Last Night in San Antonio!

Another great day at the CYFAR conference. Followed by a little fun out on the riverwalk. Tonight I went on one of the riverwalk cruises with our CITY Project teens and adults - very cool, minus the obnoxious and loud tour guide. What I was hoping for was a river cruise minus the guide...just a chance to observe and chat with some friends. It was cool to see more of the city this way though. Sure is beautiful here. Then, I did a little shopping for the kidlings and hubby. Lots of shopping to be done here...even for non shoppers like me. I am giving a presentation in the morning - Creative Communication Tools - Simply Done -- things like wikis, blogs, meeting wizard, moviemaker/youtube, and facebook. After that, closing session then - home (after about 12 hrs of travel that is). See you soon!!!

Day 3 SanAntonio

Today was the first official day of the conference. I was part of the CITY Project team that presented this afternoon. The teens that are with us did a fabulous job - I was very proud of them! I also learned more about a project called ACCESS 4-H a new web based initiative from National 4-H Council that is not quite ready for release yet - but looks really promising. There will be lots of fun tools on this page - from video editing equipment to blogging for clubs.

Then I went out to dinner with my friend Lucinda from NYC. We had some good food and again enjoyed the riverwalk. My camera batteries gave out today...so not many new pics to share.

Day 2 San Antonio

Most of today was spent in a video/podcasting workshop put on by this really awesome program from the University of Montana called TERRApod. The concept is exactly like something we are trying to get started in NYS 4-H -- training youth to develop short videoclips related to science. The difference is that this program has a foundation in creating documentary nature films.

Montana State University offers the world's only Master Of Fine Arts program in Science and Natural History Filmmaking. So TERRApod connects the MFA students to 4-H kids and video projects prompting/training them to develop podcasts that are of sound video and content quality. I was so impressed.

The rest of the day was spent catching up with friends. When you get to be an adult - you call this "networking"... hard work and great fun :). Dinner included a mariochi band (see picture). It brought me back to Sunday dinners at Nonni's when I was a little girl. No - no mariochi band members in the family...but Grandpa would often have a little too much wine to drink and seranade us in Nonni's little kitchen. He had a nice voice...and looking back - I think he just didn't have a chance to sing at church :) . The other pics are of shops around town.

At the Riverwalk

All kinds of interesting things here in SanAntonio. Today I visited the Alamo and walked around the Riverwalk (beautiful and quite inspiring). I also enjoyed a little (ok more than a little) tex mex food & the best salsa I've ever had. This is a very beautiful city...with incredible landscaping. I thought the girls would be interested to see that many of the signs are in both English and Spanish.

There are these really great live oaks at the Alamo that long to be climbed....except there are also signs preventing such fun. I think if lived in the south I would want to have one of these fabulous trees in my yard.

Thoroughly Modern Mille Fluer

We welcomed 4 new gals to our humble (Cara likes that word) home today. Jaime, a student that is working for me, passed on four of her Mille Fluer Bantam chickens to us. They are so very pretty. Mille Fluer, I'm told, means "tiny flower". And they lay the tiniest eggs! (Beth - want to come blow out some eggs with me??? :) ) Like every other pet around here - they are expected to earn their keep. I'm hoping that they will eat bugs from the garden, provide us with petite eggs, and fertilize the gardens. I'll post some pics when we get some.