World's Fair Visit

     First day: The amount of culture I have been experiencing at this Fair in Paris is incredible! I have never seen this much culture back home in Austria. First of all, the "Art Nouveau" is truly revolutionary. The paintings just looks so natural and intricate. But it does not stop just at the paintings. There is art everywhere at this exhibit. Everywhere I look, I see art, whether it is in lockets, jewelry, clothing, drawings, just everywhere! I really enjoy how flora really seems to be the focus in the majority of the paintings, seen in my favorite painting, the one with the woman with the orange hair. The architecture looms over everyone, casting shadows with its sheer height, and its intricate designs, like that one pointy tower. I learnt of this new artist by the name of Alphonse Mucha. I think I'm going to follow his works from now on. I felt a sense of harmony with the art and the current industrial state I am living in. In addition to the beauty of art I experienced, the natural life forms I saw were quite new in the sense that were I live, the industrial smoke kills all the plants. There was this one American, Luther Burbank, who was telling me of his works as a botanist. Naturally, I was quite interested. He told about his desire to develop diverse strains of the same plants, like his potato. He also created new kinds of plants, one of which was what he called, the snowbank berry. He told me he managed to do this by crossing different blackberries from different place in the world. The berries he crossed were traits he wanted inside of his berries-- the light color, the flavor, and the quality. He was also telling me about his spineless cactus, which he made by mixing the Indian Fig and the Mexican Prickly Pear. This made it easier for people to use the juices. But what was the most magnificent as a poor worker was his creation of the Russet Potato. He told me it was less prone to disease, which I think the Irish famine inspired him.
    Second day: At the fair, I saw these men practicing what I initially thought was witchcraft. The presenters told me it was called "electricity". Naturally, I was extremely curious. So I asked for an explanation. They told me that this electricity has two different forms-- alternating current and directional current. This confused me immensely, as I didn't know how a fruit can be involved in this witchcraft, but I decided not to interrupt. This gentleman named William Stanley Jr. was showing me this generator he made. He was telling me how AC was much better than DC, which he told me was invented by a man by the name of Thomas Edison. I thought this electricity was useless, as I didn't understand how it could be applied. But this man by the name of Michael Faraday was telling me of an electric motor he made-- a motor that can power the machinery in the factories just with this electricity. As a worker, this amount of manpower baffles me. All this walking around made me hungry, so I decided to stop for lunch. Naturally, since I was at a fair with everyone from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Colonies, I wanted to culturally immerse myself and step out of my boundaries. I went with a group so we could split the food and try a large variety of foods. The first I thing I tried came from the new Germany, a sausage in a bun. Usually I had these separately, but now I could have them together, and be on the move while I eat. I also had a bit of toast with this thing a man by the name of Mr. Kellogg called peanut butter. It didn't taste too fantastic, but what baffled me the most was his process-- it was completely innovative. A man was showing me this snack you made by popping corn, which he called popcorn. The corn kernels would explode with a loud noise, and then it transformed into a white cloud. I never imagined eating corn as a snack. And for desert, my friends and I split ice cream. But we managed to walk around effortlessly while eating. The way we did this? The vendor apparently ran out of bowls, so he fashioned a cone shape out of the wafer vendor next door.