8 days until Paris. 18 days until my birthday. Life is good.

Life is good. Stress happens and we all need to cope with it.  The girls who I am going to Paris with finally booked a hotel!! It took a lot of stress off of me, now that we have a place to stay.  We will really be in Paris three nights - but we only book a hotel for Thursday and Friday night and not Saturday night.  We have this idea that since our plane leaves around 6am on Sunday will will just stay up late in Paris and then get the airport and camp out until our flight.  The only downside I see of this is having to carry around our backpacks all day on Saturday - if we decide this isn't a good idea I'm sure we can find a hotel/hostel to stay in on Saturday night.  Thanks to all the people that helped with finding a hotel - shot-outs to Paul Coates and Mom!! You guys are great!!

Nothing else really exciting has been happening - just going to class trying to learn something! Ohh... today I wen to a volunteer meeting at SLU and I found there are two main sites I would really like to volunteer at.  The first one is a local soup kitchen about a 4 minute walk from campus.  The other volunteer oppurtunity I was interested in fits me perfectly - I just hope I am able to participate in it.  Here is the link: http://spain.slu.edu/student_life/service_opportunities/docs/bokatas.pdf     Let me know if it doesn't work.  The only thing I am worried about is walking alone to and from the volunteer site.  I will have to contact Ana (the lady in charge and see what she says)  I have always wanted to do something like this and I just hope it will all work out :)

Since I won't be going to Morocco for my winter break, I believe I might be going to Brussels.  I have heard it is wonderful, but I need to do some research!! Everything will work out fine though.  For all you Packer fans out there - I will be able to watch them dominate the Bears on this Sunday at a decent hour.  I have not decided if I will be watching it on my computer or if I will be going to a local bar to watch the game - either way I really want to watch the Packers win! And then they will be in the Superbowl - which is on my birthday! Life is great - isn't it.

I did my reading assignment for my philosophy/ethics class this morning and even though I didn't really understand most of what the philosopher was trying to convey to me, there was one section that really stuck out to me.  For some background information the reading was on the subject of relativism and how two belies, outlooks, or views are appropriated under different conditions - at least that is what I thought the whole article was about.  Anyways, tonight I thought I would leave you guys with a short excerpt from the reading - I hope you enjoy as much as I did.

"If we are going to accommodate the relativist's concerns, we must not simply draw a line between ourselves and others.  We must not draw a line at all, but recognize that others are at varying distances from us.  We must also see that our reactions and relations to other groups are themselves part of our ethical life, and we should understand these reactions more realistically in terms of practices and sentiments that help to shape out life."