I have lived in Dallas for most of my life, being born in Colombia, but I moved away to live in the town where my University is at. I have always been passionate about the history of Dallas, I have been a museum geek when it comes to the museums there. I have always been interested in JFK’s life and in Dallas we have a Museum called the Sixth Floor Museum in the School Depository at Dealey Plaza. If I had an option I would go to Dealey Plaza numerous times. Over the years I have learned more things about Dealey Plaza, the Sixth Floor and JFK’s assassination that I have became even more intrigued to research and learn more. Dealey Plaza is in the west end district of Downtown Dallas. Dealey Plaza is full of many historic places like the sixth floor museum, the grassy knoll where Abraham Zapruder was when he filmed everything, two fountains, and a statue of George Bannerman Dealey. The sixth floor museum is one of the most impactful museum of the area, when you go through the whole thing there are some parts that are heartbreaking to where it feels like you’re present through the whole thing. The grassy knoll impacted me the most because people were standing there during the assassination of President JFK, and it has a good view of the freeway. There are two fountains on the way out of Dealey Plaza, one is facing towards Union Station and the other one is located in front of Dallas County Administration Building, what was known as the Texas School Book Depository. The two fountains are somewhat big and are always on for ‘decoration’ and to show respect for the George Bannerman Dealey statue.
There are different districts in Dallas but the famous one is The Historic West End District of Downtown Dallas. Here, there are famous museums and historical places like the Sixth Floor Museum, The Old Red Museum, The Holocaust Museum, Perot Museum of Nature and Science, the Dallas World Aquarium, and the very first Cabin in Dallas known as John Neely Bryan’s cabin. The Old Red Museum, shown the on the right corner, is a museum about the history of Dallas. This museum symbolizes Dallas’ Heritage, along with the city’s historical artifacts. The Dallas Aquarium is full of diversity of animals, they have exhibits based on the animal’s normal environment. My all time favorite exhibit is the Rainforest because it reminds me of Colombia, since there is a rainforest in South America . Then there is the Holocaust Museum, this museum was founded by a survivor of the holocaust who was known by the name of Mike Jacob, he died about 5 years ago. Mr. Mike Jacobs wrote an amazing memoir about his experience in the extermination camps, he was first transported to Treblinka (Poland), then eventually was transported to Austrowiec (Poland), then Auschwitz/Birkenau (Poland), and the Mathausen-Gusen II (Austria). He was free at last when the Americans liberated Mathausen-Gusen II (Austria) on May 5, 1945. He wrote the book and founded the Dallas Holocaust Museum because he wanted other people to learn from the events that happened during the Holocaust Museum and to speak of the lessons he learned during the Holocaust. I have always been fascinated by the Holocaust and learning about that time period mostly because I am part Jewish and I have always been wanting to learn more about my family’s ancestry. The Perot Museum of Nature and Science is one of the go to Dallas attraction, even though it’s been opened since 2006 the museum is always busy. It has four floors full of interesting exhibits. Each floor has different types of science, like the basement is known as the sports hall where they have all kinds of hand on activities where the visitors can participate. The basement currently has an exhibit where paintings from Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Da Vinci are recreated with Legos. Paintings such as the Mona Lisa, the Scream, The Arnolfini Portrait, etc. The second floor is know as the Being Human Hall where there is a mock laboratory where there is four different experiments that you can work on. The second floor is split into two exhibits the second one is known as the Engineering and Innovation Hall where you can try some engineering expirements, this one was my dad’s favorite exhibit because he is an Engineer and it made him feel like he was going through engineering classes all over again. The third floor is known as the Life Hall, where there are different animal exhibits and on the floor ontop the exhibit is about the different types of birds. John Neely Bryan’s cabin, shown on the bottom left corner, was the first cabin built in what is now known as Downtown Dallas and it’s in the Historic West End District.

So there is a thing called photography, and I’m very passionate about it. Photography has always been apart of me since I was a little girl. I grew up with my dad and one of my uncles being into photography, so much that they would buy cameras and if they were out of style they would sell them and buy a new camera. My dad always took pictures at family parties or reunions. Every time we went on family trips to like DisneyWorld, or Sea World or South Padre Island he would bring a camera to take photos. My dad was very passionate about photography up until his job became very time consuming. My uncle has a professional camera from nikon that is one of the best cameras that is sold. For my high school graduation, my uncle brought his camera with a tripod just to take ‘professional’ pictures. My eighth grade year, I received my first professional camera as my birthday gift. I received a Sony digital camera, and it was on of my favorite gifts, despite the fact that i didn’t get to use it much because I hardly went out and take pictures.

When I came to college, I realized that cameras were allowed to checked out. I was the happiest person in the world. I had left my camera at home because i knew i wasn’t going to need a camera for my freshmen year. Near the end of my freshmen year of college i had a little fun and had a ‘photo shoot’ with my friends. Taking photograph’s is like my stress relieve. It’s like a passion that I didn’t know I had until I came to college.

The next blog I post for photography will be other photograph’s that I have taken.

So I have traveled to some countries in my life so far. Out of all the countries I have been to this one has been one of my favorite. Why Spain, you say? The cultural difference between Spain and the other countries. In Spain they do bullfights, the festival de flamenco, the ceramic architecture that Gaudi made in Barcelona. The bullfights have been the surprising ones, some cities still do them but in like Madrid it’s illegal to do bullfights. In Barcelona bullfights are illegal, in fact one of the major Plaza de Toros has been converted into a four story shopping mall. La Feria de Abril or Seville Fair, is an annual festival that takes place in the Andalucian capital of Spain, Seville, it normally last for six days. It normally starts two weeks after Semana Santa, or as well known as Holy week, it starts on a monday and ends on a sunday. In Barcelona they have some breathtaking architectures that the architect Gaudi made. Like in La Basilica de la Sagrada Familia, Gaudi used a technique called Trencadís, where he used ceramic tile/colorful glass on the ceiling in a mosaic like pattern. Even though the basilica isn’t done being constructed the architecture the ceiling has just amazes people. Then there is Park Guell, that is well known for having Gaudi’s house along with all the other ceramic architectural works. The Park is full of gardens, and if you have seen Cheetah Girls 2 its shown as a cameo in the little adventures during Strut, it is as seen on the movie. The park has different section that you can go look at, I only got to see the sections that allowed handicapped which wasn’t that much of the park. The basilica and park guell aren’t the only architectural works Gaudi did, he also remodeled a house and name it the Casa Batlló, it is considered as on of his masterpieces, has been refurbished over the years because it was ‘built’ in 1904. One of the things that is surprising, for americans when they go to Spain, is that all over the country there is a shopping mall, Corte Ingles, in a way it reminded me of the Galleria in Dallas. My favorite part of the whole country is Camp Nou, the FC Barcelona stadium, because I’m a fan of FC since my uncle convinced me. I wasn’t a huge soccer fan, I grew up in a soccer oriented family so soccer was on of my last resort unless it was the world cup…but after the 2014 cup I was bored of tv shows for some odd reason. My uncle has been a Culé for as long as I can remember so he had came to visit and puts on the Copa del Rey tournament and I had seen one of my favorite soccer players and i fell in love with FC at that moment, and I went to Spain spring break of 2018, I kid you not I spent almost all of my Euros on FC Barcelona stuff. The thing that people like the most about Spain are the locals, when you visit them but you don’t know the language…they will help you as long as you try to speak Spanish, they will even point in the direction of where you need to go.

 

 

Hello, so my name is Brianna, but I go by Bri. I’m a second year college student, oh gosh let me start off by saying I am not a huge fan of college. When I first started applying for universities, I was honestly not looking forward to it. I truly felt like i couldn’t handle the pressure it brought, I was struggling with the pressure private school was giving me throughout high school, that i hardly had a social life. I was always trying to stay afloat because my freshmen year in college i was taking 17 hours and i didn’t know how to manage school work and having friendships. So it was hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that you need to time manage, because back in high school I never had a social life…so that was something new to me. But I sometimes look back to freshmen year of college and compare myself to my high school self, honestly i was someone who i myself didn’t even recognized. I was finally free…free of controlling parents, i was doing things at my own risk cause i didn’t have my parents to tell me what and what not to do. So I went crazy, going out to parties every weekend and getting drunk then coming home to do homework and that was my routine for the weekends. Then one day, my friends and I had gone to a party…it had been shut down so we were leaving, as we were leaving we got to the street light and a drunk driver t-boned us to the point where our car flipped four times and if I’m being honest I should be dead because I was the most affected. That was when I realized that going out to get drunk doesn’t help you de-stress from college stress, it just make you feel and act stupid. I had not been feeling like I fit in so I thought that was the way out. So a tip coming from a person who has gone through some rough stuff in college, if you want to de-stress take a boxing class or go workout because let me tell you getting drunk and going out every weekend is not the way to go. But people de-stress in their own ways!