More photos from incoming students today, enjoy!

Stephane Keil Rios from Mexico is entering the MPA-DP program and submitted the first batch.

I took this picture from the Popocatepetl (The smoking Mountain) while climbing the Iztaccihuatl Volcano (Sleeping Woman). These two volcanoes dominate the valley of Mexico City and hold an important symbolic component for the City. Hernan Cortes had his first view of ancient tenochtitlan from a pass between these mountains.

The two volcanoes hold an important place in Nahuatl Culture as Popocateptl the nahuatl warrior watches over her loved sleeping woman who committed suicide thinking he had died in a battle, when he returns and finds her dead he decides to turn into a volcano and protect her, he will smoke and crumble whenever he is angry. Talk about the Nahuatl version of Romeo and Juliet. Popo erupted fiercely on 2002 putting all of Mexico’s residents to shake as you could see the bright lava from home. You can see these two lovers only on very clean days since pollution in the city covers them most of the year.

I took this picture in the Atacama desert in Chile a couple years ago. The inmense hand statue in the middle of nowhere in the most dry hot desert in the world had a small legend on the bottom. “Let’s give earth a hand unless we want all places to look just like this one”.

On the rooftop of a beatiful Coyoacan House in the southern tip of Mexico City we built our first Urban Orchard with Hidroponics. Our first harvest included brocoli, tomatoes, lettuce, eggplant, squash, chard and of course Chiles. We made the most delicious pizzas afterwards. In the picture I was trying to maintain the orchard alive under over 36 celsius degress (100 fahrenheit), my straw sombrero sure did somthing to stop my brain from boiling.

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The next batch was submitted by Stephen Schaber, an incoming MIA student.  He states simply:

More photos from incoming students, enjoy.

The first set of photos comes from Maria Lahore, an incoming MIA student.

I have always been very impressed by the deserts. Sandy or rocky, they make me feel tiny in that immensity.

The first two pictures were taken in the Atacama desert in Chile in January 2009. I could imagine how a road on the moon would be. This is the most arid desert in the world. The cordillera de la Sal (Salt mountain range) in the Moon Valley.  One of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen. Amazing.

This was also taken in Peru but this time in the north, Tucume (Lambayeque) November 2006, this is called the Valley of the Pyramids. Underneath those rocky hills, there were found archeological remains of cultures before the Inca empire, and still finding.

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This next set was submitted by Huilan Jordan, an incoming MIA student.

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This photo was taken in Zhouzhuang, near Shanghai. I happened to be there during China’s golden holiday period, so there were various performances in the well known tourist town. These middle aged women dressed in traditional clothes and were dancing to old tunes.

This was taken in the summer of 2002 or 2003, in Corona Meadow park in Flushing, Queens. Two young boys were enjoying cool breeze brought by the fountain underneath the big globe in the park. That was the first and the last time I saw the fountain working.

Freedom was taken in the fall of 2001, in the Bronx Zoo. This fella was standing there looking out, as if longing to fly out of the glass house. Or maybe he was just wondering what he’d have for dinner.