A few last things

I'm longing for warm weather, since it's been in the single digits for the past two weeks.  Out of curiosity I looked at the world map and discovered that if I wanted to go as far south as the Caribbean, that'd take me to approximately the area of Mali or Chad.  Since none of you probably find it worthwhile or fun to sit around and memorize the map of Africa like I do, I'll provide a visual aide:

Speaking of maps, I'm really excited to go to St. Petersburg, Russia in 5 weeks!  I never imagined I'd have the opportunity to travel to Russia, and although it's going to be prettttttty cold, it's going to be a great experience.  On this map, find the word "Finland", look at the big lake to the right of it, and St. Petersburg is in the bottom left corner of that lake.  Brr!  But that's not for a while.  Our first field trip is to Paris which is in a little over 2 weeks, and I'll stop writing about it right now because I'm just too excited, I could go on forever!

“And so for an eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the dark void of “the past is done, the future is not yet here.” It’s called transition. I have come to believe that it is the only place that real change occurs.”

-The Essene Book of Days by Danaan Parry 

Today Devon and I got our flights for spring break, but unlike I said before, we are actually just going to spend a week in Barcelona (and hopefully take an overnight trip up to the South of France).  It would have been a lot more expensive to add Portugal, as the prices went up a lot in the past few days, so we figured it'd be best to save our money for another adventure.  Plus, it's not like Barcelona is lacking in things to do!

We then went to McDonalds because we were feeling adventurous and have been wanting to compare US McDonalds (not that either of us eat there often at all) with German ones.  The only fries we saw on the menu were called "American French Fries", so we ordered those (for over $3 USD!!!).  They looked like this:

I mean, don't get me wrong, they were good!  But they were not anything like fries at McDonalds in the US, nor like any fries I've ever seen in Germany!! As we were eating them, we noticed others had what looked to be typical US McDonalds fries on their trays!  I guess if you're not a dumb American you know that you'll just get normal fries when you ask for fries (pommes).  Ugh!  Sometimes I feel so dumb here.  Also, instead of ketchup, the fries came with a sour creme and chives dip (sort of like heluvagood chip dip?).

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, as I'm sure you've heard.  Sadly, I'm really embarrassed to say, I'd forgotten it was today.  On my own campus I would've been more aware of it.  I only figured it out by watching France24 tonight.  From what I could understand, there were a lot of remembrance events in Poland, which is nice.  I couldn't tell you anything about what Germany did though because thanks to my lack of German skills I can't understand the news here. It would've been nice to know how Germans are reflecting on the day and the history.

"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore"

-Andre Gide