St Patrick's Day Parade

Saturday March 17th in Lawrence
Every year in Lawrence (like most US cities), there is one day where everybody feels irish, wears green and goes to the downtown parade... Most of the associations of the town and its surroundings parade in green attire. The happiest of all are the children who get all the candy distributed by the people parading.

The first of the many Miss St Patrick (2012 and many previous years too!)The university even makes special t-shirts especially for the event!
The KU students party float!

Yes, even the horses are painted green:

This float wasn't green but seemed like a fun one to be on:

Spring is here

Its only the 2 first weeks of March, but the weather is beautiful, the trees are blooming and the daffodils are out... so yes, it's spring already!

Chasing cardinals

After arriving in Kansas and walking on the trails close to my appartment, I discovered that many of these beautiful birds (The Northern Cardinal) live right here in Lawrence and I have been trying to get some close up shots of them.... Much easier to do when trees don't have any leaves!

The females only have the red beak:

Since spring is here, the males are constantly chirping to get attention...

End of winter scenes

With the warm weather already showing up, I have to hurry and put up my shots of the last winter details.
These pictures were taken on the cross country course of Haskell University, a beautiful place that I found close to my place, prefect to go for a run or a walk on weekends, away from the streets and cars.

End of winter

Although I was warned about the snow and the cold, my first winter in the Midwest was not a difficult one. The only snow we had was what you see on the picture, and it only stayed for a couple days. It did get to 5-10F (-15/-13°C) (which rarely happens in France) but not for long periods of time. In contrast, I missed the extremely and unusually cold winter in Europe, it got to -20°C (-4F!) in Strasbourg, something I have never experienced myself there!

Genghis Kahn - Mongolian BBQ in Kansas City

January 2012 in Kansas City, Missouri

One of the restaurants that I found pretty special since I live in Kansas is the Mongolian restaurant in Kansas City. First you choose your food raw, it is then cooked on a huge grill using 2 wooden sticks to handle your food. In the ancient Mongolian tradition, soldiers used their swords to do so!
Here's how is looks:

First pick your vegetables,

Then your meat(s)3rd step: the sauces... hand it to the cook and he tosses it on the huge grill!Thanks Vidhu for the demonstration:

Enjoying our food...