Okay, actually I started off writing the first paragraph in Chinese. I thought it would be cool to try travelogging in Chinese at least for once since that would for sure significantly increase the size of my readers (which has always been 1, the one being myself). But I decided not to do so before I finished the third sentence. Writing in Chinese is difficult for me mostly because words just don't come out naturally of my mind and I have to think of how to write and/or type a word and that always made me forget what I wanted to write.
So this is another work+fun kinda trip of mine during which I have to stay at UIUC for two days for a workshop kind of thing and then I'm gonna do some backpacking in Chicago for 3 days before going back to Dartmouth. For trips conventional as this, things can't really go wrong. Obviously I said so because something did go wrong. Well, I thought the bus from Hanover to Manchester airport departed at 10:10am which is the information I got from the Dartmouth Travel website. But I didn't realize until this morning that the schedule hasn't been updated since 6 years ago (oh my god). And when I checked it at the Vermont Transit website, Crap! I was already late for the 9am bus and I would be late for the flight if I took the next bus. Fortunately Keren kindly drove me to the airport. Really, I mean, what's the point of putting up a schedule that is soooo outdated except causing confusion? If those people are not updating it, just put a link to the Vermont Transit webiste!
The flight from Manchester to Chicago was good. It was a big plane, unlike what you would usually ride on for domestic flights, which is good because big planes are way more comfortable than the small ones especially during taking off and landing. The flight arrived on time, so I turned the hand of my watch back a circle, grabbed my bag, and stepped onto the Chicago Midway Airport.
The airport looked clean and bright, as there were a lot of windows for the sunlight. As expected, there were quite a portion of black people everywhere. But they spoke at an accent different from those in NYC. If you listen to those black people in NYC, they speak as if they were rapping. Here in Chicago, you somehow feel like a taste of Blues when the black people talk. And they weren't too black actually. In fact, most of them weren't as black as one of my Chinese friend whom we always make fun of and say he's an Indian due to his skin color. One last transportation I had to take before arriving at UIUC is the shuttle bus. I had 1.5 hours of
spare time in the airport before I got on the bus so there wasn't any hurry for me. All I had to do was to check out the exact location of the bus stop.
The bus turned out to arrive earlier than scheduled. The first thing I did after getting off was to hunt for food along the Green street. It was almost 9pm although the sky was not completely dark yet. I eventually ended up eating at a chinese fast food shop just because I kinda wanted to testdrive the quality of chinese food here at UIUC. I was really suprised by the taste, it was sooo original. Orient is nowhere near it. Now that my stomach was satisfied. Then I headed towards the Hampton Inn, which was when something strange happened...
Since this was my second time here, I was kinda able to recognize the way to the Hampton Inn, but just to be safe, I asked people along the way. It suprised me though three out of three whom I asked didn't know where it is. The last person I asked was a lady coming out of the library who said she was also going somewhere nearby and so we walked together. She "said" she's at her third year here majoring management or something like that. She offered to show me around the campus after I told her I didn't have time to wander around last time I was here. I said that would be great but I would have to check email and make sure there was no work for the night because very likely my advisor would comment on the slides I'm going to use tomorrow. But then somehow I sensed something weird going on... (the rest of this paragraph was deleted intentionally)
So the worst thing of the day was -- the Internet service was out of order in Hamption Inn. And that was just too frustrating. I mean I needed to get online to check emails from my advisor, and I didn't even know the schedule and venue for tomorrow!! What am I gonna do?? The hotel people weren't helpful at all except throwing me a tech-support number. Without suprise, calling was nothing but just a waste of time.
So I decided to go into the campus and try to get online. I spent like an hour wandering around and asking people without luck -- libraries were all closed, I would have to login to use the wireless network, the cafe on the green street with Wifi was closed. Then I gave up and walked back to the hotel, hoping the network would have worked again (coz I know a lot of people complained at the front desk like I did). But no, it was still down. So I decided to sleep early and get up like 6 in the morning tomorrow.
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