wonders of the U.S.

just returned from miami earlier this afternoon... i have TONS of posts to catch up on. (skipped two dream job fridays, whups... i'll make it up this weekend, i promise.) anyways, as i was traveling, i did a lot of reflecting. here is one of many thoughts that came up.

i love traveling.

and by that, i don't mean just vacationing, or going to warm or awesome places. it's interesting to see where people live, how people live, experiencing different cultures and languages, and most of all, meeting random people across the world. it began in 4th grade, when i was a HUGE geography bee nerd. to outlast the experienced 5th graders in our school district in order to advance to state finals, my mom bought tons of material for me to study, and i soaked myself in these atlases and national geography magazines for hours after school every day. it intrigued me to learn about the geography, topography, natural resources, local goods and crops produced, and peoples' languages, foods, and cultures. i memorized the capitals of each country and state, along with the largest cities in each and their population.

sadly, 12 years later, i forgot most of it. (i think i was smarter in 5th grade than i am now, but thats okay...) but if i had the time, i'd totally go through all of that material again and learn it all over again.

so this time when i was traveling, i remembered one of my life goals: "to travel to every single country in the world, including antarctica." it made me sad to think that i would never have even remotely enough money to do that.... :( how in the world was i going to fulfill this goal? i still don't know... but i do think it would be very cool.

last year, we drove down to key west during my spring break. that was awesome because we got to drive through all different types of climate and landscapes on the way down. this year, being my 3rd year in a row to miami, i realized why i loved going there so much: not only was it warm and relaxing, miami is a culture and history-rich city.

today, as we were flying back, i was looking out the window, blessed to have a view of two amazing US landmarks below us:

1) the mississippi river. it was shockingly larger than i had imagined it to be, and also MUDDIER than i thought! it was actually brown from all the runoff, and not so much dark blue and clean like the waters of lake superior that i had gotten used to canoeing down every summer. i finally got to see this river after studying so much about it for the geography bee and reading all about it in tom sawyer and huck finn. this is what i saw from the plane:

'(yes, the brown is the river, and the blue-green is the land)

2) the gulf of mexico. when i first saw it, i thought to myself, "what in the world is that?!!!?!??!?!" because it wasn't one color and didn't look like water. it was dark blue with black blotches. when i got home, i google imaged "gulf of mexico oil spill." that is what i saw. i was appalled and in disbelief that almost a year later, even with all the clean-up efforts going on, it still looks like the oil spill happened yesterday.

(can you believe fish and birds live in that mess?!)

At the rate we're going, fresh water is going to be a scarce resource soon! I'm so glad we live near the Great Lakes... where we're surrounded by fresh water...



Side note: Dream Job Friday updated for 3/4-- scroll on and read!