Counting My Blessings

Counting My Blessings

As you all know, it’s the week of Thanksgiving, and not to follow a fad or an expectation, but this post goes along with it.

But unlike many blogs/facebook statuses/tweets/pictures you will see this week, I don’t want to just list everything I’m thankful for and call it a day.

I don’t really know what I’m going for here, but if I figure that out, I’ll let you know.  In the meantime, just keep reading.

Just sitting here in my dorm room typing this makes me think about the things a lot of us take for granted.

1)      I’m nice and warm, while it’s cold and rainy not five feet from where I’m sitting.

2)      It’s well lighted in here, while some people will sit in the dark today because of a power outage or an overall lack of electricity.

3)      I can turn on my sink and get clean, cold water, and I can wash my hands in it, even drink it.

4)      I’m in a dorm room, which means I’m in college.  I’ve been given great opportunities, support, and motivation to get here.

5)      My college education will not come out of pocket.  I’m not bragging, I’m telling it how it is.  I had some great teachers in high school, and it was their efforts and the motivation of my friends and family that helped me earn a full scholarship.  It’s still kind of weird to think that I actually got a full ride.  Like, you hear people talk about it, but it just seems like a sort of impossible dream.  But I made it happen.

6)      I’m able to sit here and listen to thousands upon thousands of songs all at my disposal.  Not only are humans blessed with the talents to make music, but we have the technology to spread it around the world.  I’m currently listening to a playlist of songs I played in band.  One, I’m thankful for musical instruments and the fact that people can play them so beautifully.  Two, I’m thankful that I personally can play a musical instrument, and that I’m not half bad.  Three, I’m thankful for all the memories and opportunities that band has brought me.  I wouldn’t be who I am today without it.

7)      My roommate isn’t a creep, freak, or psycho.  With the random roommate assignment came the fear that I would have to live with someone that I either hated or feared.  She turned out to be a perfectly normal person, well, according to society’s standards.  We get along great, and one day I’ll write a post about our experiences while living together.  That’ll be a good post.  Stay tuned for that one.

8)      Star Wars is actually a thing, and I can watch it anytime I want.  Let’s be honest, that was a great series of movies, and the world is a better place because of them (I’ve got a poster of Darth Vader hanging by my bed as long as a movie poster for the special edition films that came out in 1997, so that’s what made me think of that).

9)      Friends are some of the best things we can ever have.  In my dorm room I’ve got three picture frames, a painted canvas, and a painted wooden set of my initials, all made for me by different friends.  Add to that the various gifts they’ve given me over the years like movies and storage containers (a great graduation gift), and my room reminds me of lots of great memories and just how lucky I am to know these people.  I wouldn’t trade them for anything, and as the song from Wicked goes, “because I knew you, I have been changed for good.”  Seriously though, they’re all great.  All of them.

10)   My family is also equally as great.  I’ve got letters and postcards that I’ve gotten sitting around my dorm room.  I love getting things in the mail, and since I’ve been here, I’ve gotten letters from my grandparents, letters from my aunt, and postcards from my parents, and every time I open my P.O. box it makes me smile.  It reminds me that they’re thinking about me and are proud of what I’ve done so far with my life.  I mean, when I think about lots of the things that I’m thankful for, I can give some of the credit to my family for making those things happen.  So they’re pretty cool people.

11)   Rachel McAdams was born.  Out of all the actresses in the world, she’s one of my favorites, if not my most favorite.  On my book shelf are four movies that she’s in, along with a movie poster of the Notebook hanging on my wall…and let’s just say I’m always looking to buy more movies that she stars in. *hint hint*

12)   I’ve been to Disney World three times in my life time, and many people will be lucky to go once.  I’ve got both a Disney themed Rubik’s cube sitting on my desk and a little Mickey Mouse figurine (that’s decorated like R2-D2, so that’s cool too).

13)   Speaking of Disney, I’m thankful that the Imagineers (the creative team behind Disney) has written books that help you think and do things like an Imagineer, because they’re going to help me get ready to hopefully be one someday.  I’ve got two of their books, and I learn something new every time I pick them up.

14)   Socks are a thing.  Who knows what we would do without them, right?

And that’s just a few things I’m thinking about as I sit here typing all of this.

The fact of the matter is that amidst all the bad things going on in the world, I, and many other people, have so many good things going on for me.

I think one of the bad things about our society is that the week of Thanksgiving there seems to be an influx of “I’m thankful for this…I’m thankful for that…” and that’s all great and all, but after Thanksgiving is over, after the parade is done, the football games are over, the food is gone, we all go on with our lives, usually straight into the Christmas season. 

One of the downfalls of this is that we, myself definitely included, forget about that thankful feeling we had in late November long before even March rolls around, and that’s just a span of four months.

What I guess I'm trying to say is that counting your blessings does make you look differently at your life and make the bad things going on seem a little less life-wrecking. 

So as you gather around the table this Thursday, or around a football field like I will be doing, be thankful.  As you gather around the Christmas tree in less than a month, be thankful.  As you count down to 2014, be thankful.  As you give out valentines, be thankful.  As you wear green to avoid being pinched, be thankful.  As you celebrate every holiday, be thankful.

Be thankful for the fact that you’re here on the earth.  Be thankful for the family you’ve got.  Be thankful for the friends that are in your life because they want to be.  Just be thankful.

It’s something I know we could all do a little more of.

Gobble, gobble, everybody.

Mo

An Unlucky Paper

Friday the 13^th of April, 2012 is a day that will live in infamy.

Why, you ask?

It’s the day I found out I had failed my first research paper.

For those of you that don’t know me well enough, failing at anything academic was one of my biggest fears in high school.  I was on the quest for valedictorian, and plus failing was just degrading to my pride.

So if just failing in general was a huge deal for me, you can imagine how bad failing a research paper shook me up.

A lot, if you couldn’t figure that out.

Before I tell the story, there are a few things you should know:

1)      English and I have never gotten along well to begin with

2)      I still and always will love my English teacher.  She’s a great woman.

3)      Research Papers are a big deal in high school

So, people, let’s begin.

Once upon a time, I was a little Junior in high school (literally, I’m relatively short).  It was second semester, which meant I was in AP English.  All Juniors and Seniors in our school (and I’m pretty sure the entire state, but don’t quote me on that) are required to write a research paper.

Each student gets a different topic and has to write a paper on said topic.  Seems easy enough, right?

The way my teacher assigned us our topics was as follows:

1)      She gave us a list of all the topics to choose from

2)      We all drew a number

3)      Who ever got #1 picked his/her topic first, and so on and so forth until everyone had picked

4)      That’s what you got

5)      If she was merciful and you got a bad topic because you were the last to pick, she would let you look at the leftover topics from the other class and get one of those

I’m pretty sure I drew like #3 or something.  I know I was early on.  At least I think so.  Anyways, that’s irrelevant.  I had lots of choices, and I decided on Alfred Hitchcock and his influences on American movies.  Or something like that.  It was about Alfred Hitchcock.

I love movies and all, so I knew I would enjoy this.  And I did.  I learned a lot from doing this paper.

But anyways, we all got our topics and then started the long and painstaking process.

1)      Write a thesis statement

2)      Write your thesis statement on a 3 x 5 ruled index card

3)      Turn in thesis statement

4)      Receive graded thesis statement back

5)      Make an outline

6)      Turn in outline

7)      Receive graded outline back

8)      Find your sources (credible ones, and so many have to be books, not online stuff)

9)      Print off/ make copies of all of your sources

10)   Make bib cards with 3 x 5 index cards

11)   Give yourself a pep talk

12)   Write a rough draft

13)   Edit rough draft

14)   Highlight the words on your source copies that you used from every source

15)   Turn in rough draft

16)   Receive graded rough draft back

17)   Edit appropriately

18)   Continue editing until you get so sick of editing that you can’t look at your paper one more time

19)   Realize you still have to look at your paper

20)   Cry

21)   Check for plagiarism

22)   Check all of your source copies and make sure they’re highlighted

23)   Staple source copies (each source is stapled separately)

24)   Paper clip bib cards to their corresponding source copies

25)   Alphabetize source copies

26)   Do any or all of the following: cry, scream, growl, or throw something

27)   Put everything in your fresh, new clasp envelope in a very precise order which I cannot remember exactly.  Just know that it includes your rubric, ORIGINAL graded thesis statement and outline, final draft of your paper, alphabetized source copies that you used, alphabetized source copies that you have but didn’t use, and probably something else (your birth certificate and social security card perhaps?).

28)   Write your name, class name, teacher name, and the date the paper is due in sharpie on the front of your clasp envelope

29)   Go to school on the day the paper is due

30)   Walk around the school with this look of paranoia in your eyes

31)   Go almost immediately to your English’s teacher’s room because the paper is due before the tardy bell rings for 1^st block, regardless of when you have English

32)   Take a huge breath

33)   Double and triple check your envelope to make sure you have everything

34)   Take another huge breath

35)   Put your envelope in the basket

36)   Wait for your paper to be graded

At least that was the process I followed.  My teacher has this whole thing down to a science.  A scary, intimidating, stressful science.

The thing about research papers, however, is that they have lots of different rules that apply to them.  All I had ever written up to that point was essays, and they’re all my thoughts and words, so there’s not the whole plagiarism thing to worry about.

But with research papers, you have to cite everything.  And I mean everything.  You can’t mention anything that another person said without acknowledging that that person said that.  It makes sense, I suppose, but it’s such a difficult process.

There are three ways to avoid plagiarism:

1)      Paraphrasing

2)      Summarizing

3)      Quoting

Paraphrasing means saying what the source said but in different words.  The definition we learn in elementary and middle school is, “saying something in your own words,” but really it’s just saying it in words that the original author did not use.

For instance, pretend I said, “Morgan likes to ride her bike on days with nice summer weather,” you could paraphrase it like this, “When the summer weather is pleasant, Morgan enjoys riding her bike.”

I’ve neither really ever understood exactly what summarizing is nor can I give you an example of it, so just get over yourself.

Quoting means you take exactly what the source says and put it in your paper, except you have to put quotation marks around it to show that it isn’t your words.  The thing about it, though, is that only a certain percentage of my paper could consist of directly quoted words.

The annoying thing is, though, that some words are not easily paraphrased.  For instance, in my bike example, I used both the words “summer,” “weather,” and “bike” in my paraphrased sentence.  Because those words were in the original source, I have to put quotation marks around them.  So in my paper, the sentence would look like this:

When the “summer weather” is pleasant, Morgan enjoys riding her “bike.”

It looks weird when you’re first doing it, but you get used to it. 

Oh, and proper nouns don’t have to be quoted.  There really isn’t a way to paraphrase my name.  I mean, you could say “the most awesome girl you’ll ever know,” or “a super cool person,” but that’s not really appropriate I’m sure my English teacher would say.

And then, as if that’s not enough, after every time you mention a source, you have to cite where exactly it came from.  These things are called internal citations.  Say my bike sentence came from page 34 of the book One Cool Person by John Doe.  In the paper, the sentence would now look like this:

When the “summer weather” is pleasant, Morgan enjoys riding her “bike” (Doe 34).

It’s important to remember that punctuation marks always go after the parentheses, unless they’re quotation marks as in this case (this includes commas).  

And then of course you have to list all of your sources in alphabetical order in the proper MLA format on your works cited page.  Don’t get me started on MLA format and works cited pages.  We’ll be here all day.

Overall, writing a research paper is a long, painstaking process when you’re trying to do it correctly, which was my goal.

To make things worse, there are certain mistakes that will result in an automatic 50 or 0, depending on the mistake.  Plagiarism?  Automatic 0.  No internal citations?  Automatic 0.  No bib cards?  Automatic 50.  More than a certain percentage of your paper is quoted?  Automatic 50.

There’s more automatic reductions, and they’re all scary things.

So where, you ask, did I go wrong?

First I’m going to take you through the day when we got back our graded papers.

It was Friday, April 13^th, 2012.  My teacher has this mean sense of humor and purposely gave them back on Friday the 13^th.

She waited until the end of class to give us back our papers so that we wouldn’t have to sit through the whole class period and be a pain to deal with.  So there were about 30ish minutes before the bell would ring when she started handing them back.

We were all sitting in our desks, and she pulled out the dreaded basket, filled with envelopes.

Oh, how my heart was pounding.

She went around passing them out, and one by one we looked at our grades.  I will say, my teacher was very considerate for this reason: she graded the paper and all and wrote the grade on the rubric, but she also wrote our final grade right under the flap of the envelope so all we would have to do was look at that.  If we couldn’t muster the strength to look at our paper, we didn’t have to.

She kept handing out more papers and my heart kept beating faster.  I had checked my paper so many times for plagiarism, I had counted every word and calculated how much was quoted material.  I had checked and checked and checked.

My best friends got theirs back.  All A’s.  That made me happy.  I didn’t want them to fail.  They didn’t deserve it.  No one did, really.

And then she laid my envelope on my desk. 

There it sat.

There was my name, the class name, my teacher’s name, and the due date, staring up at me.

This was it.

I picked up the envelope and turned it over.

I took a deep breath and looked under the flap.

50.

My heart immediately sank.

I sat there for a second in disbelief, staring at the 50, absorbed in my own world, a world where the only thing that existed was that envelope and that number.

And then I laid down my head and cried.

My teacher had said during the whole process that the ones that fail are always the ones that you least expect to do so.  The girl that would most likely be the valedictorian?  Most people, including myself, assumed I would do it correctly.

I only let myself cry for a few minutes.  I had to be strong, I kept telling myself.  I sat up and wiped away my tears and gathered the strength to take out my paper and find out what I had done wrong.

That’s the worst part.  Remember those internal citations I mentioned?  They must include both a word and a page number.  Somewhere among all my editing I accidentally erased one of the page numbers in one citation.

One number cost me 50 points.

I about kicked myself.

The whole time all this was going on, I could feel my best friends watching me, making glances in my direction to see how I was taking it.

And it was for them that I took my 50 with dignity.

My teacher has this option in place for anyone that scores lower than a 70.  You can get a brand new topic and write a brand new paper within a space of about two-three weeks for a chance to score at best an 80.  It really is a generous offer.

She had the paper we had to sign that had all the second-chance topics on it at the front of the room for us to grab.  Many people waited until glass was over to get one, but I got up from my desk, in front of everyone, and walked to the front of the room to get me a sheet.  Everyone knew I had failed.

I took my paper to my teacher and asked her to further explain where I had gone wrong and asked questions about the second-chance paper.  I was still in the aftermath of crying with the sniffling and all, but I was being strong.  She was so nice and patient with me, and I didn’t get mad at her, just myself.  I knew giving me a 50 had to be as hard on her as it was on me.  I’ve known her since I was five, so no big deal.  It’s just giving your daughter’s best friend a 50 on one of the biggest assignments of her Junior year.

And then I walked to my backpack, pulled out a bag of M & M’s, and walked over to where my best friends were sitting and talking and started to join the conversation.  Of course I could just feel the awkward tension, them being shocked at how well I was taking this whole failure thing.  We all talked, I smiled and laughed, and I ate my M & M’s.

Class ended and we all walked to our next class, which we had together.

Two girls who had failed checked out and went home.  A lot of the ones who failed sat like zombies in the next class, just still in shock really.

I smiled and laughed and talked to my best friend and stayed happy.  “This girl is handling her 50 like a pro!” she said.  I was so proud of myself.

Throughout the day, when I would see someone I knew, I would look at them and say, “I failed my research paper!” with a smile on my face.  I confused so many people.  It was so much fun!

My friends later told me just how happy they were about how I handled my 50 and the entire day.  Based on past experiences, they had every reason to believe that I would act chronically depressed and just be a pain to deal with the rest of the day.  But I didn’t want to put them through that.  They had made A’s, and they deserved to be happy, and I wasn’t about to ruin their great day.  Sure, I went home that night and cried my eyes out in the shower, but wouldn’t we all?

I’ll admit, writing that second paper was such a struggle.  It was so hard to make myself go through the entire process again.  I cried more over that paper than the first one.

But you know what?  I got a 79 out of 80, and even after all of that, I still tied for the highest average in the class.

So what did I learn?  Research papers are dumb?  Eh, I would argue that, but I did learn some other valuable lessons. 

1)      The valedictorian isn’t immune to failure

2)      Sometimes your friends’ happiness is more important than your pity party

3)      Numbers are very important

4)      I don’t care to ever write another paper about Alfred Hitchcock or Hot Springs National Park (the topic of my second-chance paper)

This past spring I had to write my Senior research paper.  My binder with all my sources and drafts in it read on the front, “Third Time’s a Charm.”  I really just didn’t want to fail.  I checked that thing about 100 times to make sure every internal citation had both a word and a number.  Those stupid little numbers.  I checked everything religiously.  On the day I had to turn it in, I, along with the others who had failed the previous year, was so paranoid.

I got a 100.

Take that research papers.  I beat you.  At least that’s what we’re going to say.

“Thank you for failing me on my first research paper,” I said to my teacher during my valedictorian speech.  I had embraced it.  It has made for a good story.

At some point in your life, you're going to fail miserably.  Are you going to pout, or are you going to pick yourself up, smile, and eat your M & M’s?

Mo

The Tissues Are Coming! The Tissues Are Coming!

We have arrived, people.

Winter in Mississippi.

There are lots of nice, pleasant things that occur during winter.  There's Christmas, Memphis Tiger basketball season, my birthday...nice, pleasant things.

But then there's that one thing that we all love to hate.

That one thing that hits you like a brick wall and shows no mercy.

...

...

...

...

The Common Cold.

It's a heartless creature, the Common Cold, and I'm its unfortunate victim this week.  I've tried to fight it, and I've had some success, but I still can't breathe out of my nose.

It all started Monday morning when I woke up with a small scratch in my throat.  We all know of those scratches, the ones that start out small, and you're like, "oh, okay this won't be too bad."  But then not even two hours later you're metaphorically (or literally) screaming out in pain.

I believe at that point there's some cruel-hearted little minion in my throat with the coarsest sheet of sand paper there has ever been, and he's just a sanding down my throat.

After the day I had Monday, my throat has got to be as smooth as a baby's bottom.

Every time the Common Cold hits me, it goes through the same cycle.  It starts with the sore throat, and it's on that day that I consume more milk than I think the cows can spit out for me.  Too bad I was out of milk and didn't make it to Walmart until Monday night.

I tried to fight it off that day, to keep it from progressing.  I got out my cold-eze things that my friend told me to get.  They've got lots of zinc in them, and they're supposed to help.  So I sat with that thing in my mouth while I was on my laptop.  

I was so glad when it had finally dissolved.  That thing was nasty. 

It worked for the next, eh, maybe thirty minutes and then the Cold was back.  "Nooooooooo," I thought.

I knew what was next.

Soggy cardboard.

My friend (the same one that recommended cold-eze) a few years ago had a cold and told me she felt like soggy cardboard, and I said, "you know, you're right.  That's exactly what it feels like when you've got a cold."  Sure enough, the next time I got a cold, I knew exactly what she meant.

So what, you say, does it feel like to feel like soggy cardboard?

First, there's the sniffling and runny nose.  That's a given.

Second, there's the coughing.  So much coughing.

Third, every muscle is sore.  I mean every one.  They all hurt, and all you want to do is curl up in a ball and sleep forever.

Really, there's just that overall pitiful feeling.  If the Common Cold strikes you down this winter season, remember this when you reach the soggy cardboard stage.  You'll agree with me then.

The soggy cardboard started Monday night.  It started small, which was good I suppose.  It gave me the chance to go to Walmart and buy milk and Zycam, which I heard does wonders for pre-cold symptoms.

Except by the time I got the Zycam in my system, I was way past "pre-cold," so that didn't do any good.  Just my luck.

Tuesday was oh so miserable of a day.  I woke up and just about couldn't move.  Every muscle cried out, "oh please, don't make me move."  You know, it wasn't really much of a cry as it was a pitiful moan, "noooo...uhhh...noooo...don't..."  Soggy cardboard and chemistry labs do not go well together.  And by don't go well together, I mean not at all.  Band was so cold, oh so cold.  The wind was such a jerk.  Luckily I had thought to wear about fifty million layers, and whatever time we weren't playing was spent with my scarf pulled up to my nose.  

My hands though, felt like icicles.

Back to Walmart for gloves.

I found some super cheap gloves and cut the tips of the fingers out of them (clarinet players need their fingers to play), and I must say, band was quite better today.

While I was at Walmart, I made a miraculous discovery.

Up front, Walmart had a bin full of various cold/flu and allergy drugs.

Off-brand Robitussin and vapo-rub for $0.88 each.

Uh, yes please.

It's like Walmart knows the struggle.

Thank you, Walmart, for being my friend.

I came back to my dorm like a child at Christmas.  This little bottle of miracle juice would help me!

I must say though, it was a true test of my inner strength.

You know you're a big kid when you can take Robitussin on your own free will.  That stuff is so nasty.  But I took it, all three nasty teaspoons of it. 

Then I slathered vapo-rub all over my chest and neck.  "I will breathe tomorrow," I thought.

And you know what?  I woke up this morning, and I could move.  I could generally breathe.  Another dose of Robitussin before I went to class, and I was off to face the day!

And while I still feel pretty crappy and I still can't breathe through my nose and I still need a box of kleenexes right beside me almost 24/7 and I've still got a tiny cough, I'd like to say I feel better than I could.  I mean, I could still feel like soggy cardboard.

And who wants to feel like that?

Time for my nightly Robitussin and then it's off to do laundry and clean my dorm room.

Winter is here, people, and it's here to stay for a while.

But you know, as usual, we'll be lucky to get four snowflakes here in Mississippi, and God bless us all if we get a whole two inches.

I know regardless of how I feel, I'll be out there with half of the campus on this big hill we've got sledding the mess out of it.

It really is a terrible hill, and it's such a pain to have to walk up everyday, but that one snow day will make every trek worth it.  Or at least that's what I tell myself.

Until then, I'll stay in my cozy dorm room and ride out this Cold.  That is until it's time for class and band, in which case I'll put on my marshmallow gear and face the freezing temperatures. 

The moral of this story? 

I would say don't go outside ever during the winter, but I can see how that's somewhat unavoidable.

So the moral is as follows:

Go to Walmart and buy milk, Robitussin, and vapo-rub.  You'll thank me later.

Stay warm.

Mo

Europe is Not America

Over the past two and a half years, I have had the amazing opportunity to go to four different European countries, with plans to visit another next spring.  Throughout my travels, I have learned that I love visiting Europe.

Visiting.

There are lots of little differences between Europe and America, some so small you don’t notice them at first, but by the time a week rolls around, they sure do become noticeable.  Things we take for granted in America, like free public toilets and free refills, become like the milk and honey of the Promised Land.

I absolutely love Europe and the experiences I’ve had there, but I’ve definitely noticed that wherever I go in Europe, Americans are asking these questions:

Why do I have to pay €0.50 to take a pee?

Where’s the ice?

Why won’t my [insert hair appliance name] work?

Why does McDonald’s taste so good here?

Why is that bacon soggy?

If you’ve been to Europe, you most likely know exactly what I’m talking about and probably asked one or more of those questions at one point yourself.

I figured, for comedic value, that I’ll take the time here to explain to you the circumstances behind these questions.  Perhaps it’ll help you out in the future, you know, for when you find yourself strolling the streets of Europe (at which point I will be jealous of your current whereabouts).

       1)      Why do I have to pay €0.50 Euro Cents to take a pee?

Let me tell you about European public toilets.  They’re not free, first off, and that stops us Americans in our tracks.  “What?!  I have to PAY to use the restroom?”  The prices usually range from €0.30 to €0.80, but usually it’s €0.50.  That’s about $0.68.  

Sixty-eight cents to go empty your body of all of those bodily fluids.

The interesting part, however, is the state of these restrooms.  From my observations, there are two things that Germans take great pride in: their cars and their restrooms.  Most times, there were people whose only job was to collect your bathroom money.  Some of them would go in after people and clean down the toilet and spray some air freshener.

I’m not going to lie, Germany has nice restrooms.  In some rest stops, they have these bathrooms with “dancing” toilets.  In reality, they’re just self-cleaning toilets, but it’s so much cooler to think they’re dancing. 

This past summer when the Lion’s Band went to Germany, we took a day to drive from Hamburg to Munich.  That’s a drive from the top of the country to the bottom.  Needless to say, we saw lots of German bathrooms that day.  We made a stop in the town of Rӧthenburg, which is this adorable little medieval looking town somewhere between Hamburg and Munich, obviously.  Before we got there, our guide was telling the people on our bus how, yes, there were free public restrooms here.  But he then said, “however, these aren’t as, what’s the word, nice as some of the other restrooms, since they are free,” almost apologetically.  My first thought?  “Oh!  So they’re like American restrooms!”

But seriously though, part of the European culture shock that Americans have to overcome is the bathrooms.  As strange as that may sound, ask anyone that’s been to Europe.  It’s weird.

       2)      Where’s the ice?

So I sit down for a meal during my first trip to Europe, right?  They bring us drinks (all waters), and there’s something missing: ice.  In every restaurant, I find the same thing.  There’s never any ice in our drinks.  It’s almost like Europe is more affected by global warming than America.  I can see the headlines: 

“EUROPE STRICKEN BY GLOBAL WARMING: NO ICE TO BE FOUND.”

Seriously though, even when we would splurge and buy sodas (which are outrageously expensive, by the way.  They’re on average €2.50 - €3.00, which comes out to around $4.00), still, no ice.  At that point, I was just happy to have a carbonated beverage.

On my second trip to Europe, I noticed, once again, the overall lack of ice.  The only ice I had in my drink for the entire trip was at a McDonald’s in Vienna.  Even then, it was a sorry excuse for ice.



Seriously.  That was about it.

3)    Why won’t my [insert hair appliance name] work?

    

     When packing for a trip to a foreign country, there is one thing that should always  be on your packing list: a power outlet converter.  For some reason that I am yet  to understand, just about every continent and some countries feel like they need  their own special power outlet.  They’re all different, and it’s annoying.  I would  like to know who allowed this to happen.  It seems like such an inconvenience to,  like, everyone.

     Because here’s the thing: none of my American appliances…my hair straightener, my curling iron, my phone charger, my camera charger…none of them can just be plugged right into a English or European power outlet (I say English or European, because England, as usual, wants to be different from the rest of its continent.  Not only do they want their own currency, they want their own power outlet too.  Good grief).  The only way to make it work?  1) buy appliances while in Europe that will work in the outlets, but of course that is an extremely wasteful venture if you only plan on being on the continent for a few days.  2) buy a power converter.

     Power converters and foreign outlets get along about as well as a children and naptime.  This makes charging/using ANYTHING extremely difficult.

     Because not only are the outlets shaped differently, they also spit out a different amount of power (is voltage the correct term?) as American outlets.  If not dealt with properly, an American appliance in an European outlet can equal one fried American appliance.

     For the Lion’s International Parade, the guard girls had to curl their hair.  As we went down to breakfast that morning, we were bombarded with sob stories of girls who had plugged in their curling irons to find either a) it didn’t work, or even worse b) blew up while they were using it.  For obvious reasons, that’s a very dangerous accident, plus it’s just inconvenient.  I mean, they just lost both a curling iron AND a converter.  They’re not cheap, and while on a trip, converters are about as sought after as gold.

     It seemed like every day after that I would hear about some girls curling iron or straightener that was no longer functioning.

     And then it happened in our room.

     My friend was just a doing her hair, and then we hear this, “POP!” and I walk in the bathroom to find her power converter smoking.  Smoking.  In our room.

     She reached to take it out of the outlet.  “What are you doing?!” I said, “don’t touch it!!”  In her defense, it made some sense to get it away from the outlet, but you know, there was the whole smoking situation.  We left it for like thirty minutes before I took a towel and got it out with that.  RIP power converter.  RIP hair straightener.

     And then my other friend lost her converter.  We had called that converter Big Bertha, we believed surely it would survive.  Nope.  RIP Big Bertha.

     I was the lucky one.  Not one of my two converters died.  There was this one time in Vienna when my friend was using my curling iron because hers had fallen to the disease, and I went to turn it on to find that it wouldn’t. “No no no no no no no! Don’t do this to me!”  We both held our breath as I closed my eyes and said a short little prayer. 

     It worked.

     That was such a great sigh of relief.

     A lesson you should know: read all up, down, and around the instruction manual that comes with your converter.  Seriously.  Unless your goal is to get a fried converter, in which case, in the words of the infamous commercial, “plug it in, plug it in.”

4)      Why does McDonald’s taste so good here?

     A lot of people would argue that McDonald’s isn’t the best food.  I’d agree with them to an extent.

     But when all you’ve had for a week is European food, sometimes you just want to go to McDonald’s.  And so we did during our free time in Vienna.  And it was amazing.

     It was food that resembled American food, good ole fried American food.  I only wish that America would name their cokes too.  The coke bottles also have names in Germany.

     I can experience the culture all day long.  Just let me have a meal where I know I’ll eat everything.

5)    Why is that bacon soggy?

     Day One in Europe a group of us were walking around Piccadilly Square in London looking for a good place to have lunch.  As we were in London, we decided that a Pub would be a fun choice.  We sat down, looked at the menu, and decided on what we wanted.  “Ooh! Bacon!” my friend said, and so she ordered her burger with bacon on it, feeling quite satisfied.  It had been a long plane ride, and bacon was sure to be a pleasant cheerer-upper.

     It wasn’t bacon.

     Or at least what true Southerners call bacon.

     “What’s wrong with my bacon,” she said, with sadness and frustration in her voice.

     My other friend’s mom answered, “that would be Canadian bacon.”

     “This is not bacon."

     Well, I mean, it was, but that was surely not what she or any of us expected.

     That was our first traumatizing experience with European food. 

     The thing about me and my friends and family in Europe was this:  the meals were all planned, so when we had a meal where we were free to choose what we wanted, we sure as everything picked something we knew we would enjoy.  Because you never knew what would be on your plate at dinner.  Sometimes we got lucky and got a nice dish of Japanese noodles.  Other times we had to try cous cous, and that was an experience.

     The peanut butter crackers I had packed in my suitcase were my saving grace.  I’m just too picky.

And so I hope this has given you some insight to just what the European continent holds for American travelers.  If you ever get the chance to go, take it.  It will be an unforgettable experience.  You’ll see things you never thought you would see and do things you never thought you would do.  I’ve seen so many well-known things.  

Big Ben, the London Eye, West Minister Abbey, Shakespeare’s Globe, the London Bridge, Stonehenge, the Palace of Versailles, the Eiffel Tower (eek!!), the Louvre, the Mona Lisa, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, Hitler’s Eagles Nest, the Hapsburgs’ Palace, the Alps, Salzburg (the city where Mozart lived), so many cool things where in my history or art classes, the teacher can show us one of them, and I get so excited.  “I’ve been there,” I think.  I know how tiny the Mona Lisa is, I know how massive the Alps are, I’ve walked where Mozart walked, I was in the same building as where William and Kate were married.

I’m so thankful for the opportunities that allowed me to board a plane to Europe.  By next June, I will have been to Europe every year for three years straight.  That is so cool, and I’m so blessed to be able to say so.

I’ve made such great memories with my family and my best friends, and I’ll always be able to look back at my pictures and relive those moments in my head.

I just love Europe.

Mo

The London Eye

Stonehenge

Big Ben and a classic British icon

The River Thames and Big Ben and Parliament 

Notre Dame

The Eiffel Tower, of course

Arc de Triomphe

Rӧthenburg, Germany (isn't it the cutest?)

The Alps

The Hapsburgs' Summer Palace in Versailles