I got a couple pictures up and I reduced the size so they should be able to load much quicker.  These are from a region of Buenos Aires known as Boca (¨the mouth¨). Enjoy!

The area was extremely colorful, and the streets were ridiculously photogenic.

Tango dancers:

We made it!  After quite the journey that took us from LA to DC, then a four hour lay-over, and then down to Buenos Aires, Argentina, we are here to tell the story.  We even got some rest on that redeye flight from DC to Buenos Aires.  Although I must say that my dad´s sleeping pills really did the trick.

The first thing we did after arriving and putting our stuff down in the hotel was we went to a silversmith´s workshop and saw his work and learned about his process.  The silversmith, Marcelo Toledo, was incredibly nice as he showed us around his shop.  The image below shows a piece that he is working on by weaving several pieces of silver together.

Below is another one of Toledo´s masterpieces.  This depiction of a woman is also made entirely of silver, while employing different techniques to achieve the various shades of color.  The hand in the foreground is of Marcelo, and it is intended to show the scale as well as ownership of the work.

This is the last photo that I will show for now of the silver shop.  It is a close-up of a vase that caught my eye as we were walking around.  Both the intricate details as well as the larger designs covering this vase are pretty amazing.

Below is a photo of one of the many views of Buenos Aires that we were able to enjoy on our first day of adventures.

My mom, posing for the camera:

Now, I´m about to take a nap to get ready for our next adventure.  Apparently, dinner here doesn´t start until 9pm usually, and getting an 8:30 reservation for dinner is pushing things a little early.  That said, we going to dinner tonight at 9pm to be followed by a tango show.  Tango here is huge!

And any trip to Monterey would’ve been incomplete if I didn’t bring my camera along.  Click the photo below to see some of the pictures:

So, I decided to test the waters again in AT&T park and see if I could witness the Giants win.  This was game number three of the season, and it was the first win!  Here are some pictures as evidence.

The post-game high-fives are a sure sign of a victory:

And just in the case the above picture wasn’t close enough to guarantee that they were in fact the San Francisco Giants, here they are again on the big screen:

I realize this post is a little late, but I spent July 4th with the fam in Santa Barbara, CA.  And without going any farther, I feel it is necessary to speak of the irony of the whole situation.  At the time I was there, the Goleta fires were barely contained and burning strong.  In fact, on my drive down from the Bay Area, I drove under a cloud of smoke that was an opaque brown oblong shape, looking like a 20-mile-long ship floating off to sea.  At 4pm in the afternoon, I was forced to remove my sunglasses.

*****

The cloud in the picture below is actually from smoke from the Goleta fires.  This one however is not as dark as the one I drove under because there was more of a breeze.

So with such an out-of-control fire not far away, it seemed like the perfect time for fireworks.  Maybe.  Nonetheles, many gathered to watch the fireworks off the coast of Santa Barbara that evening, and it was quite a show.  Somehow my family ended up almost underneath the fireworks and enjoyed the entirety of the 30 minutes display.

But fireworks was not all they had– there were also many stands selling food, drinks and other goodies.

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What better activity on a hot Sunday in the middle of summer than river rafting!  We went river rafting in Cache Canyon, and got to experience many white-water rapids up to a level 3.

Enjoy the photos!  Click the image below to see more.

The day was spent in and out of the water– sometimes the swimming was done on purpose, but not always.

So the Giants might not be playing too well this season, but that doesn’t mean that going to AT&T part isn’t any fun.  Especially when the Giants are playing a good team, such as they were in this case–the Chicago Cubs.  In fact, the Cubs hit a grand slam as the game was winding down. Koko (click here to learn more) and I were witness to this grand slam event.

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The wacky walk is a graduation tradition for the undergraduate class at Stanford.  The graduate students are much more orderly, but the undergrads enjoy running out into Stanford Stadium wearing whatever they think is right.  There is a lot of running and playing on the field before eventually taking our seats.

To get a small flavor of what it is all about, here are a couple pictures my dad took during the wacky walk of the 2008 Stanford Graduation.  Click on the image to see more picures.

Class of 2008!

I was lucky enough to have two photographers attend my graduation.  Both my dad and my uncle were both trying to get as many different angles and shots as possible.  It’s a good thing that I’m no longer as easily embarrassed by them; otherwise, that could have been a rather embarrassing experience.

Click on the images below to be forwarded to picture galleries full of graduation shots.

Some of my dad’s fabulous shots…

And my uncle’s moment-capturing shots…

Thank you to everyone that has supported me over the years and also thank you to everyone that came to my graduation.  I really appreciated you being there!

Stanford offers a class in viticulture and oenology taught by AJ Ferrari, and during spring quarter, I was lucky enough to participate in it.  The class met once a week, during which time we would taste various wines, talk about their differences and learned what goes into producing them.

In May, we went to Sonoma to take a tour around a vineyard and learn more about a specific wine.  Click on the image below for more pictures.