Dorm Life! MUN: Come for Drugs, Sex, and Alcohol!

Yep, so it’s like the ninth day here—things are good, I’m on top of my class work, and for the first time in my life, I’m actually doing my homework before the day its due! If this is how college changes people, I like it . Productivity forever!

But anywayz, onto the second chapter of this story.

Dorm life actually isn’t that bad. After living in Northwestern’s new dorms for two days, UIUC’s Halls seemed subpar. But now, after settling in, homeizing it a bit, and meeting our neighbors—it really isn’t that bad. Minus the fact that Anubhav’s fur is extending the length of the carpet, and it’s actually pretty cool. Observe the wonderful juxtaposition of roomstuffs.

Tuesday was Quad Day, where the school’s 1000+ organizations introduce themselves, and attempt to recruit the many clueless freshmen with piqued interest in the activities. And I realized why they gave us the nice bright orange shirts—they pretty much say “HEY!! LOOK AT ME! I’M A FRESHMAN!!!”—even from a quarter mile away—not something you’d want to do in high school, but in college, most people love freshmen.

I sadly didn’t get to take any pictures of this once a year occasion, but omg, it was yet another amazing sight. The sea of people resembled the scene from the Taste of Chicago last month—and there were so many organizations for all sorts of interests. Admittedly, their manifest functions were not always purposeful, but all of them provided great venues to meet new people. I think I signed up for at least… twenty of them—and a LOT of them were really cool, such as, the Swing Dancing Club (self-explanatory), Kul Sool Won (a Korean composite martial art), Intervarsity (Christian Fellowship), Floatin’ Illini (zero gravity in a plane!!), etc… There were others that I found kind of… misguided. The Wushu Club’s campaigning consisted of three fools standing around with Kung Fu weapons and fliers that wrote out “Come learn moves like those you see in Jet Li and Jackie Chan movies!” Ooh! Be cool! Learn cool stuff! Mleh. What an insult. But perhaps they’re just being smart and know what it takes to get peoples’ interest. Sure, I’ll be visiting them too.

I liked the many many Christian fellowship groups on campus. A bit overwhelming though; Intervarsity, Campus Crusade, Illinilife, TCBC, TCCF, Jesuslove, etc, etc, etc etc………—all of them were very open, had friendly people, and presented themselves well. I was a little confused about all of them, so I asked a bunch about what distinguishes them from each other. They gave a very respectable response; that it was mostly just the character of each group—each of them encouraged me to try going to a bunch and see which one I like the most. I liked that! Each one of them… except the < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” /> Covenant Fellowship Church . They were more… “nono, don’t go to the other ones, come to our church!” Normally, I might see them as being more serious, but in the midst of all the other groups, seeing these guys be so much more closed off was less than welcoming. (more on this later).

I was a bit disappointed by the political organizations on campus. The Illinois Student Senate seemed a complete joke—more so that Student Government back at North. And the Model UN here was just hilarious. I saw the UN flag and thought I’d check it out—and seeing “Model United Nations” I thought, Cool, they have MUN here. I see Krishna ’s name on the sign up sheet, so I signed up too, and then the big Indian dude at the table introduces himself and asks if I did MUN in high school. I said I did for two years (see the 2/17/2004 entry for that ), and then he literally shouts “Yeah?! Dude, this is just like MUN in high school, except with booze, sex, and drugs man—every year the school pays us to go to Washington DC and we party it up, get laid—dude, you’re gonna love it!” All right MUNUC buddies… time to get laid—lol~ I suppose not everyone is up to Sabahat’s level of seriousness when it comes to model international politics (though I would love to see her reaction to the Indian dude).

The science organizations seemed pretty cool—there was a Physics Club that handed out fliers that had been dipped in dry ice and gave out “the coolest fliers of UIUC.” Floatin’ Illini was a group that got NASA funding to conduct experiments in near zero gravity environments of a plane in a controlled fall—every year four students get to go on. I hear from them that it’s a lot of fun; the closest to experiencing space. I signed up for the Illini Buzzer Team (aka Scholastic Bowl)—gotta keep it goin’, and so many others that I can’t quite remember. Overall, it was a fun day, and I finally got the international issues out of the way…

Then… classes started on Wednesday…

[btw, i decided this kinda xanga writing is really REALLY boring (even for me to write) so im stopping this series right HERE–time for soem LIVE NEWS!!!]