Winter has arrived in Saint Louis

I am now going to interrupt my (probably too detailed) account of my trip to talk about the last 3 weeks.
After a rather cold and dreary early fall (according to the locals), Saint Louis has been downright balmy in the almost 3 weeks since I returned from my trip  Okay that might be an exaggeration, but it's been mostly 50's - low 70's. But today when I woke up, my room was furnace (despite the fact that I always sleep with the window slightly cracked because my radiator likes to make my room to warm and I have no way of adjusting it), so I knew immediately that the forecasts I had read were correct -- It's going to be a cold day with a possibility of snow. This is because for some stupid reason the radiator is regulated by the outside temperature, rather than the inside one. So if it's working overtime, it must be cold outside (unfortunately this is also annoying in the opposite way, sometimes it's perfectly nice outside but rather cold in here, and there is nothing I can do to warm up except put on more clothes). Anyway, it's quite cold. So cold, that I got a chill just walking from the school to here (this is like a 2 minute walk, seriously). Apparently, my strategy of wearing less clothes than I normally wear for the weather to go to school (because it is always quite toasty in there and I don't want to haul around five pounds of clothing) may not work this winter.

An unrelated but hilarious picture. This is an advent calender for your cat ( like the ones with chocolate, only, you know, cat food, for your cat)

The past three weeks have flown by, I can hardly believe it's been so long already. I've felt somewhat busy, though with what, I have no idea. I've started running again. I'm currently working back up to 5k, and after that I hope to work with the goal of doing a half marathon when I come back, because I need hobbies here. Though, I might need to join a gym to keep this up through the winter. I've also started doing the 100 push ups program which I am sure would be hilarious to watch because I can't even do a full modified push up. But now I can do at least 8 rather pathetic modified push ups rather than like 2, so progress has been made. Also, I've started thinking about graduate school applications, essays, and recommendations. Mostly though, I have been spending a lot of time sleeping. I literally slept for half of yesterday. Much to my shock, I woke up at 12:30 (note to self: set an alarm for a reasonable hour even on off days) despite the fact that I went to sleep before one. Then I went to sleep at around 12:30 or 1 am. So that's a good way to waste a day. Also, I watch a lot of youtube partially because I can't stream netflix or amazon movies even though I am american because Europe doesn't allow that :(((((. 

My Goals (to finish before I go on my next vacation in about 3 weeks):

* write rough drafts of application essays

* finish asking for recommendations

* continue running (run a 5k before trip?)

* try to transition to "real" push ups 

* finish writing about my other vacation on here

More (extremely detailed, long, and possibly boring) posts about the rest of the cities I visited will be forthcoming shortly (I hope).