What I like about Texas By Gary P. Nunn You ask me what I like about Texas I tell you it's the wide open spaces! It's everything between the Sabine and the Rio Grande. It's the Llano Estacado, It's the Brazos and the Colorado; It’s the Spirit of the people who share this land! It's another burrito, it's a cold Lone Star in my hand It's a quarter for the jukebox, boys, Play the songs of your favorite Austin Texas band! Well, you ask me what I like about Texas It's the big timber roundneck Nacadoches Driving El Camino Real into San Antone It's the Riverwalk and Mi Tierra Jamming at the Bungo Joe The stories of the Menger Hotel and the Alamo! (You remember the Alamo!) It's another burrito; it's a cold Lone Star in ... read more

Part of the Savanna Studio Fall 2001. We visited several cities in Illinois, including Galena (a neat small town by the Iowan/Wisconsin border), Chicago (of course the biggest city in Illinois), and Peoria. We managed to do a small detour to Indiana, to Indiana Dunes which is located by the Lake Michigan shore. ... read more

We spent most of our times at La Forche, or the Forks, where the Red River and Assiniboine River meet. On Sunday, professor Gary Hightshoe invited all of us who are Catholic (or whoever being interested in) attending a mass at the St. Boniface church. This church looks like a ruin from England, with just its facade standing up, with a big hole where the rose window used to be. Instead of tearing it down or rebuilding it, they built a smaller scale chapel inside the church, where all of the mass attendees gathered and celebrated the holy ceremony. The most unique thing about this mass is that it was in French. French sounds like Greek to me, I don't speak either language, so we just sat there, looking around the people and waited until they ... read more

Savanna Studio is ready to begin! Savanna studio is required for all second year landscape architecture students at Iowa State University. It involves a moving studio, if you will, for a whole semester - traveling through North America from Canada to Mexico. There will be three legs of savanna studi: north, central, and south trips. North trip will cover three weeks in Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Manitoba (Canada). Central trip will be for two weeks, covering Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana. South trip will cover Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Tamaulipas (Mexico) for three weeks. There are five vans to be our home for the next several months, and Professors Gary Hightshoe, Heidi Hohmann, Joern Langhorst, and Ashley Kyber will be our mentors, and 36 students will be our new best friends. They are: * Sarah Bentii ... read more

Chiang Kai Sek airport, Taipei. I am in a lay over to go to Jakarta to attend my sister's wedding. I took off from Des Moines, transiting in Dallas, Los Angeles, and of course, Taipei. This two week journey will be an interesting one: one week of Thanksgiving break and another week of break extension. I am a little bit worried about the weather change and expecially the reversed culture shock I might experience by having living in the States for so long. But of course, the highlight is my sister and her future husband and my future brother-in-law, Julius. They are highschool sweethearts, and have been dating for nine years now, even though for four years they lived apart in two different cities for college. ... read more