Taliesin

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in in 1867. He was famous architect and designer. He designed more than 1,000 projects like schools, churches, hotels, and other. He also was a writer. He wrote 20 books and may articles. He was married three times and he has 7 children. He studied at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 1955, he had an honorary Doctorate degree of Fine Arts from the University. Then he looked for job in Chicago.

For example for his work "Prairie Houses" in Chicago, Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and Taliesin in Wisconsin.
He designed the Taliesin that was his home in the valley in 1911 near Spring Green. It means shining brow. He tried to explore his ideas of organic architecture by this building. He toke a hill like a place for Taliesin. The building has three parts; living quarters, an office, and farm buildings. It has view to landscape.

The Old World Wisconsin

The Old World Wisconsin is a museum that depicts the history of America. It is best way to show the history by moving m different old structures to one place. It is like village that has more than 60 historic areas from farms, rural buildings, and houses. Many researchers visited different areas in WI to learn about authentic historic buildings. Then Old World Wisconsin was opened 1976. It is largest museum about rural life in the US.

Some of buildings and hopes in the museum are Blacksmiths shop that teaches techniques for crafting iron from old blacksmith, Raspberry School that is one room gives people opportunity to study in the 19th century.

Madison State Capitol

Madison is the capital of Wisconsin. It is considered the second largest city in WI after Milwaukee. It has University of Wisconsin- Madison that has the biggest campus in WI. It is a public research university. It has football team its "Bucky Badger." When I went to Madison as a trip with my classmates we stayed in the hotel in Sate Street. This is famous street because it has the Capital Hill.

It also has many restaurants from different country like Turkey, India, China, Italian, Japanese, and many hotels. People can just walk or use bikes in this street, but no cars in it. Madison has biggest Framer’s Market in WI. The farmers meet in Saturday and take place around the Capitol Square. The farmers sell their homegrown produce. They also have live music, coffee and sweets.


I also like the Memorial Union its located on Mendota Lake. There are dig open area that has live music, food, many people walk and dance. I also visited the Capital Building. The first building built in 1838 and it was replaced by new larger building in 1863. Then between 1906 and 1917 the current Capitol built because the fire. It is only State Capitol built on an isthmus. It is surround by beautiful flowers.


Inside The Capital there are many beautiful historical paintings, different kind of stones, and amazing glass mosaics. The designers use Italian German styles in the State Supreme Court room and French and Italian marble the Senate Chamber. I also learned about government in WI. There are three branches for government. First branch is the Executive Branch; the governor is the leader, his job is make sure that the laws are followed, and his room is Supreme Court room. Second branch is Legislative Branch; it is made up of the senate and assembly and their job are creating new laws. The third branch is Judicial Branch; it is lead by the Supreme Court, and his job is explaining laws and making sure they followed.

Pow-wow

The first people lived in WI before its called WI are Native American. There were many tribes lived in WI, but now just two Indian nation are in WI today the Menominee and Ho-Chunk. Each tribe had own language, history, and traditions. They changed their way when the weather or land changed. They traveled a lot to hunt. After that the US started to take land from Native American. In 1942 Indian tribes had US nationality. Now they have many problems like alcoholism because they drink a lot of alcohol. In Exploring Wisconsin class, I went to Pow Wow. It is an event for different tribes of Native American. They meet in Menominee located in central Wisconsin. They have big audience from different place in US.



They show traditional clothes, songs, and dancing. The event likes competition between different tribes who send dancers and singers. The singers sing by their language, and groups of drum are sitting around big drum. The dancers have colorful traditional clothes.


They some time dance together and some time just young women or young men or children or older dance separated. They also have many shops for traditional food, accessories, and clothes. I was really enjoyed.

Leinenkugel’s Brewery

I went to Leinenkugel’s Brewery with my classmates. That was an excursion in ESL class. I have learned about history of Wisconsin. So we have to visit the popular place in WI. I never thought I will see how people make beer. It is illegal in Saudi Arabia. It is religion issue. In this trip I didn’t taste beer, but I learned how to make beer. It was interesting thing to me. I learned that in the 3th biggest brewery in US and 7th oldest brewery in US. In 1867, Leinenkugel’s Brewery started to work. Christain Leinenkugel had ten children. His sons Mathias and Heinrich learned to brew beer form their father. Mathias married Maria Schneider in 1834. Then they moved America in 1845. They had land in WI that was perfect land for beer. Mathias had 4 children. Joseph is the second son moved to Eau Clair-WI to establish a brewery, and another son opened brewery in Baraboo-WI. Also Jacob Leinenkugel moved to Chippewa Falls after he married in 1865 to have own brewery there. Then in 1867 he built his brewery Spring Brewery with his friend John Miller. They did all work together because there were no employed. After that Jacob’s family continued developed the brewery. That was the first generation in the history of Leinenkugel’s Brewery. Then four generations continued that. To make beer they used for main ingredients water, starch source, yeast, and flavoring (hops). They had 7 steps to make beer. First step, mashing or mixed grains with water and heated to make sugar. Second step, Lautering that means separate the grains. Third step, boiling to sterilize what's left and adding hops. Fourth step, fermenting means cooling the wort by adding sterile air to the liquid then adding yeast. Fifth step, conditioning means cooling the beer. Seventh step, filtering means take the yeast out of the beer. Finally, put the beer in bottles.



Now, they have built a new addition to the brewery and the have new equipment. We toke a tour inside the factory. They offer many different samples of beer. They produce 7 year-round and 4 seasonal brews. They also have gift shop like beer glasses and a T-shirt.

Wisconsin Amish Country

In 1920 Amish started to move to Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. They came from Europe, Germany, Turkey, and Belgium. They came for religious freedom and to escape poverty. The Amish communities in WI are Cashton, Hillsboro, Wilton/Tomah, Medford, Green Lake Country, Clark Country, and Augusta. I visited Amish in Augusta in Eau Clair with classmates. Amish in Augusta were founded in 1978. They have found the settlement and farmland. Their farms produce milk and cheese.


They also do business. They have stores like shoes stores, clothes, metal shops, and food stores. They made those things. They have beautiful handmade, quilts, baskets, and wood works. They make good furniture in their wood working shops. They are hard worker. They use buggy because they avoid modern technologies like cars. Their clothes are different.


The men wear dark trousers with dark coat or vest, suspenders, and hats. Young men have to clean shaven, but after they married they have to let their beards grow.


Amish women wear solid-color dresses with long sleeves and white or black aprons. They have to cover their hear by cap and don’t wear makeup or jewelry. The family is very important for Amish because it becomes a school for children after they finish eighth grade. So boys work with father and girls work inside with mother. Amish have interesting life and they are friendly and welcoming of people.

Dairy Farming

There are different kinds of farming like fruit, vegetables, dairy farming, and others. The dairy farming is a farm that produces milk, cheese, butter, and yogurt. Many years ago in WI, dairy farming had been one small part of several farms, but now it has been big farms that produce just milk. I visited dairy farm in WI that was a trip with my classmates. It was a big farm that has many cows to produce milk. The interesting thing was the farmers used the waste from cows to reduce energy in the farm and it's called manure. That trip was the first time for me to see cow and it was difficult. I couldn't take picture with cows because cows are very big.

The Chippwa Valley Museum

In ESL 350 class we visited the The Chippwa Valley Museum. It has three parts. The first part talked about Native American, the second part talked about farm life, and the third part talked about building towns.


We learned a lot of information about Native American. Many years ago, there were different tribes lived in Northwestern Wisconsin or the Chippwa Valley. They looked for any area that has food to live there. So they moved to different place. They lived in houses that made of wood, birch tree, and animal's skin, and 5-8 members lived in the same house. In the Chippwa Valley there were many kins of animals like badger, porcupine, whitetail deer, and others. The Native American used canoe for transportation to find rice in the river. In the winter they ate sap; it is healthy food comes from trees. They also ate fish and meat. Everyone worked hard to find food. So they had tough life.


After that we learned about farm life. The colonies came to WI to have new land. They found good land to farm. they had big farms cranberries, maple syrup, sweet corn, green peas, and dairy farm. They also had pets in their farms.


The third part talked about how people in WI made the economics by railroads and lumber industry. The lumber companies used the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes to transport the lumber from the forests. They worked hard to do that. As a result, WI became the top lumber producing stat in US.