Brazil

This is an unusual exchange program. The way these things usually work out is that the classes are easy, mostly related to introducing the country, like "the Renaissance in Florence" or "French 101" etc. A few of my friends who have been on other exchange programs have told me about this on this trip. Also unusual is the fact that this trip is even CLASSIFIED as an exchange program. I guess in theory, some students will study at ASU for next semester, but its still very odd since we're creating our own program down here with our own teachers from the local university who speak English- not that I'm complaining. The thing is that this is a really really hard semester of work. We're literally taking the graduate architectural theory class and working with them in studio on the same projects. On top of that is a building systems class which is the "easy" class.

I've never felt as frustrated and lost as I have in this studio. Working with the grad students and in a group is really good because there's some support there, but I really do feel like I'm not pulling my weight in terms of actual work or intellectual work. The problem is the nature of the studio: I am completley not used to such vauge and open problems. And its not just me, either, everyone is a little lost and struggling to define the problem of the area for themselves. It's difficult to explain. The professors are great, extremely intelligent, but they're really asking a lot out of us, asking for us to abandon the usual process of looking at program and deriving form from that-but to instead to apply a system to a condition and use that resultant to begin to follow a thread to develop an understanding of the site and context. The structure then becomes reverse engineering that thread to arrive at a desired site and contextual condition. The problem becomes figuring out what the problem is. It's extremely theoretical and advanced, and it's driving me nuts because for every review and critique we're at only halfway (if that) to what the professors are wanting out of us. For example, today we presented some material, laid down some ideas for them, showed them some thoughts about elevations and the representation of negative space in the city. They said that they liked the direction we were going, but that we hadn't even come close to doing the assignment, which was apparently to do a simple plan, section, and elevation of the site.

Even the concept of the site is difficult- we have a primary site which is under the freeway extending out to a major street, and a secondary site which must bear some kind of contextual, theoretical, compositional, or typological link back to the first site and the two sites must compliment each other, as the second site should be an extention of the first. Dan, our sixth year, has a better grasp on how to approach these type of situational problems as he explained that graduate school is all about not giving you problems as much as presenting you with situations.

Anyway, tuesday we all went down to get our Brazilian visas. I got my passport photo taken at a place along the way and then we met everyone at the consulate. The consulate was very easy to navegate, and the people there seemed to genuinely want to help you get your visa. (what a concept!) I was especially impressed, coming from the beaucratic levels of hell of the Russian consulates. The only irritant was that they dont actually have forms for you to fill out there, you have to enter the info in the computer terminal. They processed all our visa appliations as a batch to speed up the process, so we should be getting them back friday, which would be great. Well, the other irritant was the $100 processing fee we had to pay for the visas, which was instituted because the US charges the same fee for Brazilians who want to enter the country.

Last weekend was really bad. The gorgeous weather was totally wasted as we spent all our time at the site and working (mostly confused and frustrated) in studio. Our group ended up working until 3 am Sunday night, getting us back at our apartments around 4 am to get up again at 8 am.

Anyway, Aldo's younger brother comes down friday (or thursday?) and we'll probably head over to Uruguay if we do really get our passports back friday. There's apparently a gorgeous little town called Colonia a few hours by boat from Buenos Aires. I decided to pass on the first trip over there which was in the first week of our arrival, mostly due to the fact that some of the guys decided to do it at 3 AM, while drunk in a club. They bought thier tickets at 6 am, went home to throw some stuff togather and left at 9 AM. I've become more flexible in my old age, but I draw the line at spontaneous international travel plans made while intoxicated.

Loaded a few more pictures on my webshots page, just click around to the last few pages to check them out. Skype is amazing. I've called my grandparents, mom's cell, and texted Tay's cell phone in Abu Dhabi.