As I sit cozied up in the oversized chair in my friends' Rolling Green common room, I have to marvel at just how accessible the world can be.
This morning, I woke up at 7 a.m., three states away from where I'll be going to sleep.  Getting up at 7 wasn't difficult when I was waking up every other hour already; I was, perhaps irrationally, afraid of the drive.
Yes, this morning was the first time I drove to Amherst all the way. Previously, I had only gone with a family member or taken the train to visit.  At this point, though, I knew it was as good a time as ever to give the full trip a shot.  After filling up on gas and grabbing my friend Alexa for the long, long trip, we set out to visit Evan and Sabrina in Amherst.
Save for a brief unintended detour right near the border of New York (287 east and 287 south are the same thing, right?), the trip went pretty smoothly, and we arrived at my friends' house right before dark.
This nice dinner out and quiet night in is still a little surreal to me; I think I've yet to really process that I made it up to Massachusetts of (mostly) my own volition.  The world has never seemed as accessible as it does right now; I've always had to rely on someone else's plan, schedule, or transportation to get somewhere.
I only have a day in Amherst before heading to the Boston area to visit my boyfriend, so I'm hoping to squeeze as much as I can into the next 24 hours.  I can already tell these next few days are going to go quickly and, before I know it, I'll be back in my bed 200 miles away from my UMass friends.  Still, after finally driving up myself, Amherst is no longer a foreign, unreachable land, but another place that, with a little time and willpower, I can finally add to the list of places that are only a do-able drive away.

The holiday season hasn't changed much over the years for my family and I; even at 20, I gather around our flameless menorah with my family for the start of the holiday season.

My dad is Jewish and my mom is Catholic; as a result, we've always celebrated both Chanukah and Christmas, often within mere days of each other. 

This year, right after my parents helped me lug my suitcases in from the car, we all gathered around our little cloth-and-velcro menorah for the last night of Chanukah.

Yeah, cloth and velcro. What can I say, some traditions don't die.  When I was little, my parents found it unwise to keep an open flame around a toddler who could knock it over at any minute.  They somehow stumbled upon the fabric menorah, complete with multicolored cloth candles and little velcro flames to stick on top of one every night.

Years after I first learned to crawl, my parents held onto the cloth menorah.  At first, it was because my little sister came along. After her came our dog, and then our cats.  At this point, we've run out of any excuses for keeping it, so let's just go with tradition.

There have been years where Chanukah hasn't lined up so neatly with Christmas: years when, after returning from Christmas dinner at my grandma's house, we gathered in our stocking-adorned living room to “light” another candle.  This year, luckily, is not one of those years; the day after Chanukah ended, the menorah came down from the mantle and the stockings went up.  The same day, we went looking for a tree.

I'm not sure how we always manage to pick the rainiest day of December to go tree shopping, but the tradition certainly continued this year.  The tree lots we stopped at were the same ones we've been going to since I was little; I still remember hiding in the rows of pine needles, pretending to be lost in a forest with my little sister.  Not so much this year.

With the first lot mostly sold out, we headed to a second one down the road, where their final trees were leaning against the building's exterior, waiting to be picked up.  When I was little, my family's pickiness was fun; it was, in my mind, our prerogative to save the best tree from the lonely garden center lot by giving it a temporary home at our house.

At this point, the novelty of standing out in the rain, comparing needles and branches from one tree to the next, had run thin.  Still, it's hard to completely banish that deep-seated anticipatory feeling one gets after finally deciding on a Christmas tree.

This weekend's going to be a hectic one; tomorrow, my sister and I decorate the tree now standing in our living room.  My big sister comes home the next day for her birthday and, from there on out, I can't help but see a lot of hectic, last minute gift shopping in my future.  It's all a little overwhelming after just returning from school, but I'll take a busy break over a boring one any day.

"I love the traditional post-finals Northampton trip!" I said to my friends as we climbed into Tommy's car.

"Since when is this tradition?" asked Evan.

"Since now."

Winter break always seems to creep up on me.  You'd think that I'd have the whole "midterms, class, finals, break" thing under control by now, but every year, I get so wrapped up in finals week that I don't even see break coming until the last test timer buzzes or my last essay's handed in.  As campus quiets down and I stop stressing about memorizing music theory or assembling my final multimedia journalism project, the realization dawns that in just a couple days' time, the distance between my college friends and I will go from 2 miles to 200.

This finals week has been a tough one;  somewhere right between writing an essay and starting another one, Beatrice, my laptop, finally succumbed to what the repair people tell me was water damage that reared its ugly, warranty-voiding head at the least convenient time of the year.  Still, with the help of study guide printouts, the library computers (that all have Adobe Creative Suite on them! Who knew?), and my wonderful, laptop-loaning boyfriend, I made it through finals week without freaking out too, too much.  As soon as it was over, though, I broke free from the halls of my Goessmann 20 exam and headed to my friends' house in Rolling Green.  The night, which was spent with Evan's guitar and Hershey's bars, was when the Northampton trip was proposed.

Even if my friends hadn't recognized it as such, the finals week trip to the neighboring town is, essentially, tradition; since freshman year, at least a handful of my friends and I have made our way into NoHo for some panicked holiday shopping around this time.  It's a gift trip, some final hangout time, and nostalgia fuel for those snowy days inside during the upcoming break all at once.

After roaming through a few stores in Thornes and making the obligatory stop at Faces, my friends turned their sights toward Turn It Up!, a neat little record store down a flight of stairs on Pleasant Street. 

I'm always a little surprised by the frequency with which I find myself gazing at rows upon rows of records while at school, considering I don't currently have, nor do I intend on acquiring, a record player of my own.  Still, the kids I spend my time with are more likely to ask if you want to see their extensive vinyl collections without any hint of irony than anyone else I've met.  They've even sold me on a handful of record purchases of my own, a small pile of vinyls that inevitably found a home in their living room.

While Tommy, Evan and Kayla looked at records and some cheap movies on VHS, Sabrina and I paced through the aisles, waiting for our friends to finish combing the crates and crates of music.  Sabrina disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a bag.

"I bought this just because we've been here so long," she said, pulling out a record, "It's whatever they were just playing in here."

40 minutes, several records, and one too many Boz Scaggs jokes later, my friends finally paid and headed out, content with their personal purchases and Christmas gifts.

The next, and final, time I saw them before break was at so-called Family Dinner at Franklin dining commons on Friday. I'm not sure exactly when in the three years of friendship "dinner" acquired the modifier, but the mass Family Dinner text is the only one nobody can ignore.  Now that most of my friends live off-campus, I'm used to lunches in my room or quick dinners at the DC between class and homework.  When it's Family Dinner, though, I can expect to be sitting at one of four round, campus-side tables at Franklin for at least an hour and a half. 

Tomorrow, I head off to my real family in New Jersey bright and early, and I can't say I don't look forward to a break with no early discussions, no Moodle worksheets to complete, and no strict schedule to adhere to.   Still, I'm going to miss all of the many people who make my college experience exactly that: an experience.

There is so much to do and see around campus that trying to fit it all in pictures is difficult. I thought that I would try to compile series of images that illustrate elements that I enjoy. I love the scenery and the small details around campus that make it what it is. Because UMass is large and diverse, there is always more to discover and capture (in a picture!)