Chambanabonanza

You'd be enjoying yourself, too, if you were drinking cocktails the size of your head!*

Here I am, starting out my weekend in Champaign with my old high school pals Jon, Mike and Adam. (Mike and Adam also went to the U of I with me, and Adam is still in grad school there to be a rocket scientist. Or so he tells girls.) At one point Saturday night, I was sitting in a booth at a bar surrounded by five guys. "This is just the way I like it," I remarked, at which one of them commented, "But this is the way it's been for the past eight years." True, true. This particular group of friends has always been a bit heavy on the masculine side (two girls to 10 or so guys). But, as I said, I enjooy it. It's fun being one of the guys.

The boys met me at the train station at 10:30 p.m., and we immediately went to the bars in downtown Champaign. I was glad of this, as the older I get the more difficult it is to return to Campustown. So many memories--and so many svelte 19-year-olds!

Here Jon regales Adam with one of his inimitable stories while we enjoyed the fine weather outside. The night finally ended for me and my friend Gina at 5 a.m.

I've known Tim the Poet for five years now, and since making his acquaintance (which yielded his nickname), our lives have not usually been spent living in the same state, let alone country. He was in Indiana, I in Illinois when we met, after which he lived on an Indian reservation in Northern Wisconsin for the summer. A semester at the U of I preceeded him studying abroad in Aix-en-Provence, followed by an On The Road-esque road trip. Then I was off to Wales for a year; he worked for Habitat for Humanity in Ohio. Somewhere along the line he also worked on a farm in southern France. We overlapped again in Champaign for a semester my senior year, and then I went to London while he moved to Montreal to be a bike courier. I moved to Chicago and had one short visit from him last winter, and he returned to Montreal before upping sticks to Central America for several months. After traveling and living in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Mexico, Tim moved to Indianpolis for the summer. Finally, it was back to Champaign one more time, for a one-year Journalism Master's degree. Which begs the question: where will life take us in the future? Who's to say?

And finally, here is my lovely hostess for the weekend. Gina and I worked at the Study Abroad Office together our senior year and even did the "senior year spring break in Florida" tradition. (The other two friends who went, Esther and Rich, are both currently in Britain: Esther is getting her Master's in London, and Rich, being Welsh, is living there. Gina gets to rendezvous with them this weekend. One of the perks of being a study abroad advisor is getting to make site visits to Britain and Ireland. Lucky ducky!)

Shoes by Theresa. Outfits by Gina. Aren't we cute? Someday we want to be roommates. Perhaps next year, if she gets into grad school here and I decide to stay an extra year in Chicago. (To work at that awesome international job I'm going to get.)

Below: enjoying dinner with my high school friends. I must admit to still being a little freaked out that Jay (to the right of me) and Molly (in the light green shirt) are expecting a baby in May. I think the rest of us at the table aren't quite at that point yet! (Helps to be married too, of course.)

I also got to visit my mom's family, pictured at last year's reunion/pig roast on the family farm west of Champaign. Now imagine half a dozen more people who didn't make the photo and you'll be able to guess what religion my grandmother was. I got to see 10 of them on Sunday, which was a true joy. While I'm nervous about introducing friends to my uncles and cousins, I happen to find their outrageous comments hilarious. An example, posted on my 20-yr-old cousin Kate's AIM profile:

"See this shack out here? There's a little bench in here for gettin' wild. And it'd be pretty good for rolling joints, too....nah, just kidding. They might roll unevenly on a thing like that." --Mike (my 30-year old, married-with-one-kid-cousin)

Ah, good times.

* an optical illusion, my good people
** To quote Monty Python's "Every Sperm Is Sacred": 'I'm a Roman Catholic/And have been since before I was born'