Random trips after my first year in IL!
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The spring semester ended on May 12, marking the end of my first year as a Ph.D. student at UIUC. To celebrate the hard work, I invited my boyfriend to come visit me in Champaign. But since Champaign has nothing much to do, we also planned a short trip to Chicago and also Florida! Poy had never been to Disney World before, so we tried so hard to make it happen despite the price of Disney world’s tickets. Poy flew from England to Chicago, so our first short trip happened in Chicago! It was my second time in Chicago, so I tried to visit different places than the last time I went to in January.
At first, we planned to go to Lincoln zoo, but because of time constraints, we decided to skip it and go straight to downtown Chicago. The main reason that we skipped the zoo was that we wanted to go shopping. I needed to choose a purse for my mom, Poy needed to buy a new pair of shoes, and we’d like to go to the Apple store near the navy pier. All of these forced us to cut off some of our plans, but it was still so much fun to walk around downtown. We started from the most famous landmark, Cloud Gate (aka the bean) in Millenium Park. We then walked along the lake to see the Buckingham fountain and Shedd aquarium (but didn’t go inside). We didn’t go all the way to Shedd aquarium for nothing, but we intended to go there to get a big cone of the original rainbow cone! It is a famous ice cream shop in Chicago, where they serve seven flavors of ice cream in one cone.
After that, we went to Sweet Bean, my favorite coffee shop. We had three pieces of pastries, a cup of latte, and a cup of London fog. We then headed to the Navy Pier; Although we didn’t expect much from the place, it turned out to be our favorite spot (on a sunny day). We ended our short trip at Happy Lamb, a hotpot place in Chinatown. It was so delicious just like the last time I went with my friends!
While Poy was in Champaign, we didn’t do much honestly. Champaign was a good town to live in due to cheap rents, decent cost of living, and green areas. However, it does not have much to offer in terms of tourism. Still, we enjoy ourselves by cooking, grocery shopping, and watching movies. We went to see “Everything, everywhere, all at once.” The film starred Michelle Yeoh, one of the best acrobatic fighting actresses. The film was one of the masterpieces I had seen: sarcastic, dramatic, and incorporated the multiverse theme so smoothly. Besides the film, we, um, ate, um, a lot. We cooked many dishes, for example, fried pork ribs with sticky rice, Thai-styled porridge, strawberry waffles, fried chicken, and mango sticky rice. We also invited our friends in Champaign to have a BBQ party! I had so much fun hosting a party.
Besides cooking, we also ate out, though not so often. I brought Poy to Yogi, a Korean restaurant (more like a food court), and Pho station noodles. We also had some frozen yogurt and boba tea. The food was great, but they were not cheap, so that was all we ate out…
Let’s talk about the other short trip we went to during Poy’s visit– Disney World! I’m a big fan of Disney theme parks and wanted to introduce theme park culture to my boyfriend. I decided to bring him to Magic Kingdom in Disney World, Fl. I know that I was there three years ago, but Magic Kingdom has such a special place in my heart. We went there on May 24 via Frontier. When we were there, I thought we had to take a bus from the parking lot in Disney World to the park, but we were told to go on the ferry! The ferry was slower than the bus, but it was classic and magical.
We went straight to hit as many popular rides as possible, but that day was very hot and humid that I almost fainted while waiting in the line, so we had to take a short break at lunch. When I got better we started our journey again, and we found out that the park closed at 11 PM in the summer!! Hence, the time lost while I was recovering was just a tiny portion. We hit almost every ride/show in the theme parks, except the two famous ones, Splash mountain and the pirate of the Caribbean, which kept closing/opening throughout the day.
Because of the extended hours in the summer, I got to go on the big thunder mountain ride, the seven dwarfs mine train, Peterpan’s flight, the speedway, and see the Bear Jamboree! I felt more accomplished than finishing my first year at UIUC. (Just kidding)
This trip fell on the 50th anniversary of Disney World, so Cinderella’s castle was decorated differently than usual and painted pink and gold. The firework at night was so magical that we almost forgot to take a breath. After the firework, we still got some time left, so we went to the mad hatter teacup, Flying Dumbo, and our classic It’s Small World.
Before we flew back to Chicago, we got a small time window to squeeze in a trip to Miami. I’d never been to Miami before, so I never thought there would be a beach people could actually go into the water. The south beach in Miami was different: the water was clear and warm enough for humans to soak in. We enjoyed this trip a lot and already planned to go back again shortly!
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.