Anne and Nicola's Adventures in Indiana (and Chicago)

So me and Anne arrived in Chicago yesterday, so we'll fill you in on how the last two days have been...

Day 1: Our flight had personal screens and we could pick what movie we wanted to watch. I somehow convinced Anne to watch Britney's movie Crossroads. It's so cliche, but still amusing because its so dumb. I watched, what else, but ESPN and the movie on Bobby Knight, the former indiana basketball coach. After I watched the World's Strongest Man Competition, where large men carry insanely heavy things around (like a 600 pound basket of rocks). Towards the end of the flight, we amused ourselves by listening to the cockpit on the radio (somehow you can do that). Also, while we were in san Francisco, we were talking about Starbucks and like aminute later we saw one at the airport, so wer decided to count them. We're up to 7 counting the one in San Francisco, but I think there are actually more Starbucks in California, or at least it seems like that.

We saw some museums and Wrigley Field and Soldier Field and Sears tower while driving around. Also, everything here is so square. The blocks are exactly square, the buldings are square...everything. We went to dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant and ate a lot of pita bread. Yum. We started to watch Vanilla Sky, which is really weird, until I started falling asleep (although Anne was awake) and then we went to bed.

Day 2: First, we went to the University of Chicago. Thr tour guide was pretty cool, he was a drama/performing arts guy who would go on about the best coffee shops on campus and bookstores and people watching, but he was pretty funny. I think the parent didn't like him a whole lot because he would start going on random tangents, but it was cool for us. I loved the architecture (Anne though it was kinda scary because it was kinda gothic) and it was pretty cool because it was in the city, but in a residental neighborhood away from downtown. I liked it a lot but there's no engineering there. They don't have any pre-professional programs, they're all about learning for the sake of learning. Just because. Go figure. Also, if you are looking for a husband, u of chicago has the highest alumni marriage rate--meaning all the college classamtes end up hooking up and getting hitched.

Then we rushed to the other side of Chicago to visit Northwestern. Its in a rich suburb on the north side of Chicago. The info session seemed really into you really wanting to go there. You had to show that you've visited the school and they accept a lot of early decision people, so if you want to go there, that's my advice. But it seemed really pretentious to me. Anways, we went on the tour, which was pretty uneventful, until the thunder and lightning started coming...and then the rain. Lots of rain. And me and anne, this morning saw that it was a nice sunny morning and wore shorts and skirts and tank tops, and of course no umbrellas. S we ended up walking (almost running) though campus (we left the tour because it was running a little long and we had to get picked up) hoping that we were even going in the right direction. Also, stupid people would not stop for us when we were standing in the middle of the street in the crosswalk in the pouring rain, soaking wet. Eventually we made it back, but we were pretty drenched.

Finally, we went to go watch my uncle, who's a dancer, in his show, which was, what else, but Chicago, the musical. (Anne's laughing because there are 7 commas in that sentence). First we had to pick up his two friends there was also my uncle's roomate who was driving. So we had to squeeze 6 people in a 5 person car. But the way, all these guy are gay. So me and anne were squeezed in the middle of two gay men in the back of the car. So, we arrived at the place and met up with more of my uncle's gay friends. It was a dinner and a show thing, so first we had dinner. So, just think about this: it was me and Anne and five gay men. oh man, what an experience. They were so funny, and every time there was some kind of sexual reference, one of the guys would be like, ok, no more jokes. Of course they kept joking. And what were they discussing? oh, the musicals they've seen. One of the guys said his favorite musical was like Cats or something (it was something kinda girlie), and another guys said, oh man, his gay-dar just went way up. Haha, I didn't realize anyone actually used that word. Also, there is this one girl in the cast, and one guy is, oh my god, I know her. She's a drag queen from Indiana! So then everyone was looking through at her picture and trying to see if she really as a guy or not, and someone noticed that there were no pronouns (no refernce to he or she) in her (his?) biography. He was also freaking out because he found out how old we were and said he was old enough to be our father (he was 35). The show rocked. And the drag queen was "unmasked" as part of the script, so i guess he was right. After we met some of the cast members and one of the dancers was an 18-year old guy (just graduated from high school) I was thinking he was pretty cute, then I saw he was wearing white capris. Darn. So close (and yet not even close at all). So after almost two days, our cute (straight) guy count is: zero.

- posted by Nicola Tan at 6/15/2002 01:17:07 AM

Oh yeah, weather in Chicago is erratic. It started out nice and warm and sunny when we woke up, the got colder and cloudier, then began pouring rain, and finally cleared up. In an 8 hour period. And me and anne had to run through the rain in the sandals we were wearing. Anne also notes in her scholarly way that the Chicago musical had several parallels to Who's Afriad of Virginia Woolf. Too bad you'll just have to watch it to really get it. And we also spent a considerable amount of time trying to igure out what TV shows were on TGIF. We have Full House, Family Matters, Step-by-Step, Sabrina, Teen Angel, the one with the genie, the one with the Olsen twins, the Perfect Strangers remake..we'll spend the rest of our trip trying to remember the rest I bet. And Anne is eating all the Club crackers. She thinks they're very good, even though they're reduced fat. Can you tell we're getting bored and running out of things to say? Haha, I think its time to go to bed. We're going shopping tomorrow! That's right, we are getting...::drumroll:: a fan, a desk lamp, laundry detergent, and an umbrella (damn this midwest weather...I don't trust it at all). And Anne's going to buy a bathing suit from....Target! How exciting huh? Ok, good night.

-- posted by Nicola Tan at 6/15/2002 02:13:39 AM

By the way, we decided that we will be planning and throwing our own welcome back party, so be ready for it.

- posted by Nicola Tan at 6/15/2002 02:04:54 AM

Day 3: well, this is gonna suck because we already wrote this out, but Blogspot wouldn't post it, and then it just disappeared so here goes. What did we do today? We woke up at 10, went to the John hancock building, ate some pizza, went shopping, went to a barbeque full of gay guys, and then went to Target. Intrigued? Read on.

So first we went to the John Hancock building (haha, we're gonna start with the boring stuff first and make you read through it until we get to the interesting stuff). It's the second tallest building in Chicago (Sears Tower is the tallest), but it has a nicer view because it's near Lake Michigan. Nicola's stupid quote of the day #1: "Wow, it's really windy." well, duh, it's known as THE Windy City. Luckily, we didn't trust the nice sunny morning and wore jeans and sweaters, so we were well prepared. Anne saw some cute guys (or so she says, I didn't really notice), so now we actually have some to count. Did you know that Illinois has beaches? That have some on the shore of Lake Michigan. It was a nice enough day that some people actually went to the beach. After that, we went to Michigan Ave., which is supposedly the place to shop in Chicago. We went to Filene's Basement which has some good deals on designer clothes. But after an hour, neither of us felt like buying anything, so we left empty handed. Actually, Anne swore she would not buy any clothes besides a bathing suit, so I helped her make sure she didn't. (this was to make up for forgetting to remind her to bring her camera and take her allergy pills. Of course I was a big help). Then we went out to get some of that famous Chicago pizza. Nicola's stupid quote of the day #2: Hey Anne, you know where there's good pizza in San jose. Pizza...oh, Pizza Chicago! Ha, well that explains everything. Duh again. It was some great pizza and we all stuffed ourselves. You can actually order a stuffed pizza, and it's 2 inches thick. After lunch, we went shopping some more but still didn't buy anything, and finally walked blocks and blocks and blocks to get to the car. It was like cross-country: after every turn I was hoping that it wold be right there, but of course it wasn't. For dinner, we went to my uncle's friend's apartment for a barbeque. It was filled with probably dozen gay guys, and then me and Anne. They were all eating on the balcony and it was pretty crowded, so me and Anne ate inside. One of the guys was. "Why don't you guys join us? Anyways, we're all just girls here." If you still don't belive us for some reason, we got a picture with some of them. And one of the guys is named Sunshine. And another guy was telling Anne where to get cool cheap clothes. Anne says they were so cosmopolitan, so wordly. So after dinner, we went to Target to get some supplies for Notre Dame. What would I do without anne? She found travel size laundry detergent, a fan and lightbulbs for us. I almost got fabric softener instead of detegent and had no idea what kind of lightbulb to get. I think I need some real life lessons before I go to college. Anne finally got her bathing suit, and we also got some food, but most of the food there really sucked. There wasn't much selection, compared to the Target in Evergreen (on Capitol). Anne thinks the people of Chicago are deprived.

Things Chicago has that San Jose doesn't: brick buildings, front porches, skyscrapers, tourists, pedestrians (lots. people really do walk to get around, even if it is a few blocks), White Hen Pantry (its like 7-11. We haven't seen any 7-11s here at all yet), Einstein's Bagels (no Noah's Bagels), 55mph speed limit--at the most of what we;ve seen (Lakeshore Drive, which is the highway/expressway which we usually take to get around has only a 45 mph speed limit, and most people pretty much follow it), less traffic (amazing, huh?), less freeways (only a few, but definitely not as many as the Bay Area)...to be continued as we think of more.

Starbucks count: 12
Cute straight boy sightings count: 7

Off to Indiana tomorrow morning!

- posted by Nicola Tan at 6/15/2002 11:09:27 PM

OK, we had some trouble getting onto the internet yesterday and this afternoon, but we FINALLY got it to work, so here are the last two days of our trip.

Day 4: So, we woke up at 6:30 and left at 7:15 or so from Chicago. First we had to drop off my uncle's roommates at his brothers house because they're going to Kentucky, so yeah... Not too exciting. We met his family and everything seemed so quaint and perfectly midwestern suburban. There was a dog, everyone's lawns on the block were cut, everyone even arrived on time (which never would happen in my family). So then we left for Indiana, which was about a two hour trip from there, but I slept most of the way there. When we finally got to Notre Dame, we couldn't find the dorm where we were supposed to check in to, and ended up at the cathedral. We went to check what time mass was, and it started about 15 or 20 minutes earlier, so we just went in and listened to mass. The cathedral was beautiful, but Anne thinks St. Joseph's Cathedral in San Jose is better (she thinks its the best of all she's seen). We eventually found our dorm and moved in. It's a single sex dorm, and slowly most of the other girls started coming in. We were the first two people there with another girl, so we got some food and stuff. All the other girls came, and we all became friends really quickly. Everyone is from all over: California (us), Illinois, Indiana, Florida, Arizona, Oklahoma, and North Carolina (probably more, but I probably forgot em). We were playing cards while we were waiting, but when we decided to get some food, the only grill/sandwich place was just closed and no one had paid for their meal plans yet, so we were almost left starving. We finally ordered some pizza which we ate while we had our little dorm meeting. Everyone seems to remind me of someone. There's girl that looks like April Harting, another like Christina Mitchell, and one of our RAs looks just like Cara Cavigliano. Our dorm is like 10 feet long though. I should measure it one day, but it is really tiny, and I think me and Anne have the worst one. I'll take a picture soon, but its smaller than my room at home. Mostly, we spent the day walking around, aimlessly wandering since there was nothing scheduled for us to do besides move in and we arrived early. We had an ice cream social at the end of the day, and there is over three guys to every girl. There are only 11 girls and 39 guys. That's actually 3.5 guys to every girl. I guess my odds are ok. I kinda talked to some guys, but I thought it was really funny that at first all the girls kinda hung out together and the guys were off doing their own thing. Eventually some girls started talking to some guys, but there wasn't much intermingling (so much for the social part of ice cream social). Haha, just like the Notre Dame at home. Oh yeah, a lot of the buildings are really old (the school was founded in 1842), and everything looks like old English manors or mansions. Its pretty cool though. And everyone stays in the same dorms for all four year (well, pretty much), and so everyone gets really close and bonds and there's a lot of dorm pride. That reminded me of ND too. Anne thinks its too Catholic though (it is. There's a chapel in every dorm and part of the rules includes a "Christian Sexial Code"). At the bookstore you can anything that has the ND logo--even pasta. Too bad everything is too expensive to actually buy. Oh yeah, Anne is trying to get me to stop wearing blue clothes because everything I have is blue. One day I'll list everything I have that's blue (its a lot).

Day 5: Me and Anne actually woke up early and ran this morning. We ran for a few minutes until we got too hot and wanted to go back to put back our sweaters, and then we didn't feel likerunning anymore. So, we went to the sports center thats buy our dorm and check it out. We can get into everything here because we have IDs so that was pretty cool. There are a bunch of sport facilities around here. Too bad I'm too lazy to do anything. I was gonna play frisbee with some other people, but decided to watch TV instead. We had our first class meeting today, which was mostly an introduction to what we were gonna be doing for the next two and half weeks. We listen to two lectures every day about engineering (like Career Week presentations but all about different types of engineering) amd have to write a one page paper about each one. Then we have two group projects where we build a robot with LEGO Mindstorms, and bridge with Knex. They're contests and supposedly the prizes are really good. AND there;s a research-Powerpoint presentation project. Oh man, what did i get myself into? At least today we didn't do much. After we found out what we were doing, we listened to a presentation from the Dean of Engineering here. It was kinda boring, and I think it discouraged me from engineering a little. He was talking about how enginnering is different from science, but I think I'm gonna learn a lot (damn, its summer...I'm supposed to be taking a break from learning. At least it looks hecca good on college apps). Then we went to the engineering lab and got password and usernames for the network and that was mostly it. We wandered more in the afternoon because we didn't have any homework yet. We ate dinner--oh yeah, the food here is pretty good. I pigged out during lunch and dinner because there was so much good food. I'm gonna get the freshman 15 in only two and a half weeks before i ever get to college. Note to self: stop eating so much. I've been eating the Wheat Thins we bought all day too. Then we did some laundry (Anne was trying to teach me what to do, since I was clueless). Luckily nothing turned pink yet. We watched some TV; American Pie was on, so I finally saw that, but Anne said they changed a lot of stuff. We watched part of Major League, then finally decided to go outside and play frisbee with everyone else. I'll hopefully be good at that by the time we get back. We played until almost 10, and we could barely see the frisbees. That pretty much wrapped up the day. Oh yeah, everyone calls soda "Pop" here. It's just so funny it hear that. Ok, gotta go to bed, tomorrow the real work starts :-(

- posted by Nicola Tan at 6/17/2002 11:54:11 PM

Okay, this is Anne filling in for Nicola. Nicola's going to play some drop-in volleyball while I am here doing a whole lot nothing.

Day 6: (This was a little while ago and I have a horrible memory so this'll be short.) So we went to our first real lectures today. And may I say they were riveting. Yes. Downright riveting. If you can't sense the sarcasm well then you don't know me very well. Actually the first lecture was ok. It was on engineering design. The second one was kinda bad in my opinion. The guy posed a bunch of interesting questions at the beginning but he never really answered them. And he said that he believed Japan lost WW2 on purpose so they could benefit economically from some guy Deming sent over from the US to supervise the occupation. Well then! Sure buddy, I'm sure all the Japanese leaders got together in a meeting before the war and decided to kill off half their population all the while forgoing all sense of honor. Yeah, that must be it. Anyhow, after lunch we went to the learning lab and learned how to build legos robots. we got in a group with 3 other boys. they all seem nice and smart too. one of the guys has actually programmed stuff before so we're gonna do hella good. damn straight we are. after that we went to this other computer lab and went through this tutorial on how to use powerpoint which was pointless for most of us. me and one of the girls were doing random things since we were bored. we almost had a crisis with computer since we had so many applications running at the same time it was freezing. fortunately we didn't destroy the computer. ok.. now for the real fun stuff. instead of coming back to the dorm to do our papers like good little girls we did other stuff. we played frisbee. we played volleyball. we went rockclimbing (illegally by the way). well.. rockclimbing was quite an adventure. first of all, we were supposed to sign a waiver that basically said that we were 18 but none of us were. luckily the guy was really cool and told us to take it home to fill out the info on insurance and to return it. I suppose I will take it home... maybe not return it though. Rockclimbing is a lot more difficult than it seems. I made it to the top! I was so proud. I was like stuck though for the longest time just 2 feet away from the top. But I finally made it. Nicola made it too. What was kinda funny was that when Nicola's partner (who's larger than Nicola) was belaying (is that the term for going down? I'm not sure) she pulled Nicola up with her. It was rather amusing. Not in a mean kind of way or anything. After that we decided to see part of the baseball game between Notre Dame and Stanford. I got bored after an inning so me and this other girl left. Oh yeah and me and Nicola actually exercised even more by running to the lafortune center to watch the game. I forget when, but at some point I started watching tv in the lounge and did one of the papers in front of the tv. not a good idea. i later went upstairs and proceeded to attempt to do my other paper but I was dead tired. I finally finished at 12.30. And we both fell fast asleep...

Day 7: So we begin the day by waking up late. Great. But it’s ok because we get up go eat bcreakfast and come back in time for a nap. Ok so the night before Kat, the RA that’s like Cara, told us that our lectures would be in a different building. So we’re all smart and go to the right building. And all the guys go to the wrong building.. Haha. Dumb boys. The story of my life. Our lectures were pretty good today. Hey I just noticed that I have a really bad tan line. Darn. Oh and we’re supposed to go to Warren Dunes which was, as of yesterday, full of e. coli. Hm. Well it’s supposedly OK now to swim there. But I’m not sure I’m fond of subjecting myself to some odd bacterial infection. OK, so back to my story. Anyhow, nothing of real consequence happened in the afternoon. We went to the bookstore and finally found some decent postcards. Now comes the interesting part. So all day our counselors are telling us that we’re going to have a mandatory event in the evening. The boys in me and nicola’s group were being all mysterious and like about it, claiming that they had thought up the idea. So we’re talking and working and talking some more when suddenly the fire alarm goes off. I found myself lapsing into the many memories of being evacuated at our very own Notre Dame. *sigh!* We never did find out what happened but we assumed someone just accidentally set it off. Now back to the mystery activity. We find out while we’re waiting for the alarm to turn off that the original idea was to play Elimidate. For those of you who refrain from watching cheap dating shows: on Elimidate a girl/guy goes on a date with like 5 guys/girls and eliminates them one by one until she’s left with one she stays with I guess. Well, let me just say that not everyone was interested in participating… including us girls. Instead, they decided to imitate this one MTV show I forget what it’s called. We called it “King and Queen of the Engineering program.” The counselors randomly chose girls and guys and paired them up for random acts. After each event the spectators (us) would vote off a pair of people. The first event was relatively simple. Each couple had to be human wheelbarrows.. the catch was the guys were blindfolded. That was rather interesting to say the least. And by the way, me and Nicola were truly blessed that day… the Lord allowed us to remain unchosen. THANK YOU GOD!!! The other trials included really bad pick-up lines, singing and dancing to your partner (?), and the girls had to persuade the guys to give up their beads. I have to say that some of the jokes were really bad. They were demeaning to women and overtly sexual. Guys were stripping clothes (which wasn’t too bad I suppose), one guy grabbed his crotch in a crude pickup line. Me and Nicola were quite the little feminists. Ms. D and Ms. Garcia would’ve been proud. Mr. Iliketotouchmycrotch won. The winners were taken out to ice cream while the rest of us went to play some volleyball. First the best players in our program played the architecture people to win the court. We won of course. Actually, we didn’t even need to play be I suppose it was a matter of pride and putting the architecture people in their places. It was a good game. Some of our girls are really really good.. as in gone to Nationals good. After that we had two courts. Me and Nicola played the more fun game. The ball never died and you got bonus points for hitting it with your head. Oh man, that game was great fun. I tell ya! After awhile we got tired and went back.. it was nearly curfew. And we found to our dismay, several large bug bites. I really hate insects.. I just thought I’d share. We went back to our dorm, showered, and proceeded to write our papers. We then went to bed, anticipating our fate for the next day.

- posted by Anne Arewasikporn at 6/20/2002 10:40:35 PM

Day 8: Man am I tired. Last night, I drank a some Coke at 11, and of course couldn’t sleep (even though I didn’t go to bed until 1:30). We woke up at 7 and left by 8 to go to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. We took a chartered bus and I planned to sleep, but we watched the Shawshank Redemption, which I had never seen before and it was a great movie, so I couldn’t sleep. The trip took about two hours, and we had about two hours to check out the museum. It’s way better than the Tech (which I am sick of by now. I lied and told them I’ve been gone since the beginning of June because I just didn’t bother to show up the weekend just after school ended), but nothing really exciting or earth shattering. It was way bigger than the Tech and we kept losing people until it was just me and Anne, and we rode a space flight simulator ride and Anne climbed a mini rock climbing wall (since we were such experts from Tuesday). There were even some interactive skiing video games that you could play for free, but we didn’t feel like waiting for other people to finish. We watched a mini movie in one of the exhibits that zoomed insanely out to like 10^23 meters or something until the entire galaxy was barely a speck in the universe. It was just like the closing scene in MIB where the aliens are playing marbles. Then it zoomed way in into a guy’s hand until we got to the protons and neutrons I think. Yeah it sounds boring, but it was pretty interesting and put things into perspective—we really are so insignificant in the universe, and it got me thinking philosophical things and then I think the lack of sleep made me start thinking that there really are aliens out there, but we are so undeveloped and so small, that we’re not even worth bothering, like bacteria under a rock in the Sahara desert or something. That’s what happens when I’m tired.
After the museum, we crossed the state border again and actually went to Michigan to go to Warren Dunes beach on Lake Michigan. This was so much fun, but we only got to stay two hours. At first we didn’t want to go into the water because it was too cold, and we tried playing ultimate Frisbee in the sand. But the sand was too hot and burning our feet, so that didn’t last long and our burning feet brought us compelled us to finally go into the lake. After running around for only a few minutes in warm but not really hot weather, the water suddenly felt really nice. It was really shallow and there weren’t any waves. We ended up playing ultimate Frisbee in the water, which is very tiring because it involves a lot of running back and forth in waist deep water. After we got too tired to do that, we just played catch with the Frisbee in a circle in the water. I got out and tried to tan a little for senior portraits, but unfortunately I didn’t (at least not in the places I needed to tan). And way too soon, we had to leave.
By the time we got back, we were all exhausted. A lot of people slept on the way back, and even after, me and Anne were too tired to walk all the way back to out dorms and then too the dining hall for dinner (it’s not really that far, just across the quad from each other, because this campus is HUGE), so we just went to the café behind the dining hall sitting on the couches there until he dinner started. After dinner we had the intention of doing laundry (well Anne did. I just wanted to sleep but she wouldn’t let me). But we ended up planning to do it on the weekend, and went outside to play some more ultimate Frisbee. Then we went to play some volleyball on the sand courts, until it was way past dark, and finally back here. Sorry for making you read all that. It was a lot for a uninteresting though fun day. I need to sleep early too because I’m gonna watch the USA-Germany soccer game at 6 this morning. Too bad all the guys are watching it in their dorm and no one is watching it here, but its gonna be a good game.

- posted by Nicola Tan at 6/20/2002 11:40:11 PM

Day 9: Today was hot. It’s been hot since last night and I couldn’t even sleep. Hot and muggy and sticky and gross. Anyways, I had planned to wake up at 6 this morning to watch the soccer game, but when my alarm clock rang, I decided that sleep was nicer. Then when the clock rang for 7, the time we usually woke up so we could get some breakfast, we both decided sleep was better than food. So we finally got up at 7:30, got dressed and bought some smoothies before going to class. It was a smart idea, because it was so damn hot. We have three places where we usually meet, and today, we had our morning class in the only one that wasn’t air-conditioned. Luckily, our first speaker who was supposed to talk about chemistry cancelled, so our second speaker was moved up so we could get out earlier. Unfortunately, it was this computer nerd talking about computer security. He was pretty boring, and I already don’t care much for computer science stuff. I live on my computer, practically growing up on one, and I know how to fix things when stuff goes wrong and all that. But making a living and spending four years learning about that does not interest me, much less Anne. Poor guy though, by the end of his lecture, his shirt was all wet from sweating. So, we got out early for lunch, and all the girls decided to go to Reckers, a cool restaurant hang out which was air conditioned and sold those smoothies. After a while, we got some lunch, which thank god was also air-conditioned. We had to meet back at 1:30, though it wasn’t on the schedule, so me and Anne went to the minimart for bug spray, food, and stamps. It was a long hot walk there. And when we got there, there was no bug spray, which is really stupid because everyone here is getting attacked bugs. We did get a bottle of Sunny D for only 2:29, which was a lot better than the soda we’ve been buying for $1.25 apiece in the vending machines. The meeting at 1:30 turned out to be for a guy’s birthday whose family was apparently sponsoring the program, so they bought him a big cake and we sang happy birthday. Since it was air conditioned in there, we decided to stay on work on our robot that we’re building. It’s supposed to interact with the environment in any way, and most people I guess have it turn around when it bumps against the wall or use the light sensor to move when it’s over a certain color tile. Our though is way better. It turns when it bumps into the wall AND can sense and pick up ping pong balls. The ping pong balls was all my idea and I built that part of it totally from my imagination—a lot of people take parts from the manual it comes with and change it so it works for them. Mine is totally original and I’m damn proud of it. One guy is really good at programming and programmed it all for us, and we had it pretty much finished after a few hours. A lot of groups are still just getting started. After we braved leaving the air conditioned room for the hot summer air again, we hung out in the lounge in our dorm, the only room that is air conditioned, and watched the Disney Channel. After an hour or so, me and Anne decided to go to the drop in badminton and play, since we’ve been wanting to all week. The sports center though it on the completely other side of campus. We are on the very west side, and it’s on the very east side, and east-west stretches longer than north-south. So, we walked and walked and walked in the hot sun. And when we got there, we didn’t know which bulding it was in and so we walked some more. But the time we got there we were already sweating. And when we finally do, we see that the badminton courts are all filled. So we sat and watched them for a while, as I decided that badminton might be my obscure sport that will bring me fame and fortune. And so, after 15 or 20 min of just sitting and doing nothing, we walk all the way back in the hot hot hot sun. We grabbed some dinner (I was really excited because Anne had this really good tortellini at lunch, and it was still there for dinner) and ice cream. On our way out, we saw the other girls and they asked how badminton was, and all we told them was that we got a good workout (hey, all that walking and sweating must have burned a lot). We both were falling asleep in the nice airconditioned room, when we realized that everyone was leaving for the movies in 15 min. So we got up and changed and rode with one of the counselors to the theaters. The theater was really cute in a small suburban sort of way (though I guess South Bend isn’t that small, there’s supposedly a downtown). It only cost us $5.50 for student admission, even on a Friday night, and regular admission is only $6.75. Popcorn was only $2, $3, or $4, depending on size. One of the counselors dared the girls to play DDR in the arcade, and I took him up on it, since I used to be good because my brother has the game. I lost on the second song, but at least got props (I don’t think I’ve every used that word before) for trying, and making it that far. In the theater, the guys were talking about Disney Saturday morning cartoons, it was really funny. “Has anyone seen Recess?” “The one on Saturday morning?” “Yeah.” “Dude, that show’s the best.” “Have you seen the movie?” “There’s a movie? No way!” Haha. We watched The Borne Identity, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense, at least to me. I understood what was going on, but I kept thinking, “but why?” At least Matt Damon is hot. And if you watch it, towards the end there’s a scene where Matt Damon’s entering an apartment and fighting some guys. It’s night outside, and in one scene, it’s daylight outside, then it’s dark again. We got home and took showers since we were sticky from the humidity, then went outside where a bunch of people were playing volleyball. There’s also an architecture camp here, and we have a little rivalry with them, so we were joking that they were scouting us so they can beat us next time (we’ve already beaten them twice). And now I’m here. Finally, this hot miserable day is over (only really miserable because its hot). I can feel a cool breeze outside, so I’m gonna go breathe some that cool air in while I can.

- posted by Nicola Tan at 6/22/2002 01:03:48 AM

Talk about awesome adventure, we went whitewater rafting today. Read on.

Day 10: Today was a really fun day. Our alarm rang at 7, and so we went back to sleep, then I woke up at 10, and we decided to go back to sleep again, and so finally we got up at 11 and had breakfast/lunch at 11:30. We wanted to go whitewater rafting the night before but we didn’t think it would work because we didn’t talk to any of the counselors about rides and only a few people knew about it. But when we got out from lunch, apparently all the rides were ready and we were leaving in a few minutes. So after a mad rush to put on bathing suits, get towels, etc., we were off. The place was only a few minutes from Notre Dame, and it’s a man made canal that they made into a rafting and kayaking course. The rocks are just big chunks of plastic, but it was pretty fun. It only cost us $5 for 3 times down, which was plenty enough. Neither me or Anne fell off our boats, though almost everyone else did. It was tiring rowing, but the water felt really nice when it would splash into your boat. I've been looking for an obscure sport to gain fame, forture and glory, and I think kayaking might be it. I'm pretty sure it's an olympic sport, and it's fun. (I didn't go actual kayaking, I took a funyack, which is a two person inflatable boat that's shaped like kayak.) After we got back, we all decided to head to the pool since we were pretty wet already, so we hung out in there for a while The guys were being guys and jumping off the high dive trying to make big splashed. This guy everyone alls Boston because he’s from there and has a strong accents (same guy Anne called Mr. Iliketograbmycrotch earlier—and he does too, but that’s a different story) went of the high dive, but apparently he’s afraid of heights or something, and when he was going down he yelled “oh sh*t!” really loud (he also likes to say that a lot too), and there were a lot of little kids there. It was a you-had-to-have-been-there moment I guess. After that, me and Anne did some laundry, fell asleep waiting for it, then ate dinner. We watched played some cards for a while and just bummed around for a while until the big soccer game started. You see, we’re all at an Engineering program, and there’s also an architecture program here too for high school students, so we have a little rivalry with them. We’ve beaten them already in soccer, but I guess World Cup fever inspired the guys to challenge them to a soccer game. It turned out that I was the only girl who was playing on our team (the architecture people had a bunch of girls who were really good and kicking our guys butts). It was really fun. We did it shirts vs. skins, and we were the skins, so I was stuck running around in the sports bra. We beat them 3-2 I think, playing until we couldn’t see anymore. That guy, Boston, kept trying to stop the ball with his hand amd when he threw it in, he tried to bounce pass it or something. He had absolutely no clue what he was doing. Towards the end, someone from our team decided we should just pick up the ball and run it into the goal, so someone did, and passed it to me, so I threw it in. I heard the guys complaining, “It’s not fair. I can’t tackle her.” Haha. That pretty much ended it since we couldn’t see, so we all went back. We had a few hours until curfew at midnight, so we watched a movie with some guys (well, two), The Last of the Mohicans. One girl, Mary, twisted her ankle before the soccer game playing volleyball, and she said she was fine, even though she felt something pop. She was even walking on it after. Well, after the movie, she couldn’t put any pressure on it, and it was really swollen. The guys had to carry her back, which was a pretty amusing sight because it was a far way back and they had trouble carrying her. When we got back, they put her on a couch (the guys took it from one of the buildings because it had a sign that said “Free. Take me,” so they carried to the front of their dorm.) So she was laying there and we got her some ice. But there was no hospital staff around I guess since it was around midnight on Saturday during the summer so they had to take her to hospital. We don’t know how she’s doing, but she’s an athlete, and if she tore something, she might have to miss next season. I hope not. We were joking though because she jinxed herself earlier at the whitewater rafting place because she was playing with the oars and said “Hey, look, I have crutches” with them, and now she might actually need them. Also, she might be able to ride around in one of the golf carts we’ve been seeing people ride around the campus in and we’ve all wanted to get hold of one because it’s too hot and the campus is too big. Hopefully, if its just a sprained ankle and nothing is torn, she’ll be back tomorrow morning.

Day 11: Today, Sunday, was a day of rest, just as God had meant it to be. (Really, we were just too lazy to do anything). I woke up at 9 to go to church, then we ate lunch. Mary, the girl who sprained her ankle, got back at 4 this morning, luckily it was just a sprain, nothing too serious. After lunch, me, Anne, and another girl went to the bookstore to get some posterboard, and we hung out in the lounge for a while making a get well soon card. We signed it from, Your Fellow Enginerds. Then we gave it to a guy so he could get the other guys to sign it. We walked to the computer lounge because we have a set of 5 papers due, and a lot of people still had to write them (I actually haven’t been procrastinating with those and all I had to do was print them). It took us like 20 minutes to get there though because Mary was just getting used to crutches. We stopped at every place there was shade along the way. After we printed our papers out, we just watched some TV in the lounge of the student center for a while. We watched Fox News, noting that they Geraldo Reveria as an anchor, and most of the other anchors are young and blonde, and asked really badly phrased questions. So we went back to our dorm and eventually went to dinner. After dinner, we decided to steal the couch that guys have in front of their dorm, but as we were walking there, one of the guys started sitting on it. So we kept walking, and sat close by, hoping for him to leave. He finally got up, but some other people came, so we just decided to sit on the couch until everyone left. That was around 5:30. Then more people start coming out, I think because the guys saw 5 girls sitting outside their dorm. Then they started setting up a barbeque. They guys had it set up on the lawn, and suddenly the sprinklers started going off, just as they lit it. So they ran and moved it away from the sprinklers, and continued to try to light it. If anyone was at the picnic at Evergreen park and saw us trying to barbeque, it was a lot like that. They would light it, it would burn for a little, then go out. Then they would put some lighter fluid on it and light it, it would burn and go out. Then they would put MORE lighter fluid on it and light it, the flame would burst up and almost burn someone, then it would die. And on and on and on. One of the sprinklers was reached where they were, and one of the counselors got so frustrated that he kicked it and broke it. It became just a stream of water bursting up. Finally, it got going and they got cooking. While everyone was outside eating and we were still on the couch, Anne decided to give the guys nicknames. There’s Noshirt, because he kept taking it off; Lacrosse boy, because he always seems to have a lacrosse stick with him; Scuba Steve, one of the few guys they hangs out with us, also known as Frisbee boy because he’s really good at Frisbee; Dumbass, the guy Boston I was talking about before; Jackass, which kinda describes itself; Architecture boy, because he’s always hanging out with the architecture girls; High, this guy who always seems like he’s high; Springboard guy, a guy who purposely slipped and hit his butt on the high dive diving board then bounced into the water when we went swimming yesterday; and more I can’t remember . Me and Anne also agreed that the architecture girls are just like Pres girls—they have high voices, giggle nonstop, and constantly flirt with the guys. The engineering girls are like ND girls, and the architecture girls are presbyans, which is what we decided to call them because only we knew what it meant. We also started trying to think of a senior prank. One of the girls was telling us of one she thought of. It involved four sheep, which were let loose at school. The sheep would be numbered 1, 2, 3 and 5. They would look forever for a number 4. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t go over well at ND, but it sounded good. We couldn’t think of anything we could do. We then wandered to thinking what we could do the with the couch. We were thinking of just stealing it, we should move it into the middle of the lawn like in Friends, or move it to the other side of campus where it would be hard to bring back. Then we started to think of other things we could do to the guys, like a water balloon ambush, but that was all we could come up with. Eventually the guys left to play Ultimate Frisbee against architecture, and we stayed on the couch hoping everyone would leave and we could take the couch, but some guys stayed around, so we eventually left to watch the Frisbee game, 3 and a half hours later. For three and a half hours, we didn’t move from the couch. We picked up a Frisbee and just played catch with each other for a while and when the game ended a few guys joined us. After we played for a while, we went in and here we are. I can’t believe I can write so much about watching TV, sitting on a couch for over three hours, and throwing a Frisbee around, but I just did. I must be gifted.

- posted by Nicola Tan at 6/23/2002 11:21:34 PM

the next part anne wrote, so it might repeat some stuff, but its good stuff

-- posted by Nicola Tan at 6/27/2002 01:03:28 AM

Well well well.. on to Day 11:
This is Anne again. I'm being bored here in the Learning Center so I decided I would write this. I suppose I should begin with last night which was technically today early in the morning. Most of us girls stayed up and sat in the hallway talking past curfew. Among other things, we decided that we need to plan a prank against the guys. No details yet because I'm surrounded by the aforesaid guys. Anyhow, we talked about random ass things. Can't remember them all. After Callie (one of our counselors) asked us to move down the hall we just decided to go to bed. Me and Nicola weren't exactly tired yet so we stayed up until 2am just talking about school, boys, etc. Then we forced ourselves to go to bed. We woke up to sound of lovely music in the form of the friendly lawnmower. Ah yes. We got breakfast and went to not 1 but 2 scintillating lectures. So I proceeded to hear the oh-so-fun admissions lecture for the upteenth time. Our second obscure lecture was about electrical engineering. When I say obscure, I mean obscure as in incomprehensible as in not understandable. well then we ate lunch. more to come later. too many guys around. =)

-- posted by Anne Arewasikporn at 6/24/2002 01:22:37 PM

Whoo…we haven’t had time to write in this for three days, so we have a lot of catching up to do…

Day 12: Monday, back to lectures. We had to sit through three lectures instead of the usual two and had to write reports on all three. I still have to finish those… Anyways, the first one was about college admissions, and the lady was giving out t-shirts for people who gave the right answers to stuff. I answered something before I knew she was giving out prizes, so when she asked who answered it, some other guy said it was him and I let him get away with it…but then I got pissed off because he MY tshirt. Luckily, I asked a questions later and she said it was a good question, but she was out of tshirts, so she gave me a Notre Dame pennant instead, which I think is better than a tshirt anyway. Most of the stuff we already knew already, and it was just more of the same. After that was a lecture on electrical engineering. According to Anne, it was obscure meaning incomprehensible meaning not understandable (oh Anne, so what did you get on your SATs again?). The guy tried to teach the first month in one hour. Well, I can tell you all about jpg and mp3 compression if you’re interested, but I bet you’re not. I was just laughing because it was so technical and complicated and no one could understand him. By then we were pretty hungry because we didn’t eat breakfast because we got to lazy to wake up in the morning. At lunch, an amazing thing happened: the guys and girls actually ate lunch at the same table. Slowing over the last week it’s been progressing. The first day or two, it seemed like the guys and girls were still afraid of each other. Then by the middle of last week, the guys and girls would sit at tables near each other. By the end of the week, they were at the table right next to us. Finally, we got guys and girls to sit at the same table. After lunch, we had another lecture about geoscience. Apparently at Notre Dame, geoscience is in the same department at engineering, which made no sense to me. By now I was already falling asleep because I slept at almost three the night before, and the lecture didn’t help. I took four pages of notes and none of it make sense because it would become a scribble when I fell asleep. After that, we worked on robots and bridges, and we hung out outside for a while with some guys. After a while, I started getting bored and started throwing a Frisbee around with my buddy Steve, who’s a Frisbee freak. Some college guys asked if we wanted to play some ultimate Frisbee with them so we did. It was pretty fun, because there were some good people and some bad people, so it wasn’t so bad if you messed up or anything. The sprinklers just went off so the grass was muddy and I was slipping everywhere. I fell in a pretty big puddle and my shorts got pretty wet, luckily I was wearing dark denim shorts and not khakis or anything white. Afterwards, we went up to the lounge where our friend were watching a movie and watched Tin Cup. It was one of our counselor’s birthday, so we had gotten her a cake and surprised her. She just got out of the shower and though she had changed already, but apparently she had not and was still in her robe, so it was hilarious. We had a dorm meeting afterwards because we dedided that we needed to do something to the guys. First we were going to steal their couch, but they would just steal it back if they didn’t stop us already in the act. Moving it to a place fr away would be too difficult. Then we were going to steal their clothes and hang it or something, but that was too risky. My two favorites were shaving creaming them and waterballooning them with Crisco water balloons and then putting powder on them, but they could easily take our weapons and turn on us since we were outnumbered four to one. Finally, we decided on sticking maxi pads all over their couch since they hate that stuff. I don’t know who came up with it, but it was genius.

Day 13: Well, we woke up late again and got smoothies instead of breakfast again. We only had one lecture, about integrated design stuff. It was pretty cool because we had to come up for a concept on how to make a scanner our of legos robot equipment, and I sorta came up with some good stuff. It started to rain when we were getting out and we were completely unprepared in tank tops and shorts and flip flops, but at least it was cool. We worked on robots and bridges some more, and then me and Anne went out with one of the counselors to Wal Mart for the maxi pads and some flip flops because Anne’s favorite pair broke. We spent way too long deciding on the flipflops that the counselor had to page us over the PA. Afterwards, she took us out to dinner at a Thai restaurant, which I had never tried before. It was nice to have some rice and some real Asain food, since the “Asian” food they serve in the dining hall does not really exist (pork tempura? Vegetable and shrimp tempura, yes, but pork? No). Also, we had some good Cheesecake factory cheescake for dessert. Well, when we got back, everyone was up in the lounge watching another movie. They had just finished Indiana Jones when we got there and started 16 Candles. I had never seen that movie in my life, so I was glad I finally got to watch it. We’ve had this joke that one of the guys calls one of my friend’s crutches a cruuuooootch, because of his so called speech impediment and Wisconson accent. I guess it’s been wearing off my friend because she was saying, “Where’s my crotch? I need to go to the bathroom!” Haha, I guess you have to have been there if you think I’m just on crack or something. We also had a good time throwing pretzels at each other and blowing bubbles. When we got back into our dorms, we wrote the guys names on the pads and decorated them. I called home and talked to my parents for a while, then called Eillen. I can’t believe how much I’ve missed in three weeks. By now, Eillen is married, Janice has a stalker, and Leah’s dating a new guy. I actually wrote two papers that night too.

Day 14: Wow, I can’t believe we’ve been gone two weeks. I hate getting up in the morning. Today was the big day of the prank. I had a milkshake for breakfast and went to our lecture. It was about computer aided deisgn, and afterwards, we got to work on the computers and make 3D models. It was pretty darn cool, I got it to work after a while (it’s not that easy), and got it to rotate so it looks all 3-D and everything. We had lunch and hung out outside working on a crossword puzzle. In the afternoon we were working on our bridges and robots, so Anne and another girl snuck out and covered the couch with the pads. It took the guys a while to leave because it was our last real day to work on stuff, so I didn’t get to see how they reacted. We were afraid to hang out over there for the rest of the day. Instead of going to eat dinner in the dining hall, we ordered pizza and ate inside. Then we heard there’s a “mandatory meeting” that only the guy counselors got an e-mail about and not the girls, so we weren’t stupid and knew something was up and the guys were out to get revenge. A few girls were outside and the guys jumped the gun and started attacking early with water guns and so we got a little wet until we saw what was happening and ran back inside. We went back out in a few minutes, but I guess it wasn’t fun to get us wet anymore. They also had condom water balloons which they though was hilarious, but they used it more on each other than on us. Also, condoms don’t pop easily. And they’re expensive. Boy, those guys are stupid. We ate our pizza and actually ordered some more, so between eight girls, we had four pizzas—half a pizza each. I’m gonna be so fat when I’m back. Well, afterwards, we went to watch a volleyball game, which wasn’t that interesting, so we played cards and hung out until the Frisbee guy came an we played around. Another guy came and hung out with us. We started playing three flies up with two guys and three girls and it turned into a wrestling match as we tried holding each other down. It probably looked like an x-rated movie with clothes on, but it was fun. It was probably the most fun I’ve had the with guys in years. Some of the girls were calling their friends on their cell phones since they had night minutes and the guys were acting goofy and stupid, but it was hecka funny. Then we started singing songs and telling blond joke like we were drunk. Fun times it was indeed. OK, well, we’re leving at 7:30 tomorrow, so I should take a shower soon and go to bed.

-- posted by Nicola Tan at 6/27/2002 01:03:57 AM

ok, here's the last week in a nutshell:

we spent a lot of time sitting around, playing cards (anne learned how to play rummy), watching movies, and playing volleyball.

ok, well, here's a little more

Day 15: field trip day #2. We went to the Delphi plant, which makes computer type stuff for cars. The first part was all about how they make buttons for air conditioners and that stuff. The second part was a fab where they make computer chips. It's exactly what Silicon Valley is all about, making silicon computer chips, but in Kokomo, Indiana. The bunny suits there are definitely not as cool as Intel's. Then we went to lunch at the worst mall I've ever seen (worse than eastridge), and then to a plane museum which wasn't all to interesting, but we got took a lot of pictures. Then we went to the college football hall of fame, and kicked and threw footballs around for half an hour, then went back. We attempted playing cards later thatnight, but we were all falling asleep while we were doing it, so finally we gave up at around 2AM.

Day 16: We listened to a two more lectures which must have been not to interesting because I don't remember them anymore. in the afternoon, we tested our bridges. It has to move the least when weights are put on it and cost the least possible. Ours moved the least and cost the third or fourth least, so we won (it wasn't officially announced yet). We sat around for a while and finally decided to go to the movies. We watched Mr Deeds, which was pretty funny. It was a pretty typical Adam Sandler movie.

Day 17: Weekend arrived. We slept in until 10:30 or 11. We went to the beach at ND, on one of the two lakes they have. We've been talking about going there since he first day. so we knew we needed to do it before we left. the guys were really afraid to get into the water and when i teased them about it, they informed me it really hurts in a really sensitive place. We sat on a floating platform for a couple hours just talking, and then we left to go swimming in the pool by our dorms. we swam for a while, but the cool pool is like 7 feet deep, so we were all wearing floaties. We were watching the guys jump off the high dive. It was the cutues when little kids who were just three feet tall would go off the high dive. We killed some more time and watched 16 candles I think. That night we tried having an all girls sleepover in the lounge of our dorm because we had it all to ourselves. There were three high school programs in the dorm, and one finished on thursday and friday, and the other the students go home on weekends. Unfortunately, everyone feel asleep before we even finished the first movie. Me and anne worked on our papers and didn't sleep until 5 o'clock or so.

Day 18: We dragged ourselves out of bed (really it was the lounge floor) at 10 or so, and went upstairs to sleep some more. After brinch, we worked on our robots for a few hours because they were due the next day. Then we went to work on all our reports, which pretty much took the rest of the day.

Day 19: We had two pretty boring lectures. Anne even fall asleep (I usually do anyway, but Anne's the good one). I was working on a crossword puzzle during it. We tested our robots in the afernoon. One of the guys in the group asked me if ours worked because I was the one working in it. i told him i might if he prayed. Thank god it did. Almost everyones used te light sensor to avoid blue tiles, so that was pretty unoriginal. Afterwards, we went to work on our powerpoint presentation, which we got on thursday or friday and were due the next day. We started Monday afternoon. I ended up doing a lot of it myself, with Anne's help, and basically that took all day. I could tell you all about how internal combustion engines work, and how gas and diesel engines differ, and what regenerative braking is though. We watched O brother where art thou that night. it was supposed to be like the oddessy, but i didn't see alot of parallels, just a few obvious ones. At dinner, the guys decided to have the "Milk challenge" at dinner. You have to drink a gallon (8 glasses) of milk in one hour. they did it in the dining hall because we could get all the milk we needed there for free, and since it was during the middle of dinner, there were tons of people there. There were even more people than usual because there as a Life Teen conference, which is some church thing. There were three guys who did it, including one counselor (i'm pretty sure it was his idea too). Almost everyone in te place got into it. the first guy threw up about halfway into it. The program director of the engineering program was in there that night, and they were trying to hide, but it was useless. So the couselor ended up telling him, and he just laughed. Another guy threw up. After each guy trew up, everyone would cheer. Finally, there was just the couselor left, and he had only half a glass left, but time was running out. He coulding finish it, and threw up. By the way, the prize was two bottles of Gold Bond cream, which the guys would not shut up about becuase i guess it makes their balls cool down or something like that. I'll have to talk about their other contest later.

Day 20: two more boring lectures (but our last ones!). we had the powerpoint presentations in the afternoon. Since i did pretty much all of it, most of the other people in our group didn't know what they were even talking about. It doesn't matter, we don't get a grade anyway. The last group was made up of some guys we call the california guys, boston, and jersey. instead of doing the assignment, they decided to do a slideshow of pictures of themselves. It was pretty funny. The first part were little intros of themselves as if they were on a dating service or something. One guys was "He hates the color blue (especially balls colored blue)" everyone started crackig up, and the program director stood up and was like "time out. time out." i though he was gonna cut the guys off, but instead he was "someone needs to fill me in on that." it was pretty funny overall. Since it was our last day together, the couselors bought pizza and buffalo wings for everyone and we hung out for a while. They were gonna do another ilk challenge, but the guy who was supposed to gt the milk was taking a few hours, so we went to watch the sixth sense instead. When we got back out, we found out that they did have the contest, and it was down to two guys. Then one of the priests coes down and takes all the milk away because he said it's gluttony. One of the guys that was winning then decided to argue with the priest. haha. Well, that night, i had five reports to write, but first, we made cards for our couselors and one with nicknames we made for the guys. We spent the last two weeks thinking of these names (I think it was anne's idea). We just put the names, and we let them figure out who was who. So, I didn't even start until almost 3.

Day 21: I nev er slept that night, inishing at around 6. I just stayed up with another girl who finished at 7. We had breakfast anf printed them out. Since we didn't have a morning session, I slept some more. I finally got up and made a poster with all of out inside jokes from camp. Oh man, this whole experience was so much fun. We had alunch banquet, and got certificates and stuff. They gave out awards for best bridge, robot, and powerpoint presentation. We got best bridge so we got free sweatshirts, which was pretty cool. We found out later that we also got 2nd or 3rd in the robot, so we really were the top team overall. Almost everyone left within an hour after the banquet, so we had our goodbyes. It was so sad, because we've all become such great friends and we have to say good bye so soon. Me and Anne had a few more hours to kill until we got picked up, so we went to the bookstore to exchange the sewashirts we won for ones our size, and got some smoothies since it was so hot. Then we sat in the ait conditioned lounge and I slept while she play cards with another girl. We went back to chicago and ate dinner, then went to watch some fireworks by the water. here, they have fireworks on the 3rd too. Unforturnately, there were trees in the way, so we didn't get a great view or anything. We got back and talked to Steve from engineering camp who lives near chicago about meeting up with him the next day, but it wasn't working out. But then I hadb't slept in 40 hours or so, so I gave up and went to sleep.

Day 22: We woke up at almost noon. we went to a gay beach, which after all that me and anne have seen, didn't seem like much anymore. Thw two of us walked down and found another beach that was "free." We played frisbee in the water and tanned for a while. We met up with my uncle and played some more frisbee. My ucle and his roommates left to get bikes from their old apartment so me and ane walked back on our own after stopping at a starbucks. later we went to watch minority report, which was pretty good, and went back here and talked to some people from engineering camp about how much we already miss everyone, adn then started writing in this. we saw a fwe more starbucks todya, so i guess the count is at 15.

-- posted by Nicola Tan at 7/5/2002 01:23:12 AM

Day 23: I can't believe this is our last day on this vacation. It's been a great experiencecle and played some more frisbee. My ucle and his roommates left to get bikes from their old apartment so me and ane walked back on our own after stopping at a starbucks. later we went to watch minority report, which was pretty good, and went back here and talked to some people from engineering camp about how much we already miss everyone, adn then started writing in this. we saw a fwe more starbucks todya, so i guess the count is at 15.

-- posted by Nicola Tan at 7/5/2002 01:23:12 AM

Day 23: I can't believe this is our last day on this vacation. It's been a great experience. And today was a blast. We woke up at 9 o'clock when our friend Steve called (we said he could call after 8, but we oon fell asleep again). We decided to meet at Navy Pier, which is a family touristy site downtown. So, we got dropped off at Navy Pier and got something to eat since we hadn't eaten breakfast yet. We went to the nicest McDonald's I've ever seen. They had a counter where they sold McDonald's souveniers and a separate dessert counter, and it was just really nice. We even took pictures of the place. Then we went to meet Steve. It was really cool that we got to see him again. We were afraid that we would never see any of the people from Notre Dame (the University) ever again. Anyways, there is a huge ferris wheel there that we pass all the time and so we just had to ride it. We ended up paying $10 each to ride the ferris wheel, carousel, and swing ride, but it was fun. We got bored at navy pier pretty quickly, so we took a trolley to a big festival that was happening called the Taste of Chicago. It's a really big thing where Chicago restaurants set up booths and you can try all kinds of food. We had Italian Ice, ice cream, fried dough, and a funnel cake. Pretty unhealthy stuff, but luckily, we got full pretty quickly and so the glut ended there. After standing arund trying to figure out what to do, we finally decided to watch a movie. We bought a newspaper and found a theater a few blocks away that was showing MIB2. As it turned out, two other guys that we knew from engineering camp were there to watch the same movie. It was just so weird that we run into them on the day they we were hanging out with our friend from engineering camp. The movie wasn't as bad as the critics made it seem. It had some cheap laughs, but, hey, it was funny. Afterwards, we headed home on the subway with Steve because we thought my uncle was barbequeing, but they were still out trying to buy the grill. So we chatted to some of out friends from camp online, and finally went out to eat dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We walked Steve down a few blocks to the train station and we had to say goodbye again, which really sucked. It was really nice knowing some cool guys that we could hang out with like that. So we walked back and now we're here. We still need to pack everything again, so that's what we're probably gonna be up doing. It didn't see that bad when everyone was leaving the engineering camp because we still had a few more days of vacation left so it didn't feel over yet, but now that we are about to leave for real, now it's getting pretty sad. I'm gonna miss everyone and everything so much. (except maybe the humidity). It's all over now...

Starbucks final count: 18

By the way, Anne alphabetizes her buddy list. I've been wanting to mention that for a while, but just never got to it, so might as well now. That is so weird, but it is something Anne would do.

Oh yeah, I have to talk about the other contest the guys had. Well, at first the guys would mention it but they said we didn't want to know what it was about. But they kept talking about it, so we made them tell us. It was a contest to see who can screw themselves the most over like a week. there was a board in their dorm to keep track too. It was really gross. If any of you girls at Notre Dame (the high school) ever wish you went to school with guys, remember that. That counselor that was in the milk contest, well he was in this contest too, and three or four more other guys. After a while it just became a joke because everyone was writing stuff on the board, but yeah, it was gross. And the tale of our vacation I guess will end on that note.

-- posted by Nicola Tan at 7/5/2002 11:24:30 PM