Today I worked with the abuelitos again. I write in this blog everyday, but I try also to write personally every day as well. Lately I’ve been slack, so I asked Vicente (Javier’s dad) to drive me to the plaza an hour earlier than usual so I could sit at the cafe and write in peace before work.
Then we went to the abuelitos, where we played Bingo, Lotteria, and read from my Kindle. (I told you it was the most useful gift ever!)
I also met the real-life version of this Russell, from UP:
You can meet Russell here:
But here he is in real life (his name was not Russell).
Aurelio was also particularly adorable today. He loves to hold onto us, but these pictures were especially touching. (The lighting was terrible, but I had to capture the moment).
Then I went to the University de Tolima for Spanish lessons. We went over basic noun vocabulary, but another group created skits and acted them out (they’re the advanced class).
The most interesting thing of the day was this, however. The following picture shows a postcard I saw in a pile of Juli (my Spanish teacher’s) things. I hope most of you Charlotteans recognize it.
This particular piece of public artwork is part of an installment in The Green in uptown Charlotte, North Carolina, called, “Brick Kids: Life is an Open Book.” I asked Juli where she had found it, because it seemed very odd that I should find a relatively obscure piece of Charlotte’s public art here in Ibague, Colombia, of all places. She simply said, “Oh, I don’t know, it’s just a picture with a poem on the back.”
The only article I could find of the history of the piece was here. This article was written in July of 2010, so the statue has to be at least that old. The lyrics on the back were segments of the three parts of Pink Floyd’s Song, Another Brick in the Wall, but I couldn’t find any affiliation between “Brick Kids: Life is an Open Book” and Another Brick in the Wall save for the one sentence at the beginning of the article that reads, “…for a generation not influenced by Pink Floyd…” Unfortunately, the sentence is not completed.
The picture is unmistakably the piece from Charlotte (I checked, it isn’t a part of a series and was commissioned by The Brick Association of the Carolinas).
Does anyone from Charlotte know of the connection?
I can obviously make the connection between the lyrics and the piece, but I’d like to know the official history because I’m curious.
If anyone can help, comment below!
-Kristina
Traveler at the Edge 