Things I learned during my time in UIUC (1)

First snow in 2008 as seen from Sherman Hall

My earliest experience studying abroad was in 2008 when I spent a semester as an exchange student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) while attending National Chiao Tung University. It has such a long name because UIUC is situated between two cities in central Illinois: Urbana and Champaign. It's about a two-hour drive south of Chicago. The city really feels like a college town surrounded by cornfields. Drive ten minutes outside of the college town, and all you see are endless cornfields. In winter, it's an even more desolate expanse of ice and snow. That's why some people jokingly say that UIUC's outstanding academic achievements in science and engineering are a result of graduate students having nowhere to go for fun on weekends; they can only stay in the lab and research.

Before I left Taiwan for UIUC, my mom packed a bag of rice in my luggage, afraid that I wouldn't have any rice to eat in America. I thought about it and decided against it, and took it out. After all, when in America, one should embrace American culture, eat hamburgers, and drink soda. Later when I arrived in UIUC, I discovered there were actually three Chinese restaurants nearby. Today (2025) when I search on Google Maps, I'm not sure if it's due to the population growth or an increase in Chinese international students, the whole street is now full of Chinese restaurants. That's a good news for today’s asian exchange students; they no longer need to bring white rice when they come to UIUC.

To get from Taiwan to UIUC, I first stopped in Los Angeles to visit relatives, then flew from Los Angeles to Chicago, and from Chicago, I took a small connecting flight to the Champaign campus. After getting off the plane, I carefully examined each bus stop sign, making sure I hadn't misread anything. I then boarded the bus and double-checked my dormitory with the driver. Finally, I arrived at the graduate student dormitory. It was fortunate that I managed to drag around my luggage by myself the whole way without any issues. Since I was an exchange student, I lived with graduate students. The dormitory was simple: a bed and a desk, with two people per room. However, there was a wall in between, so we wouldn’t see each other much. The bathroom was shared by two rooms, and you could walk through the bathroom to the other room.

My roommate was a tall, thin white guy with a gangster vibe like the rapper Eminem, even though he was an economics major. Since he lived in the adjacent room, accessible only through the bathroom, we didn't interact much on a daily basis. One weekend evening, he came into my room wanting to chat, but somehow it turned into him showing off his favorite adult websites and porns. My friends from Taiwan were also in the room at the time, and we were about to go out. Seeing him so enthusiastically share his collections, we felt awkward interrupting. We just watched and admired how open Americans were. Then we started to worry if he would get too excited, and if something inappropriate or against public decency would happen. Fortunately, his friends arrived quickly and dragged him out and left. The next day, he knocked on my door to apologize, saying that Americans aren't typically that open and that he had too much beer last night, which led to his inappropriate behavior. I told him it was okay; at least we now know your collection of porns.

To be continued...

Frozen food became my daily meals