Summer Time

I just got back from over 24 hours of being on a plane/in an airport and three weeks in Europe. Learned a lot, saw a lot, and experienced a lot.

Being gone made me realize how important my family is to me as I missed home quite a bit.

On the trip, people often inquired why America is NOT beautiful while places in Italy are. I'm not convinced that America is less beautiful than a place like Italy by any means. Certainly, most of the churches in Florence and Rome are much more aesthetically pleasing and fun than American churches, but America as a country is not ugly by any means. America boasts of beautiful places such as the Grand Canyon and Yosemite, but places in Italy are much older, and thus more historically exciting. This thought is not complete, other than to note that America is beautiful for other reasons that Italy and Greece may not be. Another thing I thought about is how relatively new America is in terms of being a civilization (250 years of existence compared to the 2500+ years that a place like Athens has been around).

More thoughts about the trip that I may record throughout the summer. Glad to be home for now and ready to start work. Going to Yosemite this week. Excited about that =)