In "Curious George: European Vacation?"

You really don't need much more than that. Of course, you may have to get past the idea of wearing clean clothes each day. Just look at it this way: you'll be on the road so much, no one will notice if you wear the same shirt two or three days in a row. I'd usually wear the same pair of pants every day for a week, swap t-shirts every other day, and do my laundry at the end of the week in my other pair of pants. If it's not stained, and it doesn't smell (too bad), it's good to go. But NEVER underestimate the unpleasantness of day-old socks. Especially when you've been on your feet all day. Always pack more socks than you think you'll need. You can do your laundry in the hotel or hostel, but I found it really wasn't worth the effort. Much easier to just pay E 8 (at the most) and get it all done in a real washing machine. You said that your sister speaks Japanese? You can have a _lot_ of fun with that. First, find a large Japanese tour group (shouldn't be hard). Next procure an umbrella. Hold it up in the air, start speaking some relevant Japanese, and lead the tour group off in a random direction. Eek, I just realized how much I wrote. Sorry if it seems like a lot; I just love traveling =). If you'd like to know more, or have any questions, feel free to email me

In St. Goar (Germany, on the Rhine) you can stay in a Castle for E. 13 a night. It's _really_ cool, but you have to hike up a mini-mountain to get there. Bacharach (sp?) is close by St. Goar, and is home to the ruins of the largest castle on the Rhine river. E 8. and you can explore them all day. They didn't yell at me for climbing all over them when I was there, but I don't know if they will pay more attention during the summer. Venice is _really_ cool. It's an island, so you really can't get that lost. The best thing to do there is just start walking. Getting lost in Venice is the best part of it. But it's not really worth staying for more than a day or two. It's a dead city; tourism is the only thing Venice has going for it, so after a few days you'll pretty much see everything there is to see. Walking tours are a great idea. There's no better way to learn about the city. Most of the time you can get away without paying for them, just find out where they're going to start, watch them leave, wait five to ten minutes after they start, and catch up. Just pick a large group and stick to the back, and you'll be fine. Do a bit of research, and see if you can't visit during some local festivals, they'll add a lot to your experience. Eurorail passes will give you the most bang for your buck as far as trains go. However, if all you end up doing is visiting the major cities, consider airline travel. Ryanair and Easyjet are two ultra-cheap airlines in Europe. I flew from Rome to London for just $30 (one way, booked 3 days in advance). Often it's cheaper to fly to the city than take the train. But you do miss out that way; train travel is quite the experience, it's my favorite form of travel. Pack as light as possible. If you've never traveled anywhere before you'll try to pack for everything you might encounter. This is wrong. You can _always_ buy more stuff if you need it, but dropping three pairs of pants that you thought you might need is a bit of a pain in the ass. Unless, of course, you don't mind throwing things away. I started out with one of those huge backpacks that you see everyone with. A month and a half into my trip I traded it up for a 30L rucksack, not much bigger than a school bag. Never looked back. You'll be amazed by how little you need. My suggested packing list: - 1 pair of pants (some churches in Italy have a dress code) - 1 pair of shorts (maybe 2) - 1 pair of pajamas - 3-4 T-Shirts - 1 Nice shirt - 3-4 pairs of underwear - 7 pairs of socks (you can NEVER have too many socks) - Swimsuit - Sandles - GOOD walking shoes - Toiletries - Camera (You're only going for a months, so don't worry about finding places to download from a digital camera. Worst come to worst you should be able to find an internet cafe that'll let you do it.) - Notebook - Water bottle - Money belt, passport, etc. (I found the best way for me to deal with money was to goto the ATM each morning and pull out my day's budget. That way I never spent more than I thought I was. If I wanted to get a souvineer, I'd have to be thrifty for a day or two, and save up what was left over from each day)

One month is a really short time to see Europe on, but I'm sure you're already aware of that :). Instead of going straight to college when I graduated HS, I did four months in Europe (Oct-Jan). Best thing I've ever done, bar none. Language won't be a problem at all. All of the Germanic countries speak english. On the off chance you run into someone who doesn't, the next person will. A general rule of thumb that I found was that the farther north you go, the more people will speak english. I didn't speak any language other than English when I went, but quickly learned how to say hello, goodbye, please, thankyou, count, and some basic food items. I got by just fine. It's kind of hard to suggest where to go; you could spend a month alone in Paris (I nearly did). That reminds me, parisians is notorious for being rude to tourists. As long as you're super-polite to them, you'll have no problem at all. My experience was that they have an ultra-high level of politeness, and if you maintain said level, then they're quite nice people. Anyways, I found the north to be my favorite of all of Europe, but that's just me. You'll probably end up spending between one and three days per city if you want to get the most in. Sleep on the trains if at all possible, but watch your luggage in Italy. One or two of those locks with the pull out cords should do the trick. Just keep an eye out and you'll be fine. I met a girl who was nearly raped and robbed on an Italian train, but she was traveling alone. If at all possible, get a sleeper cabin. While it is possible to sleep in one of the normal cabins (pulling two seats together) it's not very comfortable. Add to the fact that you can't lock the door, and that you'll have people coming in and out of the room all night, and those sleeper cabins for $15 more start looking really nice. I would highly recommend Paris and Rome (I went in the winter, so your experiences will vary. But I hear that Italy is notorious for pick pockets in the summer). Be sure to visit the Catacombs of Paris, there's nothing like seeing miles of human bones stacked up in tunnels. Don't climb on the ruins in the Forum/Palentine hill, you'll get kicked out (I learned that the hard way). Book your lodging ahead of time. When I went I just showed up in town, but that was during the off season. I hear that a lot of places fill up quick during the summer. Stay out of Naples unless you're heading straight to Pompei (awesome btw) or Capri. There's no reason to visit it, it's a shithole of a town. Munich is awesome too, I spent a week there. Copenhagen is one of my favorite cities of all time, nothing major, just a really nice city. Stockholm is beautiful. There's a hostel there where they converted a sailing ship into dorms, and you can stay on it for only a little bit more per night. Well worth it.

In "Curious George: Living with Epilepsy."

My older brother has epilepsy due to a birth defect (which has also given him memory problems). Unfortunately for him, he's tried just about every medication to no avail. He even went as far as to get a vagus nerve implant to try to counter the seizures. It worked for a while, but lately has stopped having any effect. The biggest pain for him is when he has grand mauls. He never used to have them, but lately (the past two years or so) he's been having them all the time. They seem to be related to stress for him, but just about anything can bring them on. He hasn't hurt himself seriously, but has come close to it when he hyperextended all of the muscles in his leg (to the point just shy of ripping them apart). He couldn't walk on it for a week or two, and had trouble with it for nearly two months afterwards. As far as using pot to help epilepsy, my brother claims it's one of the only things that has helped him thus far. I think one of the biggest things is it relaxes him, lowering his stress levels. A lot of times the medication works for people, as will probably be the case with your mom. But for us, it's just something we've gotten used to. It took my brother a long time to do accept it (he was diagnosed at 12 and is 23 now), but he's getting there. For me, it's just part of every day life; if I'm at home, and I hear a loud crash, I run and make sure he's in a position that he won't swallow his tounge, or bash himself on anything. There's not much else to do other than that.

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