I´m still here in Spain, merrily wandering about...or not particularly wandering about, as the case may be. Anyway, I´m here still. Joel was here too, but left as of Wednesday following a lovely afternoon walking around Valencia together while eating clementines, white chocolate, and bread. And in two weeks I go to Bologna! It´s all quite exciting.

Today I discovered the inner workings of the postal system...rather, I discovered that I can in fact buy envelopes at the little bookstore on campus and that I can buy stamps at the tobacco store a few blocks away. I have not quite figured out what to do with the sealed and stamped envelope that I now have, but plan on figuring that out within a few hours. I know that I could take it to the post office, but that´s inconveniently far away and would cost a bus trip. I think there are little boxes into which I could drop said envelope, but I haven´t found one since I´ve started actually looking for one. The stamps for the US are a different price than those for Italy, and I haven´t asked yet about postcards, but eventually I shall figure it all out and start sending postcards to all of those people I promised them to.

It´s less than two months until Christmas! And then I will come back, have a couple of weeks of class and then I have to take finals! Some of the classes I still don´t quite know what is going on and that´s kind of scary... I started playing with the idea of dropping my Letters major the other day. Why am I trying to graduate with both Spanish and Letters? What am I going to do with either one of them? And what would Letters add that I can´t accomplish with only Spanish and carefully chosing my free electives? I guess part of the answer to any of those questions lies in the answer to the question of what is my goal for my college education. The problem is, I don´t know the answer to that question. I mean, college is what you do after high school, right? Especially if they offer you a pretty shiny scholarship that effectively means that four years of going to college will cost you less than four years of living would... I knew I wanted to study abroad...so I´m doing that now. But after college? The rest of college? How much longer should I stay in college? I could probably graduate in only one more year after I get back to the US, but if I didn´t feel like it I would have scholarship money for three more years (the whole package only for two more, but still a significant amount for another after that). I know that I´m supposed to trust God with the plans for my life...put I always get confused on how to live that out. So, "Live today and deal with tomorrow as it comes..." But part of living today involves making choices about tomorrow. Oh well. I just felt like ranting about that for a little bit.

In other news, there´s an interesting species of tree that I have found here in Spain. I have no idea what it is called, but it is very intriguing. The trunk is a sort of lime green with greyish spikes, similar to the thorns of a rose bush. The trunk is always swollen near the bottom of the ground and sounds as if it is hollow. The branches don´t start until rather high up the trunk and look a bit scraggly, at least on the younger trees. The most intriguing things is the tree´s flowers. They look similar to stargazer lilies. Those are the ones that have the dark pink in the middle softening to a pale pink or white at the tips. They seem to have two types of flowers, one having longer, more scraggly-looking petals while the other type is smooth and rounder and normally brighter in color. The leaves are palmately compound with something like six leaflets per leaf. It produces a fruit almost resembling a pear, but longer and not as shapely. The fruits are either not yet ripe or just happen to want to stay attached to the tree as our efforts of retrieving one to investigate the seeds were to no avail ( and, yes the "our" does indicate that I dragged Joel into the observations). I took pictures and will load them on soon so that you can see what I´m talking about and maybe help me identify them. I guess I could try google...or ask someone that lives here..but it´s been fun just wondering.

Anyway, I should get around to studying as that was my original goal in coming to the university today rather than staying home...