We’re home!

We have been in Champaign about two weeks now, and we’re doing our best to make ourselves feel at home. The first shock we got was when we actually saw our apartment… it’s so tiny. Guess that’s what you get for renting a place without actually seeing it. The description and pictures online looked so much better. But we did our best to fit all our things into the space we have by doing some clever engineering. Bed raised on concrete blocks frees up a lot of space for storage! Now it’s starting to feel like real home as we’ve added a lot of personal touches.

The location of our place is great though, we are right outside the campus and close to almost everything. Manish’s bldg is just 5 minutes walk… hm… maybe it’s not such a good thing b/c he’s been spending a lot of time there We barely use our car here, which is a huge change from LA living. There’s even a great international market just down the block from us.

Something you can’t miss driving on the highway and just outside of town are the cornfields! Corn, corn everywhere… can’t miss ‘em. They’re really beautiful right now, mostly green and golden… and they spread out as far the eye can see. We went to a BBQ last Friday to a professor’s house, and his beautiful house was located smack in the middle of cornfields. It was quite eerie (or peaceful according to Manish) at night with a silence that we’re not accustomed to. It was awesome to see all the fireflies flying around in the dark.

So guess what they have in a town surrounded by corn – a festival to celebrate them. We went to the sweet corn festival last weekend with D and M and it was fun overall. The corn was yummy, however, we heard that they were actually from CO. Huh! So many cornfields and they have to import edible corn for a showcase festival. Apparently the corn they grow around here are mostly feed corn… go figure.

Manish has started school and has two classes to TA. He is actually enjoying it and says he is “relearning a lot”. Looks like the student life is agreeing with him so far.