I am now officially done with classes for this semester, and it is getting tantilizingly warm in Auckland, so much so that I actually wore shorts today. It is very counter intuitive to be getting into the end of school, start of summer mood in OCTOBER. Not only should I be thinking about Christmas and Thanksgiving, and snow, but I should be in the middle of Midterms, not Finals. Well, to be fair they would have the same level of stress, but still. I have a few weeks of finals, and in the breaks between exams I am planning on doing some last minute exploring in the Coromandal. I dont know exactly how it got to be the last few weeks of the semester, but somehow it did. It only seems like yesterday that I was lamenting the end of my Megiddo dig. It seems like a long time, but as I said before, time does not move as you expect it to and looking back on it all, it seems like it went by in a blink too. I can't explain it.

A couple of friends and I went to Devenport again last night again and it was an interesting way to bookend this semester. We went in the first couple of weeks, and now we went again in the last couple. The weather was a thousand times better, with the type of sunlight that filters down and makes everything look happier and lighter, the type of sunlight that makes it IMPOSSIBLE to take a bad photograph. To say the least, we did NOT do as well as we would have liked at a pub quiz...but at least we tried. The night was perfectly cool and crisp, the kind that sneaks up on you until you suddenly realize that is actually really nice out. It is so strange that it is October! My mind starts slipping into the idea that it is May. What am I going to do when I get home and I find out it is 20 degrees outside and the sun was a thing of the past.

It has occured to me that Halloween must be A LOT more enjoyable here. I loved Halloween as any other little kid becuase of the free candy that we demanded of our neighbors, but it was always f***ing FREEZING, and costumes almost always included the bulky winter coat. Here it would be PERFECT, with just the right temperature. Unfortunatly, Halloween, while it is celebrated here, is not given the same amount of ubsurdaty, no little kids running around rightously demanding that they get a snickers bar from someone they have never met. Oh well. The good news is I wont miss that much because I have an exam on Halloween and All Saints Day (the next day) and will be locked away in my room/the library praying to all that is holy that I do well on biochem.

I suppose the next time I update will be in the middle of packing or my Coromandal trip....damn, sometimes I wish I could freeze time...I also wish for a million dollars, but somehow I think both are unlikely. :)