Still in Love

Its 5am in the morning. I am awake and on my laptop. Seems like any other night. Though this was not any other night. I just had to check the weather on google to know what was special about the night. There was predicted snow!!! So there I went, trudging along the living room, to the window to check if it had started snowing yet and behold there it was, a white blanket over the trees and street below my apartment. Bummed out as I was to miss the start, there was no way I was going to miss anymore. This thought itself surprised me more than anything else. After the harsh winter my first year in Chicago, I thought my Indian born brain would not hold any novelty for the phenomena and my Indian born body would not be happy at all to see it again. How wrong was I?

As I later remarked to my roommate, it was as if I had no memory of the first snow from last year. It was the same juvenile excitement and sense of wonder that had struck me about a year ago. I still wanted to be first one to make the first tracks on the snow, still wanted to click pictures at places I would usuallu not give a second glance to and still wanted to take a long walk to the university campus just like last year. Who cared If I was going to have grueling exams for the next 4 days. This just had to be done. All I had to do was wake up my roommate (which he already was) and in the next half hour (after making sure we had all the ingredients for our excursion jackets, peanuts, chocolates, camera) we were on our way.

Moving from a town house to a normal apartment in a dark street, we had always feared the lack of view. But the dark narrow street in front of our apartment did not dissapoint. It did allow us to make the first few tracks on the freshly fallen snow. And like I told my roommate, a new place was just a prelude to a new set of beautiful views. It is probably why I have come to like this season so much. The fact that a single color adds so much beauty to any landscape. It has the potential to convert ordinary pictures into postcards. You can have the best smells during the first rain and have a myriad of colors with spring, but there is something angelically wonderful about a landscape blanketed with first snow.

We walked the few blocks to our university campus clicking pictures along the way. In a few minutes we were at our destination, the university hall. If you want to experince the best of the current weather on campus, in UIC, then this is the place to be. As has become our custom, we clicked our pictures and ate our snack (we graduated from energy biscuits last year to peanuts and chocolates this year ;) ). Then just took the sight in for a few minutes. I even put my tongue out in true dog like fashion to taste the snow (which was tasty and salty btw).

Finally it was time to turn back. A coffee from starbucks would have just put a cherry on top of a brilliant hour. But alas, in our excitement, both of us forgot our wallets. But when you get to see first snow both in the dark as well as daybreak, lack of coffee is just a minor hindrance.

As I later realised back in my room with a warm mug of french vanilla coffee in my hand, the best part was perhaps the fact that I enjoyed the whole thing as if it were my first time out in the snow. The realisation that perhaps I had not lost my sense of wonder, did make me satisfyingly content in some wierd way.

What about you guys?? tell me about your first snow experience or second or next......
Don't like snow, then tell me about your favourite season :)