its been a while...

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. Its amazing how difficult it has been to find internet lately, and the few occasions I have found it, the keyboard was so difficult to decipher that it just wasn' worth it. SO I apologize for my lack of updating.

No, I have not actually been in Berlin since October 14 :). I have actually been to Leiden, The Netherlands, Bruges, Belgium, Bayeux, France and Paris since then. I'm in Paris right now in a ridiculously expensive internet cafe, but I can't really complain since I saw the Eiffel Tower last night and am going to the Louvre tomorrow!

The rest of my time in Berlin was wonderful. We spent our last day there (a free day) going to the zoo (yes - the zoo!) and the Reichstag, which is the German government building. There is so much interesting history in Berlin, and it is really beautiful, which I didnt expect. The day before we left Germany we drove out to a town called Potsdam to see a famous castle out there, and it was unbelievable. There were huge trees everywhere and all of the leaves were changing - I was pretty much in heaven.

The time between Germany and Paris was a little bit of a break time for us before the craziness of the last month. We stayed in smaller towns and nicer hotels and didnt have quite as much scheduled as usual. Leiden is a university tozn about 20 minutes outside of Amsterdam. Windmills everyzhere and cold enough to snow (but it didnt...) - it was a beautiful place. We spent most of our time there studying for midterms, but we did get to go to the Anne Frank House (which has Disneyland status lines) and the Van Gogh museum, which was incredible. This museum has about 70 of Van Gogh's works, and it is so interesting to be able to see how much his style changed throughout his life. Also, he was a wierd dude, so that museum was full of all sorts of crazy stories.

After Leiden we went to Bruges, Belgium, which may be my favorite town so far. It was just ridiculously cute! Bridges and alleys and leaves and horses and chocolate everywhere - what could be better?! One of my best friends from school, Juliann, is studying in the south of France this semester and she was on break this week, so she came up to Bruges to play with us, which was so fun. We also got to spend a day in Brussels visiting the European Union sights and generally becoming more educated, worldly human beings.

After Bruges we traveled to Bayeux which is a town along the beaches in Normandy. We spent Halloween there - we had a party and then a group of us hiked up a bluff to an old Nazi bunker in the dark - how creepy is that?!?! We stayed in a pretty nice hotel outside of the city on a golf course, and it was just beautiful. Our first morning there I woke up early and went for a walk during the sunrise...it was probably one of my favorite memories of the trip. The best day of that city, (and the reason we went there) was the day we went to all of the D-Day museums and actually walked around on Omaha Beach, the main beach where the Americans invaded. It was surreal to stand in such a peaceful, beautiful place and imagine it as the chaos of battle. We also went to the American Cemetary (which is owned by America, so I got to stand on American soil for the first time in 2 months!!) and spent a lot of time talking about the envents of D-Day.

Now we are in Paris enjoying this crazy huge city.

32 days left - I promise to update my blog at least once in that time ;)

all my love...