Where did the time go?

So. Where to start? It's a little bit hard to believe that as I'm typing this, I'll be on my way home in less than one day! As amazing as this trip has been I think home sounds pretty good right about now.

The past few days in England have been great, visiting museums (Natural History Museum and British Museum), seeing the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, watching The Nutcracker and other very wonderful amazing things. I have to admit, that while we were at The Nutcracker I spent some of that time thinking about how much my life has changed in the past year, because my grandmother used to take my brother and I to see productions of both The Nutcracker and A Christmas Carol in Columbus when I was little. The museums are amazing partly in that they're free! The part of the Natural History Museum that I saw, though factual was designed to also be interesting to children including interactive aspects.

Yesterday and our day trip to Paris was amazing! We got to see so much of the city by walking and using their Metro (subway) some. It was great to get a chance to go see another country in addition to the one we've been staying in for two weeks now. It was kind of really cool to think that we had a short train trip from London to Paris, and that we got to see as much as we did in Paris. Our trip to Paris was a very brisk tour, more of a flavor for things we may like to one day come back and visit. I think, coming from the United States where our country is so big it is a bit of a shock to be in Europe. Granted from my house in Ohio I can be in Canada in less than four hours, but in the time we would travel from one state to another or two away from home we were traveling from country to country! Still somewhat amazing to me. Additionally, one REALLY nice thing about Paris was that though I barely understood any of the language when speaking to Parisians, the cars drive on the road in the same way that we use in the United States! Made crossing the street really easy in that for the first time in two weeks I didn't have to force myself to look the opposite direction from what I am used to at home.