Minnesota Summer Photo Diary

This week I learned that the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area was found to have the most extreme weather in the whole country. This was based on the number of days in which heating or air conditioning was needed per year. Considering our winters, this comes as no surprise. But our summers play their own role in these numbers. Hot and humid though they may be, Minnesota summers are adored throughout the state, most likely because our 10,000+ lakes are there to cool us off.

Yes, I was out of town a lot this summer (I haven’t even covered all my summer trips on here yet), but I tried my hardest to make the most out of my time at home.

Valence and Fête de la Musique

After Lyon, my next stop was an hour train ride away: Valence. I was staying in a country house about 20 min outside of Valence with some old family friends. Although I absolutely loved spending time in the countryside, surrounded by farms and mountains, spending time in the city of Valence was pretty cool too. It was a really unique travel experience because Valence isn’t a huge, major city, like Lyon or Paris, or a quaint, little village that draws hoards of tourists. It was an average sized, real French town.

My second night in the region was June 21. The first day of summer isn’t usually a big deal for me, but France celebrates the holiday with the nation-wide Fête de la Musique (direct translation: music festival).

Spain Part 1: My First Time Traveling Alone

Three years ago, my family was given the amazing opportunity of hosting an exchange student from Spain. Her name was Natalia, and she lived with us for 5 months for the second semester of the 2012-2013 school year. Living with someone from all the way across the world was definitely a cool experience. She taught me some Spanish, and we helped her work on her English and assimilate into American culture; we were each other’s windows into new and foreign cultures.

The following summer, (summer of 2014), at barely 15 year old, I flew all the way to Spain on my own to spend a few weeks with Natalia’s family just outside of Madrid. I was about

Beach Reads

I’m usually open to any genre, any type of book. But when it comes to beachside reading, I admit that I’m drawn to easy, fluid reads. Books that you can let your mind gloss over but still feel captivated by the plot, books read purely for entertainment. Maybe it’s the hot sun turning my brain to mush, but those are the kind of books I like to read at the beach. As we have been in Sicily for the past week, we’ve spent A LOT of time at the beach, and that means A LOT of time to read some pretty relaxing but captivating, borderline sappy, books. With my Kindle in hand, these are the books I’ve been reading this week.