TURKEYS have EGGS? Wait, olives grow on TREES? Sanity restored by a run in the canyon...

Two more days, and then au revoir and adios to my students until 2012...

The semester break comes just in time.

In recent weeks the following student exclamations have colored my workdays:

"What--turkeys have eggs!? I thought just chickens did!"

(source of that quote--a sophomore...kid is fifteen years old, can get behind the wheel of a car for driving lessons...scary...)

And this:

"Wait...olives grow on TREES? No way!"

Thankfully I teach neither botany nor avian reproduction.

But food--la cuisine--la comida--inevitably gets discussed in foreign language classrooms, and I continue to be astounded.

Seriously, today, I also heard this,

not for the first time:

"Whoa--so, how does pasta grow?"

I wish I were making this up.

So.

Sanity requires an afternoon run in the hills:

We've had a string of stormy days here in the desert--

cold rain on the cacti and snowcapped mountain peaks;

today the sun came back out...

I took my iPhone with me on my run on the hills above Sabino Canyon...

 ...and down in the canyon itself, where the creek is flowing strong

and the late fall cottonwoods are coloring its banks:

...ahh, running into the sunset...sanity restored, patience refilled...and just two days of exams to get through...