Williams traveled to Berlin and Munich, spending four and half days in each city.

“My grandma is from Berlin and so her sister and also her brother’s son, my second cousin, live in Berlin,” said Williams.

While staying with family in Berlin, Williams got to explore some of the governmental buildings.

“Berlin was really cool because I got a private tour of the Chancellor’s office because my cousin is an advisor to the Chancellor. He works on her European policy team…He gave me a tour and told me about his job and how he’s helped in some of her speeches,” said Williams.  

While in Munich, Williams visited Dachau Concentration Camp and Neuschwanstein Castle, both short train rides from the city. Williams commented on the beauty of Neuschwanstein, which is located in the Bavarian Alps and is the castle on which Disney’s is based.

Having studied genocide in many of his political science classes, Williams was particularly impacted by his visit to Dachau.  

“I’m doing a presentation for Colloquium Day over genocide and ethnic cleansing, so to go and be there…it has an impact on you that you can’t really explain,” said Williams.

Lott traveled to Japan with a friend, visiting three cities: Tokyo, Nara and Kyoto, over the break.

One of Lott’s favorite days in Japan was when they visited Tōdai-ji temple and Kasuga-taisha shrine in Nara and ended the day at Kiyomizu-dera temple in Kyoto.

“I really enjoyed my day at Nara because during the day we went through the deer park and through a shrine and a temple, and then we went to Kyoto after that and we went to another temple that we thought was closed initially. It just kind of worked out perfectly,” said Lott.

They were able to explore the inside Tōdai-ji and the grounds of Kasuga-taisha. They hiked uphill two and half miles to view Kiyomizu-dera, which Lott notes was worth the climb because of the view of Kyoto from the temple.

An owl cafe in Tokyo was also among the top places he visited. Lott said that there are a lot of cafes in Tokyo, but they are a bit different from cafes in the U.S. They have many animal cafes, like cats, hedgehogs and owls where you pay a fee to get in, get a free drink or unlimited free drinks for a period of time and then can interact with the animals.

“At cat cafes you can try to pet that cats, but I hear they’re super jaded and hate everyone, so that didn’t sound fun [and] I’ve already held a hedgehog…so I was like ‘well I guess I’ll go to the owl cafe’ because owls are cool and why not…They had a lot of different types of owls, some you could pet. Everywhere you looked around there were just owls perched in every direction. One did fly next to my head and hit me with his wing,” said Lott.

Among the various activities, Lott’s absolute favorite was eating at Hashimoto, an unagi, or freshwater eel, restaurant. Opened in 1835, this restaurant has a sixth generation chef and is Michelin star rated.

“I had had unagi in the U.S., but it wasn’t anywhere as near as good as that. It was actually pretty cheap because we went for lunch…The tradition in Japan when you get a good meal is that you have to eat every grain of rice, so I did and it was really good,” said Lott.

Cover photo courtesy of The Most Perfect View.

Through the course of the game there are many factions that the player can choose to join including the Brotherhood of Steel, The Institute, Railroad and the Minutemen. The faction you choose to join influences the outcome of the story line, along with certain bonuses or items that you could earn with one faction as opposed to another. Although the idea of choosing a faction is something that remains constant from “Fallout 3,” the new factions offer a refreshing twist on the story of Fallout as a whole.

The point of the main storyline of the new game is to retrieve your son, who was stolen by the Institute from vault 111 in Boston after the nuclear annihilation of the surface. Some may think that the games are too similar since “Fallout 3” is based on finding your father.

While this is marginally true, “Fallout 4” is definitely different than its predecessor. One major area on the map that is incredibly unique is Diamond City, which is crucial to the story and is located inside of Fenway Park. Its contains a home that the player can purchase in game called “Home Base.” If that isn’t cool, I don’t know what is.

Major changes made include things like structure building at settlements the player controls, with a new perk allowing for trade between multiple settlements; extreme weapon customization, power armor customization; armor customization, and my personal favorite, modification (mod) support for consoles like PlayStation 4 (PS4) and Xbox One.

Mod support on consoles is a huge step forward for Bethesda Softworks and the video game world in general. Typically mods are only allowed and supported on personal computers (PCs). While “Fallout 4” is already an extremely well-made game, mods make any game better. With the option of things as menial as the Buzz Lightyear power armor mods or more useful mods like inventory search mods, the game gains something that not even “Fallout 3” had: infinite replay-ability.

Although previous Bethesda games like “Skyrim” and “Fallout 3” had a huge amount of replay-ability, Fallout 4 pushes that amount of replay-ability to infinity (and beyond with the Buzz Lightyear mod).

In short, “Fallout 4” is every gamer college student’s worst nightmare. Not only does it take a lot of time to achieve a high level in the game and complete it, but every playthrough of the game you can add on more mods to use, find items you had not in a previous playthrough and attempt to find all of the Vault Boy bobble heads spread everywhere throughout the Wasteland.

“Fallout 4” is the perfect game for “no life,” and I know that it is probably the only video game that I will enjoy playing for many years to come.

The game of futsal originated in Brazil in the 1930s and 1940s where it was played as a much smaller version of soccer to make up for the lack of space for full-sized soccer fields. Futsal was and is a way for people of all ages to enjoy a form of organized soccer in a much smaller space.

Although futsal originated as an alternative to full field soccer, many of the world’s greatest players started their soccer careers playing futsal. The likes of Pele, Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Xavi and Ronaldo all credit futsal as the reason their skill improved so significantly as children.

The basic rules of futsal are relatively straightforward. All rules of regular soccer apply, but the ball is one size smaller than usual and weighted, and there are five players for each side with unlimited substitutions available. The games are much shorter than full soccer, with only 24-minute halves.

Although futsal originated in the streets of Brazil, many young soccer players in the United States now play futsal at the club level, usually up until the age of about 18, in order to become better players.

Here in Kansas City, Heartland Futsal is an organization that local players use, primarily to play almost every weekend during the winter months.

While the international futsal scene is not huge, there is a Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) affiliated world cup for futsal every four years, with Spain, Brazil and Portugal being the “heavyweights” of that competition.

A current star that plays futsal in the Portuguese futsal leagues is Ricardinho. Here, you can see the amount of skill that is showcased by Ricardinho.