Crunchy Leaves

Fall is quickly turning to winter, and the leaves are beginning to fall off the trees. It seems like we only had a couple of days of the leaves in yellow. I think they went from green to brown overnight. The great thing is that the leaves are falling so quickly that the street sweepers can't keep up... You see, for some reason, the Chinese are obsessive about clean streets. At least three times a day, a truck spraying water all over the street drives past, followed an hour or so later by a truck that brushes the streets. On top of all this, there are tons of men and women whose sole job is to sweep the sidewalks, lest any leaf or trash hit the ground. (One day, I even saw a sweeper lady stick her broom in the tree to shake down all the loose leaves before they could even fall! And this was in a grassy park... Not even a sidewalk.) The sidewalk sweepers are so good that until now, they swept up the leaves so quickly that the sidewalks never quite had that "fall look" with brown leaves covering the ground.

But, back to my point... Now that the leaves are falling so quickly, the sweepers can't keep up! And even if it's a month or so late, it looks like fall outside. And today when walking around campus, I got to step on all kinds of brown, crunchy leaves. Maybe you aren't one of those people that appreciates walking on the crunchy leaves during autumn; but if you are, you will completely understand why this made my day!