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Published: October 25th 2008
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Holy Cow! Miami/Fort Lauderdale in July is hot hot hot with 125% humidity! After living in Germany where it's cloudy, cool, and dry unless it's raining, this was a huge adjustment for me. Luckily, even though it's a million degrees outside it's practically freezing inside because of the air conditioning. I forgot how nice it was to go from your air conditioned apartment to your air conditioned car and into another air conditioned building. It definitely makes the heat a lot easier to bear.
This was my first time back to the States in a little over a year and it was so great to see everything. I got excited about the little things, like going to the grocery store (it was so neat seeing all the new stuff that's come out in the past year!) or just going to Wendy's to get a Frosty 😊 The reason I went back was to start my Ph.D. (yes, my sanity has been questioned several times for this) and I have to spend a week on campus each semester. My school is Fort Lauderdale so I spent a week down there and then headed up to Cleveland for a week to see
friends and family. I didn't get a chance to make it to Nashville this trip but maybe the next one. I'll be back in 6 months 😊
My school in Florida was beautiful...there are palm trees on campus!! I made friends with some people in my classes and we all went to see a movie (in English!!...we saw Hancock with Will Smith, by the way) and went out to eat a few times. I also went to several malls and hit every clearance rack. I don't do much clothing shopping in Europe, not because the clothes are bad because they're beautiful, but because the Euro/Dollar exchange rate is definitely NOT in my favor and it's SO expensive to buy anything on the economy. I can always buy stuff online but if it doesn't fit then I have to pay to ship it back and that can get expensive.
Let me just say how crazy Miami drivers are! I'm used to driving fast...I've been driving on the Autobahn for over a year, but I'm not used to the weaving in and out of traffic that American drivers tend to do. Germans love to follow rules and the rule that
the left-hand lane is just for passing is generally followed pretty strictly. Everyone uses their turn signal, you signal to get over, you pass the car, and then you move back over to the right. It's great and I missed it a lot when I was in Florida.
I do love my GPS though. I brought my TomTom GPS with me from Germany and just switched it to North American maps from the Western European maps and I was able to get anywhere and everywhere with it. I could have done it the old fashioned way and used MapQuest but this made it a little bit easier. Hopefully Matt won't need it next time I have to come back and I'll be able to bring it with me again.
This semester is going to be a lot of work but I know I can do it. I just need to take it slow and steady and plug away at it. I'll finish eventually and then I won't have to worry about homework ever again...unless I really want to lol.
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