Spring and by Summer Fall

It's autumn again, and I'm very happy.

The air is tight and cool, the leaves smell sweet with decay, and I've discovered that I am, in fact, still alive.

I always get annoyingly poetic about the season that precedes winter. I once wrote:
There is potential in the fall for my tissues to be reborn into glorious sensitivity. If it were summer, I may have wasted away by now, blowing away in the breeze, or melting into the soil.

Overly emotional, 18-year-old dreck aside, there is certainly something about fall that awakens me in a most pleasant way. I, like everyone, dread its onset, because it means a vanishing summer that will eventually give way to winter. Still, when it arrives, I am invariably overjoyed. I'm not sure why, but it's probably because fall's quite an important season for most New Englanders. It's hard to hate autumn when it looks like this, even if its arrival means returning from vacation, going back to school or work, and an imminent winter.

I'm not sure that Finns love fall quite as much as we do [any Finns care to comment on this?], but Finland certainly doesn't want for autumn beauty. And just as I always did back home, I feel now as if I've awoken from some kind of summer-induced stupor, and that I can begin again in some productive capacity.

I appear to have hit the ground running in terms of Finnish study; all the passive activities that I took part in over the summer, though they seemed a bit inadequate at the time, have helped me quite a lot. I'm actually speaking Finnish -- using it to communicate, not just to practice communicating. Please don't think that my attempts to speak are anything other than pathetic, but still. One has to start somewhere.

My English class has been a real joy, too. My students are really enthusiastic and very fun. They're quite willing to speak up, as well. What more could a teacher want?

And, lastly, if you were a nerd kid who grew up in the USA in the 90s, you probably watched The Adventures of Pete and Pete. I always think of this show as a bit of an autumn treat, since much of it seemed to take place around this time of year. And perhaps this formative children's entertainment is the reason I get so annoyingly poetic sometimes. And why I giggle whenever I hear the word "blowhole."