An experiment in life imitating art, here is the Mona Lisa impersonation contest. This is the practice round before the students go to The Louvre and get up close to da Vinci’s painting and perfect their individual pose. Our rules state that if a student sets off the museum alarm in Paris, well then, that person is disqualified from the contest.
Category Archives: Preparing for the Trip
From One Smile to Another
We are just days away from take-off as we prepare for yet another adventure with Woods Around the World. Not too far from our campus in Fulton, Missouri, along Highway 54, there is an elegant billboard featuring the world’s most famous (and mysterious) smile. The billboard is part of an advertising campaign from the Foundation for a Better Life and urges the viewer to share a smile with someone else. In less than a week, our smiling group will travel 4,446 miles away to see the famous original in Paris, France. Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, hangs in a special gallery of The Louvre. Here are a few of our travelers posing in front of the billboard alongside Highway 54.
Bringing France Back
A good read in preparation for traveling to France is the recently published book, The Greater Journey: Americans in France by David McCullough. The notable author writes of the influence that French culture had on leading American lights during the 18th century, including such individuals as Samuel Morse and Mark Twain and Oliver Wendell Holmes. A story on NPR’s Weekend Edition tells us how Morse tried to bring back France to an American audience by painting the best holdings of the Louvre, on a single canvas.
Woods Around the World 2012 