'The final mystery is oneself'

I feel that I have had an intellectually intense week, hence why Oscar Wilde has infiltrated this post title. I don't know if that makes sense but I shall try to explain. It isn't so much in my classes that I have felt this, in fact quite the opposite; I mostly just feel retarded in Spanish, confused in Key Concepts, and well my independent study is non-existent at the moment. More just through talking to people and random conversations I have been having recently. The most random of these happened on Tuesday. I was in Stevenson Coffee Shop on campus, with Spanish text books spread out in front of me and my head in my hands; a regular occurrence. This guy comes up to me and asks to sit in the seat opposite me and, being the nice person that I am, I said 'sure'. Ten minutes later he suddenly says "Oh, you are learning Spanish! what level are you at? I'm going to Ecuador next quarter and need to get better!" and thus began our conversation; a 2 hour non-stop conversation with a complete stranger. Now this conversation was not usual chit-chat; we did not mention movies, popular culture, music, majors, nothing like this. No instead we debated the merits of globalization, what would happen if we were to re-distribute the population of America, the pros and cons of higher education in both America and Britain, and so on. I have never had a conversation like it! With friends we may have skirted around these topics, but never in such detail, and never with a randomer! In fact, it wasn't until he had to leave for class that we finally introduced each other and learned each others names! It sounds really geeky reading that back but it wasn't. He was a completely normal, slightly surfer-y outdoors-y, 25 year old Californian. And well, I am me. So yeah, I felt very intellectual that day!

To counter-balance this feeling, the following day we preceded to go around my Key Concepts class and play word-association with the word 'America'. One girl said 'capitalism'. I said 'the White House'. I was tempted to say 'hot-dogs' but the guy before me beat me to it. This was after taking attendance when a girl named Sarah requested to be called 'Sparrow' as "that is what she goes by". Not a single person in the class seemed to find this odd, not even the professor who acknowledged it and carried on. I on the other hand was trying very, very hard not to burst out laughing! If someone did that in a seminar in Warwick, well they would have been laughed out the room or something! I was like "You just asked us all to call you by a species of bird?!" (of course I didn't say this). Santa Cruz.

Yesterday a group of us went and checked out the Mystery Spot; a 'gravitational anomaly' just outside Santa Cruz. It was the strangest thing! It is a wooden cabin on the side of a hill, surrounded by redwood forest, where nothing is as it seems. When you stand up straight, it looks like you are leaning, water seems to run uphill, standing in different places means you appear to grow or shrink! Here is the website (http://www.mysteryspot.com/) if you are so inclined to check it out, but I shall just leave you with the pictures we took that look so...odd. I am standing straight in the photo with my arms out by the way. And the picture below, the wooden plank sticking out is completely level. We checked.

Ok here is where I shall leave it. I am currently in Coffeetopia drinking a frozen mocha as it is pretty hot today. A stark contrast to the past week where it has been cold and rainy. We even had an EPIC thunderstorm a couple of days ago; fork lightening like I have never seen! I did not feel safe walking up the hill to my apartment at midnight with a friend! Next weekend I am going on a river rafting/camping weekend so won't make my Sunday deadline. I would apologise but I will be doing something far more fun!