After spending a little time in my apartment (I refuse to call it a dorm) and restlessly flipping between Facebook, Stumbling and staring out the window, I decided it was time to do something. There was no use in sitting around and feeling sorry for myself. I was in Los Angeles, for gods sake. These walls were far from what this city has to offer for me.
So I decided, since classes were starting the next day, I should got take a look around campus and find the ONE building that my four classes were to be held in (I guessed it must be the Communication Studies building since all I'm taking this semester are upper-division Com classes). I popped my head into my roommates' room and told them I was going to take a walk to campus to have a look around. To my surprise, their reaction was something close to horror. "You're going to WALK to campus? Its really far away!" Confused, since I remembered checking a map and thinking that it couldn't be much farther than walking from the dorms to the West Bank (sorry non-U of M students, I don't know how else to explain this), I went back to my room to reconsult said map. Unless the whole thing was very skewed, it didn't look too far to me. I went back to their room and shared my findings, asking how long they thought it would take to walk there. "Oh god, probably like 15 minutes." I was shocked. A 15 minute walk was nothing! I chose to walk longer than that from work to my house almost every day this summer when I was in Minneapolis. (I will elaborate on how dependent people are on their cars here and how that has affected their perceived walking distance abilities when I have a boring day with nothing much to talk about.)
So I set out, walking along a winding trail that took me through CSUN's athletic area: a track, soccer fields, tennis courts. After a bit of wandering, I crossed through a promising looking building and I was on campus.
I nearly cried (remember: still an emotional train wreck). It was absolutely beautiful. Stunning. Breathtaking. All those cliche adjectives. But that's how it was. In my gloominess earlier, I had failed to notice how amazing it was that my entire campus was surrounded by mountains. Not the Colorado mountains of my childhood, mind you, but still; tall, gorgeous mountains. An absolute turn-around from flat, flat Minnesota. And the landscaping! Palm trees, of course, but so many different kinds! Ones taller than I had ever imagined a palm tree to be; short, fat ones that I couldn't hope to wrap my arms all the way around, and everything in between. There were also trees I had never seen before: some sort of weird pine tree that looks a closed umbrella; trees with white bark that don't look anything like birch trees I'm used to; short trees with thick, gnarly trunks. I passed by rows of bamboo growing along the side of a building, rose gardens, cacti, weird shrubbery pruned into perfectly flat rectangles, and colorful flowers that reminded me of all those Francesa Lia Block books I had read in high school. Finally, I found myself standing at the entrance of an orange grove. WHAT. AN ORANGE GROVE. ON MY CAMPUS. I felt my mood lift. This is why I came here. My campus is an absolute gem.
After a short walk through the grove and meeting a disappointingly locked gate at the Botanical Garden a little ways down (Hahaha! Yes! A botanical garden!), I located the building where I would have had class and, definitely sunburned (the sun is different here too!), headed for home. Exhausted, I was asleep by 9:00.
What I can't explain to you is how different it smells here. Its earthy, but not like soil earthy. And its floral, but not overpoweringly so. The best I can do is to tell you that is just smells fresh and lovely. Unfortunately, coming into my third day here, I can't smell it any more. But I can tell you I'll never forget it.
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