Well, I'm not all the way north of it of course, lol. There's just a small little spur that juts in below the thumb of the Michigan lower peninsula. But yeah, it does get pretty cold here. It just amuses me that I'm further north, south, east, and west of Canada at the same time.
I think getting my new passport was around 150 dollars or so. Don't remember exactly. Idk how much an enhanced ID would cost, but probably less. Considering American car culture it wouldn't be very sustainable for the ID's to be too expensive here. Standard ID is literally your drivers license, although you can also get a pure ID card that isn't a license to drive. (even so there are some people who are so impoverished that an ID/DL is outside their price range).
South Africa has a lot of history to heal from. It was in 2009 when I went, so I don't remember it perfectly. But it was a colonial possession and the white minority did maintain brutal policies of apartheid and forced communal dwelling and a lot of people still live in the townships today (they certainly did when I was there, and things do change but some not all that quickly). So there is still a great deal of poverty--impoverished parents don't have a lot to pass down to their children, etc. And the racism isn't gone either. I remember one time we were standing in line as a class and the cashier tried to serve me before my black classmate who was in line in front of me. I almost didn't notice but she said, "Hey, wait a minute!" We were warned that people would act like that too, so it wasn't just an isolated incident. We landed in Johannesburg, and when we were there we weren't allowed to wander very far or alone and we couldn't leave the rental compount after dark at all. Most of the trip was spent in Cape Town, where we had a lot more freedom. We'd still see guards with machine guns standing by ATMs and banks and stuff. I never experienced any violence. I'm trying to remember if any of my classmates got into trouble, but it was a long time ago.
