Before The Graduation Day: Portland, Freeport, and Brunswick!
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A few days before graduation, my boyfriend took a flight from San Diego to Maine to be my helper during graduation. I went to school at Bowdoin College in Maine, so did Poy, but he hadn’t really gone to Portland that often during his time at Bowdoin. So, on the second day of his visit, we went to Portland together! (Note: Portland is definitely not the capital city of Main, but a lovely city to visit.) We took a breeze bus to Portland and dropped off at the monument square. It was a nice and sunny day, luckily!
Then, we walked around and went to Bubblemania, the only bubble tea shop in town. Then, we walked down to the pier to see the beautiful blue ocean. Portland is still worried about its COVID situation, so many places shut the indoor dining zone. We then went for Gilbert’s chowder, the place where Al and Nita (Emma’s host) suggested. We sat outdoor and ordered a lobster roll and two seafood chowders. The food was amazing and not so costly compared to its quality!
We then walked around for a bit to see the water again and also some souvenir shops.
I was craving some donuts, and there was an amazing donut place called “Holy donut.” However, the shop had permanently closed due to the COVID-19, so I didn’t get to taste it for one last time before I left Maine. With a hint of disappointment, we thought we would go to our next stop: “Freeport.”
Freeport is where the LL bean outlet is located. Emma and I have been there a couple of times, but Poy and I never went there together before. We went to several shops to look for some gifts for my parents and some for me. I got a wallet for my mom from Coach and got a nice pair of Sketchers with a cat pattern for myself. After that, we decided we would go back to Brunswick and take some rest.
A couple of days after that, Poy was staying with John and Margaret, our host parents, while Emma and I had enjoyed the activities that our school prepared for the seniors. Traditionally, the last week before the graduation was called “the senior week,” but for this year, it was shortened to “the senior days.” Emma, Doris, Ruby, Alina, Rosemary, Hikma, Esther, and Belinda. We went to take the class photo together and rushed to the lobster bake. That was the last free lobster bake that I got from Bowdoin, and it was surprisingly better than the ones I had in the previous years! In fact, the point of Bowdoin lobster bakes is not for students to enjoy some signature food of Maine, but for us to take pictures together and have fun.
The day after, I had dinner with Poy, John, and Margaret. It had been so long since I had dinner with them in their house, but it did feel warm and fulfilling every time I was there. Actually, there were several things I did during my senior days, including a get-together with my Japanese squats, going to a renovated Wild Oats bakery house, having dinner with Emma and Poy at Little Tokyo on the Maine street, seeing Professor Tanabe in her office and talking for two hours, taking pictures in gown and cap, packing and sending stuff to my new place in IL, and basically enjoying my leftover time at Bowdoin.
And there came the graduation on May 29th, 2021. After the weird three semesters due to the pandemic, we came back to Maine for the last semester ever. It was fun to be back and see our friends. I love having my dear downstairs neighbors, Ruby and Alexia, come to and chill in my room. My Bowdoin experience was quite an experience, but I could not ask for a better one. Although it was raining and cold during the graduation, everyone looked happy than ever. Thanks for a great education and precious memories, Polar bears!
P.S. Okay, that was not the absolute end of my time in Maine before I departed to Thailand. I actually stored my luggage with John and Margaret, and Poy, Emma, and I drove to visit Acadia and Bar harbor!! See the next post for my trip over there!
After we found out that there are some flights from Willard (a regional airport in Champaign) that are inexpensive, we started flying out from here instaead of Chicago. We got a really good price of plane tickets to Seattle, so we decided to go to more national parks! The two parks that we visited were Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks. We thought about going to North Cascade as well, but the time was limited so we planned to visit there next time. Visiting these two popular national parks in the fall was such a good choice–less crowd, nice weather, and fall foliage!
Midwest surprisingly offers us many national parks to visit all year round. One of the national parks near Illinois is the Mammoth Cave National Park in Cave City, Kentucky. We rented a car from Champaign and drove around 5 hours, excluding small stops in Indiana. We had never been to Kentucky before, and we believe that not many international students had been there. Plus, this was the first time we visited a cave in the US, and we start with the world’s longest known cave system!
We’d been thinking of visiting South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore and Badlands national park for almost a year. Then an opportunity came when one of our friends gave us a buy-one-get-one-free coupon from Delta. We did not hestitate even a bit in buying two tickets for a round trip from Chicago to Rapid City, SD. Although it was an impulsive trip, we had a lot of fun observing the wildlife in the great plains of South Dakota and North Dakota.
Although Poy graduated from the Scripps-Oxford joint Ph.D. program in Biochemistry for half a year and already started working at UIUC as a post-doctoral researcher, his graduation ceremony was held way later in May 2024. His family also came from Thailand to attend his graduation ceremony in San Diego. We then spent over a week afterward traveling around the west coast, including California, Arizona, and Nevada. It was my first time (and his family’s first time) doing a road trip in the west coast. We enjoyed a huge variety of natural wonders that the west coast has to offer.