Today I experienced autumn leaves falling off trees for the first time in my life. It made me think of the many simple pleasures we take for granted every day.
How often is it that we, in the Bay Area, take time out of our day to embrace the cold weather as a sign that the holidays are coming up? Many of us, myself included, find ourselves so busy with our lives that we may see the transition from warm to cold and rainy weather as inconvenient and unnecessary. I'm pretty sure that people who live on the East Coast would feel the same way about the falling leaves. Rather than embracing the physical transition between Summer and Winter, they would probably curse the trees during the season of Autumn for getting in their way of going on with their everyday lives. Being from the West Coast, I never got to see this "dance" of the bright orange leaves in the wind but I was lucky enough to have front row tickets to this majestic seasonal event during breakfast with Ms. Kronenberg, Rebecca, and Adrianne. That was an excellent start to an extremely eventful day.
We went on an hour-long drive to New London, Connecticut, where we took a college tour at Connecticut College. As expected from East Coast colleges, it was characterized by rustic brick buildings. The college itself is currently undergoing construction; a new natural sciences building is being built and it will be open to students in Fall of 2012. This sounds rather perfect for a student looking to study zoology and animal behavior like me. :)
The best part of the day had to be the reunion of my Women and Leadership class back at the hotel. It was described by everyone as surreal, AWESOME (D'Ara's catch phrase), and nearly tear-worthy. We were all just so happy to be back together and we skyped and called the people who weren't able to attend the event just to let them know how much we hoped they were with us today. My Women and Leadership group is so closely-knit that we're known by other courses to be "the only class that cried when the session was over" and frankly, I'm really proud of that title.
"Tomorrow," as quoted by one of the administrators of the Symposium, "will be an 'action-packed' day."
Josephine,
ReplyDeleteIsn't it great to finally experience what you've only been able to read about? The changing of the seasons is spectacular but we're often cheated because here in the Bay Area it isn't as pronounced.
One advantage you have, though, is that soon you'll be back on a plane heading home while some poor groundskeeper gets to rake up all of those beautiful leaves. Bummer.
Was this visit to Connecticut College something done through the ILC or something through Brown?