Everything is so green here.
UCSD lies on hills of white stone and green, green, green: lemon grass yellows and cool aloe greens, slender sage and lush forest blacks. Green and cold. I came down here with a carrier bag brimming with dresses and skirts, unprepared for the chilly sea breeze.
It feels strange for me to be here as a CSULB student, an outsider looking in. This must be what a country bumpkin feels when she steps off the train into the city for the first time. I marvel at the hard-cut buildings, with their sharp, jutting angles and glass and silver facets. The beach takes some getting used to as well--it's only a short walk and a flight of stairs away! This morning Shaina and I went to the Black Beach, climbing down a collapsing, rickety wooden staircase. Interestingly enough, it's also a nudist beach, but on an overcast sunrise, you don't see much except some surfers and a couple fishermen.
Maybe it's the weekend or the post-Sun God hangovers, but there's a sad air cloaking campus. The Peet's I am in is sleepy and half-empty, the baristas' conversations echoing off the walls. CSULB is old and familiar, like a pair of worn shoes. UCSD is a sleek pair of stilettos, beautiful and foreign. Ever since yesterday I've been hobbling across campus with Shaina, marveling at the twisting paths, Dr. Seuss library, and the dancing patches of trees.
While waiting for Shaina to finish a lab, I finished reading Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I read the way a bird eats, alighting hungrily from one word to the next. Maybe I should have read it the way a bear eats honey, sticking its paw inside the beehive and methodically lapping the honey off. Either way, for a book under 200 pages, it's a heavy read I'll be digesting for a while.
I need to talk about this book with someone. I keep thinking about the Vicarios and their perception of innocence before God and men, about Angela Vicario and her strange relationship with Bayardo, and most importantly, Santiago Nasar himself. I think I should just kidnap an English professor and make him or her talk with me.
Lately, and especially today, I feel uprooted. Like a dandelion seed. I know there's bags and boxes waiting to be unpacked, furniture to be bought, German and French to be learned, and work to go to back home...but for now, I'm here.
UCSD lies on hills of white stone and green, green, green: lemon grass yellows and cool aloe greens, slender sage and lush forest blacks. Green and cold. I came down here with a carrier bag brimming with dresses and skirts, unprepared for the chilly sea breeze.
It feels strange for me to be here as a CSULB student, an outsider looking in. This must be what a country bumpkin feels when she steps off the train into the city for the first time. I marvel at the hard-cut buildings, with their sharp, jutting angles and glass and silver facets. The beach takes some getting used to as well--it's only a short walk and a flight of stairs away! This morning Shaina and I went to the Black Beach, climbing down a collapsing, rickety wooden staircase. Interestingly enough, it's also a nudist beach, but on an overcast sunrise, you don't see much except some surfers and a couple fishermen.
Maybe it's the weekend or the post-Sun God hangovers, but there's a sad air cloaking campus. The Peet's I am in is sleepy and half-empty, the baristas' conversations echoing off the walls. CSULB is old and familiar, like a pair of worn shoes. UCSD is a sleek pair of stilettos, beautiful and foreign. Ever since yesterday I've been hobbling across campus with Shaina, marveling at the twisting paths, Dr. Seuss library, and the dancing patches of trees.
While waiting for Shaina to finish a lab, I finished reading Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I read the way a bird eats, alighting hungrily from one word to the next. Maybe I should have read it the way a bear eats honey, sticking its paw inside the beehive and methodically lapping the honey off. Either way, for a book under 200 pages, it's a heavy read I'll be digesting for a while.
I need to talk about this book with someone. I keep thinking about the Vicarios and their perception of innocence before God and men, about Angela Vicario and her strange relationship with Bayardo, and most importantly, Santiago Nasar himself. I think I should just kidnap an English professor and make him or her talk with me.
Lately, and especially today, I feel uprooted. Like a dandelion seed. I know there's bags and boxes waiting to be unpacked, furniture to be bought, German and French to be learned, and work to go to back home...but for now, I'm here.
