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Miscellaneous
House hunting. I had known about Craig's list quite along ago, but I had never made good use of this site, until now. Two months before going to St. Louis, I started contacting a whole lot of people for summer housing in St. Louis (you can tell I'm pretty cranky about the place I live in :-), found several good places, and finally decided to take a room in a shared two-bedroom condo up on the sixth floor of a newly renovated building in Central West End area. My room has a gigantic window that overlooks Forest Park two blocks away, which is the reason why I chose this place. Other rooms are also full of light with lots of large windows everywhere.
My friend Navin and I arrived at Lambert airport on Sat afternoon, May 28th. That evening, Brian, my landlord and roommate, and his girlfriend, Yamini, took us out for dinner, to welcome us to St. Louis. The next day Navin and I took the Gold line to campus to explore the place, and then the Red line to the shopping area for some initial shopping. I was happy to find out that with its convenient routes and schedule, the Washington Uinversity shuttle would surely help me commute comfortably even without a car. I cooked a lot this first week, enjoying the convenience of Brian's fully equipped kitchen, and the homemade food that I had missed during the whole last school year living on campus.
On the next Saturday, Navin and I rented a car and drove down to St. Louis city center to visit the Arch. We took the elevator up to the top of the arch, where we could enjoy impressive views of the Mississipi River on one side, and of the Capitol and the Stadium on the other. We had lunch at Pho Grand, a Vietnamese restaurant (Yay!). In the afternoon, we drove a long way to visit Butterfly House at the other end of the city. There were a lot of beautiful butterflies, but since they have to maintain tropical weather for the butterflies, it was really hot inside, so hot that we soaked in our own sweat when we left the place.
Navin left on Tuesday, which marked the end of my relaxing days. Soon after that, I got into a busy schedule, working during the day, and studying for GRE during the evening.
The same hectic schedule of working and studying. These weeks must have been my hardest days this summer. On Friday, however, I had a great break, as Brian and Yamini took me out to a Sushi restaurant, Wasabi Sushi Bar. This was the first time I tried 'authentic' sushi in a Japanese restaurant. It tasted so good I decided to add it to my list of 'international' favourite dishes.
Same heavy schedule. Learning the GRE word lists is not at all an easy task for a non-native speaker of English like me. It took a lot of effort for me to learn the word lists. At times, I felt disheartened with the amount of hard work that was still ahead of me.
We had a long weekend as July 4th was a Monday, but I spent most of it studying the word lists, so it was not much of a break for me. I had a wonderful day during week 6, however, as July 5th was my birthday. I received a lot of wishes from family and close friends, and even a big bouquet of splendid red roses from someone very special, which made my day!! In the evening, Brian prepared a great dinner for all three of us. We watched a movie afterward (The Green Mile) with my favourite actor, Tom Hanks, playing the main character. It was a good movie, but so heavy and thought-provoking that I had a hard time falling asleep that night. That weekend, we went out to celebrate my birthday (again! ;-) at the Melting Pot, which is a fondue restaurant. It was another splendid experience with food!!
Same busy schedule. I felt better about the word lists, as it seemed I could remember more words now. On Sunday, we went berry picking at Eckert Farm. I ate half of the blackberries I picked before I could put them into my bucket, so I didnt have a lot of berries to bring home :-). We had a huge and delicious countryside lunch in the restaurant on the same facility: fried chicken - all you can eat!
My mind revolted for the first time and refused to work as hard as I had been (excuses ;-). I took two evenings off and watched movies instead of studying for the GRE.
I was getting close to finishing the project, which made me extremely happy, as I had been worried about not being able to finish it at the beginning of the summer. That weekend, my mind revolved the second time (excuses again! ;-) and I spent the whole Saturday and Sunday getting lost in the magic world of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The scene of Harry and Dumbledore in the cave with the Inferi rising from the black water of the lake scared me so much that for the next few days, I was afraid to walk alone around the house at night :-)
I stayed at home most of these two weeks to work on my final report. Life was peaceful. I worked hard during the day, but saved the evenings for myself: I watched a couple of movies and reread Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.