La Tarea, Tapas, y Futbol!!

Today in studio me and mallory had our first desk critique of the semester! Our professor Jordi (Jhor-de) really found our proposal interesting and he likes the direction our project is going. He gave us some good suggestions on what to focus on and diagram throughout the week. Mallory and I are going to focus on pedestrian density/flow in the area...this in turn will help us to see where areas or nodes of congregation and flow occur naturally; once we have a solid grasp on this then we can determine fully where our intervention will go and what exactly it will be. As of now it could be anything from a strategically planned series of park benches and landscaping to small pavilions or canopies placed throughout the area...this is still to be determined. We have some tarea to do (homework) for Thursdays class...he wants to see initial site diagrams/maps showing the observations we have collected.

Here is the initial site map that I created for Mallory and I to use. We are very interested in the two intersecting roads, we really would like to focus our interventions on the two "peninsulas" at the point of each road...kind of like a "times square" but we will see if this fits in with the natural program of the area. Our purpose is to fit our intervention in and not FORCE a new program on the area.

Tonight for dinner Caitlyn, Emily and I went out and had Tapas for dinner... tapas are just another Spanish cultural aspect that you are "susposed' to experience while here. Basically a tapa is a Spanish hors d'oeuvre..they come in all varieties...but they almost always consist of a piece of bread with various meats, vegetables, oils, cheeses, and sauces on top of them. The place we went to had tapas for 1.90 euros each, all you do is grab a plate and put as many tapas as you wish on the plate...when your done they count the amount of toothpicks on your plate and add up your tally. I had a cibata bread mini sandwich as one tapa (this consisted of some type of turkey, onions, peppers and a delicious sauce), my next tapa was a cheese spread with seafood on top of a large piece of toasted bread, my last tapa was a croscant sandwich (this was a honey lemon baked croscant with shrimp and cheese) this was my favorite tapa!

To end the night I played some futbol (soccer) with a large group of Clemson students and local/college Spaniards! My futbol skills are a bit rusty (I really have not played since elementary school)...but I was very impressed with how much I still remembered and how my endurance has improved greatly. It was a great time, I played goalie at first then I switched out with a teammate later on during the game to a forward position. I did not score any goals but I had a few good saves as goalie and two exciting "getaways" and failed assists on the goal.

Late class tommorw...2:30pm, hopefully if I am good I will get up at a decent hour and go running. More Aussie Open...go Nadal!