel room playing dorky artist games well into the night.

Our breakfasts at the hotel are quite sad...but last time i checked free is fantastic, so we deal the best we can. We get cereal, twice toasted stale toast to hide the staleness, tang (not orange juice), really bitter coffee and some badass cappuccinos.

We get most of our meals at the Standa Market, a little grocery market around the corner of our hotel. We can get simple meals with fruit and veggies for about 3 Euros. Keep in mind the ats almost two dollars per Euro, therefore no eating out for us art students.

Monday was our first real day, at 8:30 Domenic took us to : Museo dell'Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore. It was a museum across from the Duomo and consisted of mostly sculpture. The highlight of that museum was the Mary Magdalene Sculpture in wood by Donatello. It was quite exciting that a piece from 1450 was so powerful and almost felt modern. It is Mary Magdalene in a sick and thin state with her hair draping over her whole body. (photo soon to come) After that we got food then napped. Class is at 4:00 and goes for four hours. We are studying with Prefesore Granchi, who is a well known Fresco painter. We have been painting in high quality tempera and i have been struggling a bit.

Tuesday to the Capelle Medicee and the Firenze Villa Bardini. The Medicee Chapel was amazing, it had a good number of Michelangelos. His sculpture is breathtaking, but there was no photgraphy allowed, and whenever we tried to draw, the guards would kick us out. We took a huge trek up a hill to see the Fatori show at the Villa Bardini. It was an awesome show that had his paintings as well as his contemporaries. He had a show of Butteris, who are the Italian cowboys. It was one of my favorites and I hope to get to see them first hand later in the trip. We then went back to teh school to learn more about Fresco painting from Granchi and painted in Tempera for a while.

Today we went to the Basilica di San Lorenzo. It was a a beautiful church with vast ceilings and great frescos. We saw various tombs including where Donatello is buried.

Overall I feel safe and happy. The sights and smells remind me of Guadalajara, just a but safer and cleaner. I am here with a great group of people and i am having a blast, hope to share more as well as photos soon...

Ciao

Luis

On Tuesday

Arrival to Italy!

Hey everyone,

I have arrived safely after a full 24 hours of travel. Lax to Frankfurt, Germany was about 10 hours and 40 minutes. We had about a 3 hour layover the another hour and fifteen to Florence. As soon as the bus drove us to our hotel we checked in, showered and went exploring. I am beat for the day, but here are a few things i have encountered thus far...