18 Aug, Wednesday
So we arrived on the morning of 18 Aug 2010 after a long flight via Narita - I would love to say Tokyo but unfortunately we never left the transit area... Found a cool system at the airport that allowed us to pick up a receiver to talk to a cab operator, and soon, we were on the way to Evanston!
It took only 30 min at most. We alighted opposite the Hilton to see this: McManus, our new home!
We got our keys and found our room - 516. It was fully furnished but of course we still had to get stuff like bedsheets, appliances, and even a landline phone to use the already activated line. We got online to find out some basic info - the wireless worked like a charm! And I could use it anywhere on campus - woohoo! No need for data plan! :)
My priority was to get bedsheets - else I couldn't sleep! But before that, the bank. And before that, to get Sito's student ID. And before that, we had our first meal in Evanston - BK!! It was right outside our place :p Not the best, I know but we were hungry and new! :p
With the ID, we can go to the bank. Apparently, it was really easy to get Citi Gold here but for some reason, Sito's ATM card had a mistake. My card for the moment :)
After that, I think, we checked in with the international student office and went to the health centre to make an appointment to do a health test.
Next was to get bedsheets!! After checking out a local store, it seemed that our best bet would be to take a ride out to a shopping mall named Old Orchard (and apparently now renamed to something else but I don't remember!) - we were lucky that there were some discounts going on and spent only some $300 on bedsheets, pillows, duvet and covers. Well, could be worse..
Dinner was um, Subway - haha! Slightly healthier than BK... Got some essentials at a convenient store and went home.. And when we eventually went to bed, we decided that the bedsheets and duvet etc were so worth it :)
19 Aug, Thursday
Woke hungry. And found that we had no cup for our milk! *.*
This was the day when we MUST buy the rest of our essentials. We learnt the day before that the round trip to Ikea cost too much at $100 (!) so we went to Target instead. What should be a short walk from the bus stop turned out to be a long long walk cos somehow, google map was wrong!!!
Luckily we had Macs for lunch - oops, another unhealthy choice :p
Anyway, spent some two hours walking the entire store, getting pots and pans, rubbish bin, phone, rice cooker, cleaning stuff etc.. We had to a cab back but yes, it was so worth it! We felt so much settled after that. And, it was great fun setting up home even though it was tiring :)
Met another Singaporean at his house after that and we had dinner with him and another guy at Koi, an Asian fusion kind of place. We ordered too much - I've never seen a bigger plate of sweet and sour chicken!
We bought cereals on the way home. Americans don't seem to eat much muesli - I am sad =(
20 Aug, Friday
So we had utensils for breakfast - or brunch :)
We headed for T-mobile to get local mobile lines. The guy was so helpful. And funny too - he said he would see me again cos I would want to change my prepaid plan to postpaid :p Well, so far so good, we shall see :)
We had lunch at BK - again! - before Sito went for some tech check while I went to buy a night moisturiser cos my face was drying up *.* The weather was like Sg weather - hot and sunny - but dry. In fact, the highest temperature reached was higher than that in Sg!
Went to a pre-KWEST BBQ dinner that evening - more on this in later post...
29 Aug, Sunday
Couldn't sleep in although we just got back from KWEST the night before cos of iCIM - international CIM! Ok, so I don't know what CIM stands for, but it's some orientation thing :p More on CIM later..
We did two loads of laundry in the morning and headed out for iCIM. Had coffee with a guy from Malaysia before getting some groceries - cooking dinner at last! A simple one though :)
PS: I boiled the sausages to cook it first - and to get some oil out! :p
30 Aug, Monday
Today marks the start of CIM. I had some time in the afternoon to iron all our clothes!! Finally cleared the mess of clothes on the top of our drawers! Finally took pictures!! :)
First of all, the label at our door had a typo in Sito's name, so he changed it, quite drastically, to include me :)
This is the entrance to our room - a sofa on the left for our bags and the bookshelf to the right:
These show the living room from the door and the bookshelf. Sito works at the desk while I use the dining table for both leisure and ironing clothes on our mini ironing board :)
Kitchen! Can do with a dish holder though...
We have a big rice cooker that can take like 10-14 cups - bought it cos it was cheaper than the rice cooker for six cups :p
A corridor leads us into the living room, via a huge wardrobe that's only one of three - yeah!!
And this is our bedroom - it's bigger than our first at HV! Think we can fit another queen bed next to our king...
Finally, our very important bathroom!
