America's Drive In

Being in a foreign country makes a person realize what they really miss and love from back home. I miss and love alot of things, but omg..sonic and its ice is a huge one. In Europe we never get ice in our drinks at all, especially not Sonic ice. This is one of my first stops when I get back to the states. Happy Hour delights my soul. Since sonic was my very first job as well, which was quite nice and rewarding, I guess I will be somewhat forever grateful for it.

I want one of these.

I need one of these for my cross country travels.

United Colors of Benetton

United Colors of Benetton has interesting ways of advertising in order to communicate their message to the consumer. These are some ads over the past years. The top ones are from 2009 and 10 and the bottom ones are from the 90's. I love their ads. 2, 6, and 7 are my favorites.

Not Exactly What I Expected

Yesterday our group took a biking trip to Burgenland in Austria. The plan was to bike around the lake, but Im pretty sure we were on the wrong path. We only got to see the lake for like 20 minutes at the end of the trip. We rode near 30 miles...yep 30 miles. Thats a long time when you arent used to riding bikes. I mean, I work out like 4 times a week, but I was completely dead and in pain after this venture. The top and bottom pic show the country side we saw. It was nice, but in the middle of absolute nowhere and reminded me of Kansas. As you can see from the 3rd pic, I fell off my bike at one point while trying to miss a car. That scrape is accompanied by scrapes and bruises on my leg, a bruise the size of Texas on my side, and the worst sunburn of my life. Luckily, I packed aloe vera, but to bad I didnt pack sunscreen. So did i have a good time on this trip? To be honest, no. This is the only trip ive been on in Europe thus far that i would never ever ever do again. Maybe it would have been better to ride 5 miles instead of 30 and camp out by the lake. Now that would have been fun.

A world Portrait

I found this online..its from a study done by the University of Wisconsin. I thought it was really interesting. They title it 100 people: A world Portrait.

If the World were 100 PEOPLE:

50 would be female
50 would be male

20 would be children
There would be 80 adults,
14 of whom would be 65 and older

There would be:
61 Asians
12 Europeans
13 Africans
14 people from the Western Hemisphere

There would be:
31 Christians
21 Muslims
14 Hindus
6 Buddhists
12 people who practice other religions
16 people who would not be aligned with a religion

17 would speak a Chinese dialect
8 would speak Hindustani
8 would speak English
7 would speak Spanish
4 would speak Arabic
4 would speak Russian
52 would speak other languages

82 would be able to read and write; 18 would not

1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer

75 people would have some supply of food and a place to
shelter them from the wind and the rain, but 25 would not

1 would be dying of starvation
17 would be undernourished
15 would be overweight

83 would have access to safe drinking water
17 people would have no clean, safe water to drink

Ruins in Rome

Rome..now this is a big one. You would think a city with less than 3 million wouldnt feel that overwhelming, but it does because there is sooo much to see. Rome needs at the minimum 4 full days. Its really hard to compare Rome to any other city in Europe. Thats what makes it soo special. Its crazy to think too that Vatican City is its own lil country of 800 people right in the middle of it all. Vatican City needs an entire day itself. We arrived there at 9am on Friday morn..and still had to wait in line for the Vatican Museum for 2.5 hours. Luckily Maria taught me a spanish lesson to waste time. It is worth the wait though to see Raphael's Transfiguration, and to see the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel, which depicts the story of creation, was amazing. That lil Michelangelo was quite the talent. There was a ton of stuff inside the museum I didn't get to see. I suppose this gives me reason to go back :). After the Museum we went into St. Peter's Basilica, the biggest church in the world. St Peter's holds La Pieta, the sculpture of Mary offering up Jesus. It also has the statue of St. Peter that everyone goes and rubs the foot of...for good luck I think. The pic at the very top of the page is me in Vatican City right outside the church. After seeing Vatican City we headed to the Pantheon, the second pic up from the bottom. It was under construction, so unfortunately my pic isn't that good. The interesting this about this building is that the ceiling has a huge hole in the center...so when it rains the water has to drain out from inside the building. Later on that night we went on the Spanish Steps Crawl. This 6th pic is of us on the steps. Saturday was quite the busy day as well. We started off this day at the Colosseum, my favorite thing in Rome. This thing was massive and seriously so cool. Pic is the 5th picture down. We did a tour of the inside and outside then headed over to Palentine Hill, 4th pic down, for the rest of the tour. This tour ended at the remains of the Forum, which is the 3rd pic down. This spot overlooking the Forum is an excellent view of the city as well. After having a full day of site seeing we were really tired and decided to have a chill night so we went to the Trevi Fountain, my 2nd fav thing in Rome, to make our wishes and throw our coins in. The very bottom pic shows half the fountain..it is huge. I made 2 wishes and I really hope they both come true. On Sunday we had a pretty chill day. We walked around, listened to street musicians, which by the way are amazing and one of my fav parts of Europe, and went shopping at a flea market we found. We also made it our goal to find the famous gelato place with over 100 different flavors. Think of how hard that is to choose. Around 7 that night we said bye to Rome and its 70 degree weather and boarded a 14 hour train back to Austria. When we woke up in the morning it was definitely snowing in Austria. Yep, thats Austria for you.

Firenze

My 2nd stop in Italia was Florence. After Venice my expectations for Florence were high, and to be honest..it wasnt as great as I thought it would be. Nonetheless, it deserves a days time of any person who is traveling in Italy. We spent 2 nights in Florence. Our hostel was cute, and gave us free breakfast in the mornings and cheap dinner options at night. My favorite Florence moment will forever be the statue of David at the Accademia. Omg...ive never seen a statue this great. I probably stared at him in silence for at least 30 minutes. I would get tickets in advance for the Accademia, or be prepared to wait in line. The 2nd pic is my Pisa pic. Very touristy I know, but it had to be done. In my opinion this lil town, which is 45 min away costing 11euro, is worth the trip. The 3rd and 4th pics are by the river...and the last pic is of the seriously amazing church there. This is on my top 3 favorite churches list..but I think its for sure the prettiest on the outside of all that Ive seen so far. Other than those touristy things, we spent the rest of our time shopping in the flea markets, laying in the sun in the square, and eating...of course..gelato.

Venezia bella

The beautiful, long awaited Venice. O how I love this amazing city. I arrived in Venice after a long 12 hour over night train ride from Vienna on Easter sunday morning. I had to wait on Maria, Amanda, and Kirsten to arrive so I sit on the steps of the train station, which overlooks the water, and listened to Hillsong for about 30 minutes while I had my omg Im in Venice moment. The four of us girls spent 2 nights Venice, and participated in hardly any tourist activities. I have a rule for anyone who visits this city. Throw the map away. There is no use. Venice is one big maze, but I love every piece of it. All you have to do is make your way towards the river and hop on a water bus, their sweet transportation system since there are no roads for cars. Word to the wise..the buses do run 24 hours, but only once and hour past midnight and only at the main stations. It took us 2 hours to get back to the hostel one night, but that would be an entire blog in itself. We spent ours days walking around getting lost in the city, sitting by the water, and eating none other than...yep you guessed it...gelato. Our hostel, A Venice Museum, was a winner too. Family style dinner every night for 3 euro and lots of new friends met. I was sad to leave this city.

München

The second half of our trip mom and I went to Munich. My 2nd time in Germany, but my 1st time in Bavaria. The first day we arrived we basically walked around and shopped the whole day. The picture in the middle is of the famous shopping street. Fashion Club was my fav store. We dont have it in Austria or America. The 2nd day we took a free walking tour and got to see the city. We learned about the 2 things there are to learn about in Munich..beer and the Holocaust. We had such a good guide our 3rd day we decided to go back with her to Dachau, the Holocaust Memorial Site or former concentration camp that housed over 200,000 prisoners. The pic on the far left is of a church in the city. It was one of the only buildings not destroyed in WW2. They didnt bomb it because the towers served as important landmarks for the other bombing. The pic on the top right is the building where Hitler was on the night of KristallNacht, which is the night all of the jews in Munich were first captured and sent to concentration camps. The bottom pic is of the Glockenspeil. This is something hundreds of tourists crowd around and cheer for, but is not that exciting. Overall, I really liked Munich. A city full of culture and history.

Proof

The book I am reading! Explains all of the scientific and archeological reasons why the bible is accurate. Interesting.

A lil place called Aspen

If you havent watched this since 94 when it came out...id give it another look. I forgot how funny it was.

The Hills are Alive..with the Sound of Music

Very touristic of us I know...but yes..mom and I did go on the Sound of Music tour in the lovely lil city of Salzburg. We stayed for 3 nights in a cute lil B&B that overlooked the city. The overlook the city part was nice - the hike to get up to the place to enjoy it. We just used the hike as an excuse to eat more apfel strudle. The SOM tour was quite pricey, but honestly worth every penny. We made several stops and got to see alot of places the movie was filmed. The 1st pic shows one of the houses where the movie was filmed, and the lake scene was shot here too. The 2nd pic is in Monsee, a lil town right outside of Salzburg, at a beautiful lake. The 3rd pic is at the top of the highest mountain in the area. Mom and I rode the cable car up. Really lovely scenery. The last pic is of us at a cafe in Vienna. One cool thing about Salzburg is all of their christmas stores that are open year round. Pretty sure they contain more ornaments than Ive ever seen in my entire life. Im not sure anyone should ever go to Salzburg without buying at least one of them. Also in Salzburg we got to see the fortress on the top of the hill, and the haus of Mozart. He was pretty good at what he did..so this was neat. We even got to see his first violin...not sure why..but this was really cool to me. Maybe bc Ive always wanted to be able to play that thing.

Mexican Nanny

So the more time I spend abroad the more I feel like America's education system is doing us a huge disservice with regards to learning other languages. When I was in school..what seems like ages ago..we had to only take 2 years of a foreign language...and...not everyone had to do that...only the people who wanted to get more scholarship money. When you compare this with other countries..its quite sad. Take the dutch for example. Every dutch person I know speaks perfect english because they are made to learn it their whole lives. Just because english is the language of business all around the world doesn't give us a right to get out of learning other languages. Personally, I feel like every American should begin to learn spanish as early as 1st grade. (Or even earlier with a nanny) They should take it all the way through school, and then in highschool, they should be required to pick another language to take 9-12th grade. Think of how many people you could then communicate if you knew english, spanish, and lets say german. Of the things I regret growing up...not learning spanish and not playing the piano more are the main two.

What a girl should have in every color

What a girl should have in every color. And no..im not talking about the boy at the top..although..he is quite lovely. Seriously..I'd have all of these if i could. I have a slight obsession with purchasing scarves.