It's already Saturday which means my Thanksgiving break is reaching to the end. This also means I need to get ready for winter classes to start on the day after tomorrow. Ahhh, the break is really short ! I want it to be longer...
Anyway, staying in Penn State for a week plus plus (around 9 days) was not that bad. At first I wonder what I'm going to do when I go there because Penn State is not located in a city. Instead, it's in located in "kampung" area, according to Penn State pals. I was thinking maybe I'll spend time in Atikah's house (free accommodation & food =P) wasting time like watching movies, dramas or sleeping. But, it turned out that the time spent here was filled with lots of activities with lots of friends.
On Monday, I went to eat ice-cream at Berkey Creamery. People said it's a must to eat Creamery's ice-cream when you come to Penn State. Why ? Because of the great taste ? Maybe. Also, it's special because it's produced in Penn State. For me, I like it because it's cheaper and more flavors than the ice-cream I had in RIT. After eating ice-cream, we watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1. This is the first movie that I watched in a theater in US. No comment about the movie because there are lots of pros and cons of people's opinions on that movie.
On Tuesday, I went to Beaver Stadium of Penn State, a very big football (football here refers to American football, not soccer) stadium. Penn State is very famous with football and people can go really fanatic with football games. However, I couldn't go inside. I took pictures with Joe Paterno's statue. Joepa was Penn State's football coach. I don't really know his contributions to Penn State, but definitely he's a great coach for Penn State's football team. After that, I walked around downtown State College to buy some Penn State souvenirs. For lunch, Atikah brought me to eat at Indian Pavilion. There, I ate different kinds of Indian foods. I ate naan and tandoori ! I really miss those foods because I really like to eat them when I was in Malaysia. At night, we baked dark chocolate cake, chocolate chip and walnut cookies, and chocolate brownies. '
On Wednesday, we went to Muru's house for breakfast. Cookies from last night were for this breakfast gathering. Sharma cooked roti canai. That's a request from me. Ohhh, it was delicious ! It looked like capati, but tasted like roti canai. So, that's the first roti canai that I ate in US. More special because cooked by a friend. He also cooked curry with potatoes and fried eggs in it (new recipe...never eat curry with fried eggs). As for Muru, he tried cooking masala potato for the first time. Not bad, just need to cut the potato smaller. After eating, Sharma and I played Pro Evolution Soccer (PES), a game for Xbox 360. As usual, I am not good at playing video games at all. Sharma even had to help me to score by leading me to the goal post for a few times, but still I couldn't score at least a goal. Nevertheless, as we played, I had progressed from "cannot defend and attack" to "cannot attack but can defend". I really defended Sharma from scoring goals. I defended my team very well that I could hear him sighed a few times for failing to attack my good defense team. That was nice. I got tired after some time because I didn't play quietly. I made noise when I was playing that game. In the afternoon, Shahril and Dzul came to Atikah's house. The chocolate cake that was baked last night was specially baked for them. But, Dzul didn't really eat. Dunno why. It was Shahril who really ate the cake. Perhaps because he requested it.
On Thursday, I followed Atikah and her seniors to go shopping at Leesburg, Virginia for Black Friday shopping. At first, it was planned to go to Hagerstown, Maryland. But, they changed the plan. On the way to Virginia, we passed by Washington DC and Maryland. We didn't stop at Washington DC. I could see National Monument, but didn't have the chance to take a good picture because I was in a moving car. The pictures were blurred when I took them. We had dinner at Mandarin Chinese Halal restaurant at Springfield, Virginia. We reached there 10 minutes before it closed, but they still accepted us. The foods was good, but they served a very big amount of chicken/beef with very small amount of rice. It'll be really good if there's a halal chinese restaurant near RIT because I like Chinese foods. After that, we stopped at an Islamic center to pray. Still full, we met some Arabs there who served us with lots of Arab foods. There were having Thanksgiving dinner. No choice, we felt really bad to reject the offer so we ate some, and brought back some. They served us with hot chocolate drink with ginger. Some of us didn't drink it at all, some just sipped a little bit because couldn't stand the smell of the ginger. As for me, I just drank it. I could stand the ginger smell and taste because I ate something sweet that they served. Maybe that's the way to drink the hot chocolate with ginger. We reached Leesburg premium outlet around 10 something. There were so many people there. We wasted time in finding parking spaces because no more parking spaces available. Some people just parked illegally behind the outlet's buildings. So, we just followed. The first shop that I went to was Coach factory. Duhh, such a long line of people that it just made U shape. Tired of standing and waiting, but I don't care because I really want to buy a handbag for my mom. Finally after an hour plus of waiting, I made it to the shop. There, I spent time on looking for a good handbag for my mom. Found one, so I bought that. I don't buy for myself because I don't really like to wear handbag. It costs me...ahh, don't want to mention it. Some people knew anyway. After Coach, I bought 4 pairs of Nike shoes for my siblings. For my dad, I bought a leather belt and a wallet from a leather shop (forgot the name). For myself, I bought a pair of Skechers shoes, 2 pairs of Levi's jeans, 2 pairs of long john pants, and 1 set of 30 pcs cutleries.
I didn't sleep the whole night. I was too into shopping that I didn't realize how time flies. On Friday, on the way back to Penn State, we stopped at Baltimore, Maryland. It was a very nice city with lots of high-rise buildings. I think, what's really interesting about Baltimore is the nice view from the harbor. We went to Hard Rock cafe to buy some Hard Rock cafe merchandises. We also went to Cheesecake factory to buy some cheesecakes. The cheesecakes were really good. The prices suit the taste and size. Also, we got to taste free samples of their new cheesecake (forgot what flavor). Along the journey back to Penn State, I slept all the way. I was extremely tired from shopping last night. At night, some RIT pals (Nana, Nadiah, Ika & Paan) came to Penn State for their last destination of campuses road tour before going back to RIT.
Today, it was snowing when I woke up early in the morning. I was wondering for a few minutes when I looked outside the window to see white round-shaped thing flew around. Then I realized it was snow ! When I went outside to check out, it was really snow ! Since it's snowing in Penn State, I bet it's snowing in RIT too. In the afternoon, I walked around downtown with snow still falling down. My first time walking with snow falling. Nice experience. But, it was really cold. Now, I'm waiting for the time to go back to RIT. I can't believe it, my Fall break is almost over. Feel kinda sad...I'm not ready to start class on Monday.
