October Celebrations!

October is one of my favorite months, the beautiful colors on the trees, the crisp autumn air...so many fantastic things...but of course I have always been slightly partial since it contains both my birthday and Halloween.  For my birthday this year all I wanted was a nice classy dinner with a few close girlfriends and perhaps some swanky drinks somewhere after.  My dear friend Nora planned a perfect birthday celebration, I could not have possibly asked for anything else!

This is year two with the flaming dessert thing...and yes I do also have a photo of me looking horribly terrified...I should be more used to this I suppose.

Drinks at Albertina Passage after dinner.  We actually then all met up with a big group of friends from school to go dancing.  Those of us in our nicer cocktail dresses and heels were a bit overdressed, but definitely an awesome way to start my 29th!

Then...by the miracle of the Great Pumpkin or something...a box my sister mailed 2 weeks ago arrived on Halloween afternoon, complete with a supply of American trick-or-treat candy!  I felt like a bit of a weirdo with my bag filled with candy as we went around on Halloween to various celebrations to share, but people didn't seem to mind.

Americans sticking together to be mildly scary on Halloween night.

Those of us from our little group who decided to dress up.  Halloween still isn't much of a thing here, our various accessories and things had to be gathered pretty creatively, not just a quick run to the store to pick something up.  There did seem to be an increase of organized Halloween parties this year, mostly at clubs and bars, but our school had a fairly organized party at a club downtown that we all went to.  It's funny that most of my friends here don't have the same experience with Halloween that I do, having years of memories of deciding what to dress up as, and working on your costume for weeks before finally getting to wear it to school and march in a parade or something before trick or treating, but they're getting the hang of it. (4 of us in this photo are North Americans though...)

Speaking of North America, this is our best geographic representation of ourselves...2 Canadians...2 Americans and a Mexican...

Pumpkin pie makes group work better.

Other than that, things around here are pretty nuts at the moment.  My days seem to be scheduled down to the hour (including the 30 minutes or so I've allotted myself to post this), classes are in full swing, with one actually already winding down, final presentations and papers to be done.  The end of last week I found out that I will be able to attend two conferences later this month, beginning with the annual UN Climate Negotiations in Warsaw and a Dialogue on Sustainability Conference in Germany immediately following.  So many of the projects I thought I could work on over the next 3 weeks or so, have now been pushed up to the next 10 days before I leave.  Definitely not complaining though, so excited for both of these opportunities, and a few other fun things on the calendar before I'm back in the States for Christmas!