Salem

I wanted to write this post last night but got distracted by the beginning of season 4 of House, it was excellent!

I had a great time down in Salem where I got to see old collegues and friends and enjoy a little suburbian Americana. Here are a few pictures, the first is my alma malter, the library and little stream that runs through. It is just beautiful and everyone was outside taking advantatge of the last few sunny days of September. I love the campus but all of that comes with a price tag eh?

I took a little walk downtown with some friends, even though there are a lot of parts of town (the big shopping street, er, strip mall) which are not so nice there are some really cute neighborhoods that they've been working on and the architecture is just so different! Here's a little church tower with was just so pretty and white against the blue sky and fall leaves...

I went to go visit my old boss and meet her baby boy! He was a little ham and we had the best time playing peek-a-boo didn't we? :-)
My trip would not have been complete without a visit to Target, Old Navy, Borders.. I just love this Halloween display at Target, that was always one of my favorite holidays as a kid. Dressing up to go trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins and all that fun - maybe also cause it reminds me that my birthday is coming up!

The last treat was a trip to Baja Fresh - Mexican fast food but not fast food. I love it! All the fresh salsa and guac... YUM!
On Monday I got to have lunch with my French advisor which was really fun :-) Plus she gave me one of the best compliments ever - that I didn't really have an accent anymore! :-) Afterwards I hit the road to avoid the rush hour traffic in Portland. On the drive home I finally took some pictures. The sun was starting to get low in the sky so I wanted to take advantage of the last bit of sunlight... It is beautiful isn't it?