Saturday, November 2, 2013

Pepitas y arte

Today was another great day to put in the books. I got up, made breakfast, and then Lucia and I looked up a pumpkin seed roasting recipe and followed through with it. Let me just say they turned out great and are delicious! Want to know our recipe aka the recipe we found online? Boil the pumpkin seeds in salt water for 10 minutes. Then drain them, put them on a baking sheet, and drizzle extra virgin olive oil and salt on them. Bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes, then stir, then keep in oven for another 10ish minutes. I would take a few out and cut it open to make sure they aren't burning. Also, a great tip would be to know whether your oven works in Fahrenheit or Celsius. Thank God Lucia was working the oven and she questioned me when I told her that the oven should be at 325. :) I don't think our oven even goes up that high so I think I would've figured it out, but still... After they were finished, we chowed down on a few and Lucia was surprised to find out that you can eat the whole seed and I was surprised to find out that you can take off the outer shell to eat them. It was an interesting difference in knowledge. Haha
Pumpkin seeds roasting in the oven.
Anyway, we bagged up the pumpkin seeds and took them on our adventure to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. The museum is named after Queen Sofia and is filled with art from the 20th century. It was really fun and I got in for free for being a "student," which was great! Love free things. Tehe. Anyway, we walked around for a very long time through the four floors. We kind of rushed through the last floor, my feet and legs were killing me! And I'm pretty sure Lucia was starving (and so was I) because it was around 3 p.m. and we hadn't eaten lunch yet. The museum was cool, though. The first section that we saw dealt with Feminism and there was a series of pictures and newspaper articles that dealt with the creation of nurseries for women entitled "Who's holding the baby... and often alone" . With the start of nurseries, women were able to leave home and do other things. There was one newspaper article about a lady that got the "High-Rise Blues" and jumped out of her apartment building window with her two-year-old son. The artist then proceeded to write underneath that if there had been a childcare facility, the woman would not have been isolated and depressed in her apartment left to look after her kids. Crazy. In this Feminism section there was also a series of photos about the North American Waitress and diagrams that showed the rules they had to follow. For example, nails manicured, hair brushed carefully, clothes free of wrinkles, no gaudy jewelry, buttons sewed on firmly, etc. We also stepped into a very strange post-modernism section, but I don't have much to comment on that...

There were pretty cool Salvador Dalí paintings and some from Pablo Picasso. The most famous painting in the Museum is Guernica painted by Pablo Picasso in response to the bombing of Guernica, a town in País Vasco (Basque Country) during the Spanish Civil War. I learned about the painting last year and it's bigger than I thought it would be. It was pretty cool. We weren't allowed to take a picture of it nor will I confess to doing so. I think my favorite part, apart from seeing Guernica, was seeing a series of photos that were taken while Guernica was being painted. It was really cool to see Picasso's original vision and then see how it evolved into the finished product. So awesome. After this we went through the temporary exhibits, one of which consisted of a series of photographs from places in the U.K. taken by Chris Killip. There were two quotes that I liked that were written on the wall. Sorry they're long, but here they are:

"The moment you make a photograph you consign whatever you photograph to the past as that specific moment no longer exists, it is history. The photography that I practice takes place in a specific time and place, depicting real moments in people's lives. In some ways I think of myself as a historian, but not of the word. History is most often written from a distance, and rarely from the viewpoint of those who endured it."

"The first portraits that I made were as a beach photographer in 1964, working on commission and saying 'smile please.' Portraiture is a unifying thread throughout all of my work. Although since my time as a mercenary beach photographer, I have had an aversion to asking anyone to pose."

See pictures from the museum below.
Indestructible Object, 1923-1933
Man Ray
Rostro del gran masturbador, 1929
Salvador Dalí
Gran profeta, 1933
Pablo Gargallo
This is 1 of 7 replicas.
Guernica, 1937
Pablo Picasso
This picture is meant to show you some
perspective as to how big it is.
A section of Guernica
Los cuatro dictadores, 1963
Eduardo Arroyo
Me outside of the Reina Sofia Museum
After the museum, Lucia and I headed home and made lunch. Then, I left soon after to take a contemporary dance class. It was really fun and nice to get a chance to dance even if it won't be a weekly occurrence. After I got done with the class, I went grocery shopping and then started budgeting for the month of November. This is my first time actually budgeting so it's going to be a learning experience. After this task, I started drawing and decorating a Flat Stanley! If you don't know what Flat Stanley is, he is a character from a children's book. Stanley gets flattened by accident, but it allows him to fit in an envelope so he can travel wherever! Well, it doesn't quite work how it did when I was a kid. I got e-mailed a template and I get to decorate Stanley myself and then mail him back to my little cousin who sent it to me! I'm not quite finished with him. I still have to color him, but Lucia and I already have a big adventure planned for him tomorrow! Stay tuned tomorrow to see where Flat Stanley gets to go!

Tonight, Lucia and I watched 101 Dalmatians on T.V. together and for the first time, I ate dinner after Lucia at 10 p.m. Crazy! Now, I am going to bed soon so to get ready for our Flat Stanley adventure tomorrow. :) Have a good night and enjoy the time change.

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