Being from the United States, I’m used to paying for stuff in dollars, weighing things in ounces or pounds, and using indicators, such as Fahrenheit degrees, A.M. and P.M. to tell time, and miles to measure distance.

But with my trip overseas coming up, I just remembered that I’ll need to know how to do conversions! Fortunately, there are a number of apps that can help me. One of my favorite apps is the XE Currency App (xe dot com) to access live exchange rates. I’ve also changed the settings on my phone to display the 24-hour (or “military time”) clock and to show the weather in Celsius degrees.

I love a challenge, so I’ve been trying to get comfortable with the conversions by thinking in terms of Euro, Celsius, 24-hour clock, kilometers, and kilograms.

For the past few days, I’ve said the following things (in my head):

“OMG, if I stop adding cream and sugar to my 470 ml of coffee, I could lose about 1.5 kilos in a week.”

“It’s hot today.  Must be at least 24 degrees!”

“Bay to Breakers is a 12K foot race through San Francisco.” (Oh wait, that doesn’t count. Come to think of it, no one says it’s a 7.46-mile foot race!)

Then there’s the whole business about adapters and converters. Thankfully, my phone charger (as most electronics these days) is dual-voltage, which means I won’t need a converter. However, I’ll still need an adapter since my plugs with the 2 flat prongs won’t fit in the European rounded-peg prong sockets.

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(Photo credit: Target)

Well, that’s all for now.  Need to go to bed – it’s almost 22:00!