CHAMPAIGN EXPERIENCE: SECOND EPISODE

Hello and assalamu'alaikum people....

I'm still in Champagne, enjoying the hospitality of the people here (many thanks to Rina, Tet, Ella and Kak Shab for putting up with us and all of our antics, and for opening their house --and fridge-- to us ). I'm having a good time here, albeit a few mishaps, but so far it's been pretty good, though I'm feeling a little guilty from all the good food I'm eating, I'm doing nonesense to my body.

On Sunday, Tet brought all three of us out to see the campus. We went sightseeing, took a few pictures, saw the massive library, and basically start doing comparisons between our two campuses. I think UIUC have better looking buildings and they're closer together, but I like U-M's scenery better. But still, the campus is pretty, I especially like the Union and the engineering library. There's this statue of a life-size guy sitting outside, reading a book, which I think is pretty cool, so all of us took turn taking our pictures with him, hehe..

So yesterday we didn't manage to go out much, it was freezing, but that night we went with Rina and Tet to the IPENG (pronounced ai-peng, not ee-peng, just in case there's.. errr.. confusion ) dinner held at a restaurant, think the place's name was Famous Dave's. There, I met up with Soon Sim, my ex-housemate from PPP, plus some other people from PPP whom I haven't met up in ages, like Joanne, Sze Ying, and a few other guys. It was a lot of fun, and dinner was excellent ( fish and chips, coleslaw, apple in syrup, and for dessert, hot chocolate brownies topped with vanilla ice-cream, and hot bread pudding...nyum nyum..), and catching up with friends is always an interesting thing to do. I'm really impressed with the UIUC students, they take four or five hard courses, they work for around 16 hours a week, they still have a life, and yet their results are excellent. Man, some people really have everything going on for them, I'm so jealous. Anyway, after dinner, I managed to get some programming done ( gasp! shocking! ), from around 11 pm up to 3 in the morning, and after swearing to the computer like a pissed-off truck driver, decided to call it a night and went to bed.

Next morning, I woke up at 9.30 am and, being the diligent student I am ( hahahahahahhaahha.... oh, boy, isn't that just stretching the truth more than a little bit ), I went straight to the computer to work on the program. I cant help it, stupid thing is giving me nightmares. But anyway, I took a break close to 11 o'clock to take a shower, and to see what we got lined up for today. Think we were supposed to go to the mall and shop, but I wasn't sure. But again, it was -17 degrees C outside, so me and Nanim were debating about it. And then, something ridiculously bizarre ( hush hush thing, can't elaborate here ) happened, so we decided to scrub the plan altogether. Which was okay with me, because I was all light-headed from the lack of sleep. Besides, I was meeting Soon Sim at 5.30 pm for dinner anyway, so it wasn't like my day would be completely wasted. I took a short nap, continued with the program, then at 5.30, Soon Sim, Nanim and I met up at Beckman for dinner. Sim took us to this Thai place which was nice and cosy, and right in front of Walgreens. The food there was good, and really spicy, which was fine with me. We caught up on stuff, and being the lousy person with dates as I am, found out that Sim's birthday is this Friday. Sometimes I pity my friends. I am so bad with dates with the exception of my mom, I can barely remember everybody else's birthday, no matter how much I love them. Anyway, after that we went to Walgreens for a bit to get some stuff, bumped into Tet there, then headed to the bus stop. After saying goodbye to Sim and promising here I'll see her on Thursday, Tet, Nanim and I headed to Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe so that I can sample their much-talked-about chocolate drinks. I had the Chocolate Caramel Whatever drink, which was basically chocolate, caramel and steamed milk topped off with lots of whipped cream, more caramel, and one of Moonstruck's small quarter-sized signature chocolate. More nyum nyum... the drink was a little too sweet, but it was pretty good, and the chocolate was heavenly. We headed back home after that, watched Smallville while doing our homework before I decided to update my blog and go to sleep.

Tomorrow we made plans to go shopping with Hakam and Ella, and to go to Chicago on Thursday before heading back home on Friday. Will keep people interested in reading about my life posted :).... Till then, ta ta and assalamu'alaikum..

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