Dead trees, fall leaves and one very cool map

Okay so I totally did not know about the satellite feature on Google maps and it is SO COOL!! (I haven't really stopped to think about how creepy it actually is, but hey, let me enjoy this). I just looked up my house (which by the way is wrong - Google maps labeled the house next to mine as mine) and my apartment and the place where I'm going to be living in Spain and my cousin's house in New Delhi and my other cousin in Luxembourg and ohmigod this thing is just about the coolest thing I've seen in a very long time!!

Alright - momentary lapse of sanity right there. Anyways, today I got the info for my host mother in Spain, and according to Google maps, she lives only 10 minutes away from the university. (I'm pretty sure it's 10 minutes by car though, so not sure how relevant that fact actually is). As I was looking around the map it really hit me that I'm going to be in Europe next semester, away from everyone and everything I know. And, not to knock everyone and everything here, but that prospect is refreshing and invigorating and oh so exciting. I'm almost done with this hellish semester (26 days!!!!), and while next semester is slightly daunting and intimidating, it will be like nothing I've ever done before.

Anyways, things have been slightly weird around here. Weird in the sense that I don't remember the last time I saw a blue sky - it's just been days and days of gray. One day it sort of rained, another it was kind of misty, and then another you could feel the rain lurking in the air around you, but it wasn't actually there. Last night I was walking around the mall on the center of campus and it was the eeriest thing I've ever seen - the entire expanse of grass was covered in this mist, just like the fake mist created by dry ice at low-budget magic shows. I thought to myself, if it was Halloween right now, I would kind of be scared out of my mind. It really looked like something out of a Hitchcock movie or something. But it wasn't cold and it was fairly early in the night (8 p.m.) so it wasn't totally sketchy. You would think that with a misty field would come the howling wind and people bundled up in coats and scarves, but it's been pretty warm for this time of year. Today it was supposed to touch 69 - walking around you saw people in shorts and people in coats.

And it's not just the weather that's strange. Yesterday I was walking to the journalism building to work on a project, and the moment I turned the corner, I knew something was missing. As I walked down the steps, I saw a gigantic tree stump and realized that just the day before, when I had gone to my journalism class, there used to be a big old friendly tree there. And now it was gone, just like that. It was so sad to think that something as large and and stable and seemingly immovable as a tree was subject to the same rude awakening as the leaves that fell off it. I guess it just reminded me that nothing is ever really safe. In just the past two days I've walked by the stump about six times and each time a tiny part of me dies along with it.

But while some trees are being cut down, others are just coming to life. Well, not really, but all the twiggy trees in the courtyard outside my apartment have suddenly decided to debut their fall colors. I thought that the autumn colors peaked weeks ago, but apparently I was wrong. One of them has leaves that are this intense orangey-red color that has to be one of the most beautiful colors I've ever seen. And another one is a paler yellow-orange that is also stunning. Further away from the building is another gigantic multi-tonal tree, and while its colors aren't as pretty, there's just something about it that is striking. Hopefully it's one of the big trees on campus that isn't on the chopping block.

The other weird thing that I've noticed is that my hair has been really curly lately and I realized today that it is probably because of the pseudo-humidity nestled into all this gray. My hair isn't the spiral, mop-top kind of curly, but rather looser ringlets. Usually it's wavy, but lately it's been making the move over to curly. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I mean, I think it looks great, but I look at myself in the mirror and I can see the difference. Ever since I got to college, I think my hair has just been making a gradual transition to curly-ness, since I don't remember it agreeing with me in high school. It wasn't ever straight or curly back then, just straight up frizzy and poofy and disagreeable. So I guess the current curls are drastic improvement, especially because it literally styles itself. I know, I know, every girl is going to hate me when I say this, but I actually don't have to style it at all for it to look this way. I just walk out of the shower, slap on some mousse and I'm ready to go.

Alright, well that's the random amalgamation of thoughts that have occupied my mind this week. Now I think it is advisable that I put my mind to more productive means, like writing my English paper or studying for my government test. Yeah, I should really get on that...