"Bloody" Omaha

The most famous of the D-day beaches, I believe this is where most people died. I think 99% of the first round of people were killed almost immediately. And, as we all know, it was this invasion that turned the war to our favor.
















We were told that after heavy rains, you can still see some of the barbed wire coming out from the sand.


































I don't know about you, but I think this makes perfect sense.



















The French government gave this property to the Americans to use as a monument to all those that died. Actually, the paper we received called it a "shrine"... which I thought was interesting, I hope they didn't really mean that. Anyhow, the property is tax-free in perpetuity (that means forever! :-p).


















An interesting side note, this is in Caen. Apparently, they don't have a clue as to where Key West is. Unless there's another one I don't know about, which I suppose is possible. And honestly, I guess I can see where they might get confused since the name does have WEST in it... so it would be easy to assume that it might be in the western part of the United States.

Brugge Windmills

My friend Emily joined me for her Spring Break. After showing her around in Lille on Monday, Tuesday we decided to rush off to see Brugge. Surprisingly, there were some interesting things that I didn't get to see the first time I was there. I had no idea there were windmills in Brugge. We got lucky, between all the hail and rain, we had some nice blues skies and so I got to take some pictures.

So I introduce to you the windmills of Brugge...
















I got a little carried away... there are so many nice pictures that I decided to put most of them up.













I thought the benches were pretty neat...






























































And of course, you can't go to Belgium without having belgian waffles. This one was particularly nice... it had seasoned cherries on top... mmmmm...

St. Patty's Day

No green beer this year. Actually, the french don't seem to embrace this holiday quite like we do in the States. Which is interesting because they like to drink... so why not drink even more on St. Patty's day?

So what did we do instead? Well, a mutual friend, Mario (from Germany), visited us. We walked around for a few hours... showing him different parts of the city (some of which I hadn't even seen before).

As we were walking around, I had the pleasure of taking some pictures of a good ol' french protest...













(This is not to be confused with a good ol' French riot.)














If I remember correctly, these are the buses that carried all the policeman (then again, I could be making that part up...)














A small group of friendly policemen waiting for action-- ya know, in case this group of people start getting a little rowdy.




From what I gathered, this was a protest against nuclear energy. Apparently, some improvements have been made to the technology. The french government is again looking at building some of these energy plants somewhere around here. It seems these people would prefer investment in other safer and more environmentally-friendly options.




These people have a cause! (and it doesn't include bathing).
















Actually, I found the atmosphere quite pleasant. It was like a small festival. They had music playing. People were selling stuff. I only stayed long enough to take these pictures. Flo was too scared to walk over there with me...worried that the US government wouldn't allow him back into the country if he did go. Interesting, huh? Apparently, this happened to one of his friend's parents.

Random Things

I know, I'm a bit late... but it's better than never, right? Besides, I'm distracting myself from homework right now. This is something I *need* to do.

So, here we have some pictures of the time it snowed and actually stuck to the ground. This was back at the beginning of February.



This is Flo's car covered with snow... probably its first time ever having such an experience.


Foot steps on the side walk... note the steps aren't very deep... it didn't really snow much but it was nice, nonetheless.














Ok, so this is completely unrelated to snow... but I thought this was funny.












My french audience probably won't understand why I find this funny. A spleen is an organ in your body... at the moment, I'm not sure of what its function is... I just remember from Beavis & Butthead, Beavis was also screaming "ack, my spleen! my spleen!" (and I doubt that explanation gave much understanding as to why I find it funny... but I tried).




As we all know Flo.

















Here we have Alban, a friend of Flo's here in Lille. We see him quite regularly as we often eat lunch at his place.





















I think this is a really interesting picture. I like the perspective and the off-color... the strange mood... all that...





















And, finally, an unusually sunny day in Lille... this is very rare. I couldn't resist the urge of going to the park to feed birds and take pictures.