Chemicals and Organic Food

I wanted to comment about a funny article Raj sent me. I was asking Brian the other day what a 'chemical' is actually defined as. He said it was everything and couldn't think of the right definition. I looked it up and here were two versions.

Merriam Webster: a substance obtained by a chemical process or producing a chemical effect (a little vague, so I looked up a more specific definition)

Chemistry.about.com: Short answer: Everything is a chemical. Longer answer: Chemistry is the study of matter and its interactions with other matter. Anything made of matter is therefore a chemical. Any liquid, solid, gas. Any pure substance; any mixture. Water is a chemical.

A few days later, with excellent timing, Raj sent me this funny article:
http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2008/ChemicalFree.asp

I just thought this was interesting since most of us are scared of 'chemicals' without even really thinking about what that means. I get caught up in the whole 'organic' world because I want to eat healthier. But I have to stop and think sometimes because the labels are sometimes very helpful, while a lot of times they are just saying things to scare me into buying their more expensive products (which I do sometimes without thinking). How about when I bought organic, hormone-free chicken one time only to find out that ALL chickens are hormone-free because the FDA doesn't allow chickens or pigs to be injected with hormones, only cows??

NYE on Charles Bridge

We didn't really have NYE plans and had gone to dinner and resided to watching a movie when our friend Eli called. We decided to meet up on Charles Bridge with the rest of Prague and watch the fireworks. The crowd was massive and it was cold, but a lot of fun.


The view from Charles Bridge to watch the fireworks. Sorry, I am not very good with night mode on the camera so this is the best it gets.


There were about 3-4 different firework presentations going on, even a smaller one with some drunk guys near us on the bridge. The girls standing next to them did not seem impressed by it.


Here is some of the crowd right off of the bridge. Amazingly, I wasn't too cold and didn't mind being outside for the night. We popped some champagne on the bridge and toasted to 2009!


Iva, Magda, and Eli


Brian and I

Short Hair

I have been meaning to post this for awhile. So I decided about a year or two ago that I wanted to try short hair. It took awhile for me to actually do it, and just before I moved to Prague I did my first step. Apparently me asking for funky and edgy is not possible, people just don't believe me. It was a nice haircut, exactly that "nice".



So, I decided to try one more time once I got over here. Now, a language barrier was a little difficult to get my point across, but this lady did a much better job. I like it, but not sure if I am going to keep it. Sometimes I am tempted to go back to long hair. Comments please?









The best part of all of this is my friend Sara got her hair cut the same way too at the same time. Hey, what can we say? Great minds think alike (or get tired of their long hair at the same time).

Christmas in Vienna

We made a trip down to Vienna for Christmas for a few days. This was our first Christmas to celebrate alone without any family. Holidays don't feel the same when you don't have family around. We did realize that this was probably our only Christmas to spend alone so we did it up like any other couple. We toured the city, ate some food, slept in, and were very lazy. The best part about living in Europe is that a 4 hour train ride puts you in another country with a whole different history. Here is a slideshow of our sightseeing. I guess we should thank our blog because I had to look up exactly what were all the buildings that we took pictures of while we were there.