After the Seattle trip, it was time to head to the nearby city of Bloomington in the state of Indiana.
The reason for this trip was that one of my bestfriends from UConn, Nidhi, her younger brother was moving to the US as he got an admit from the University of Indiana, Bloomington. I was really impressed when I got to know about it as it was one of the universities that I applied to but was never accepted.
Nidhi told me about her visit to the city of Bloomington and I immediately volunteered to help her and her brother out with the moving and initial shopping stuff. It was a 6 hour journey from my place and I was too lazy to drive that long, so I decided (for some strange reason) to hop onto a flight and do a car rental for three days. We needed a car to get from one place to another and do some grocery shopping and I was the only one with a valid US driver’s license.
Anyway, the trip didn’t start normally. My roommate Ravi dropped me off at the airport and I was on my way to board the flight, but they had overbooked the flight, so I volunteered myself to get the next flight in exchange of the gift card. After waiting for almost 15 minutes, they told me that they had a spot for me on the plane and I had to be okay with that. The flight took almost 90 minutes to land at Indianapolis, from where I got the rental car and started driving to Nidhi’s Airbnb.
Nidhi’s Airbnb was in suburbs of the Indianapolis and when I arrived, they were all ready and packed to leave for Bloomington. The moment I saw Nidhi and Nitesh (her younger brother), all the lovely memories from Hartford came rushing down to me. I remembered all the cool things that we did during the UConn days and how much fun we had. It was lovely to see her after a year’s time.
After I picked both Nidhi and Nitesh up from their Airbnb, it was time to head to Bloomington’s Airbnb. It took us (what felt like) a couple hours to reach our Bloomington Airbnb and the first thing we did was to get fresh. I laid down a little bit as I needed some rest as we had a busy afternoon and evening before us.
We spent most of the rest of the day exploring the campus and looking at all the cool places. This was the first time I was looking at how campus life looks like in the US as I studied in a “satellite” campus during my time at UConn.
The next day was quite busy. We started our day with the breakfast at the owner’s restaurant. I didn’t have many expectations from the breakfast as I had been to other places and Airbnbs who were good at hosting but didn’t pay much attention to the food part of the stay. I couldn’t believe when I took the first bite of the breakfast. Man, I was blown away with the taste and the way they had put dishes out for the three of us. I still can’t get over the fact that how tasty and beautiful the sausages were. They looked enticing and were certainly more delicious. I would rank them as one of the best sausages I have ever had.
After such a lovely breakfast, we headed to look at a couple apartments for Nitesh. Nitesh and Nidhi had already talked to a couple seniors at UIB, so the only thing I did was I drove both of them around. We liked the first apartment that we looked at and loved Nitesh’s future roommates as well. I could see the older sister side of Nidhi, which I had never seen before, when she asked all those questions to Nitesh’s future roommates. After this apartment hunt, it was time to shop a few things for Nitesh, which didn’t take long, as everything that we needed was close by. I remember visiting Chase bank as well for him to open a checking account, and that reminded me my time at Hartford when I opened my Wells Fargo account.
All this busy afternoon got us hungry quite quickly and we chose a Lebanese restaurant to satiate our foody guts. It was very hard for me to find a parking at the restaurant but somehow I managed. The ambience was quite dark and thought they had put too many things in a small place, but the food was surprisingly good. It was a good way to spend the morning and afternoon with the lovely people.
After the lunch, we headed to our Airbnb apartment to get some rest before our evening outing and a scheduled dinner with Nitesh’s to-be-roommates. I told Nidhi that I would explore the city on foot as I wanted to buy some souvenirs for kids (Aryan & Arnav). When I was buying T-shirts, I saw a couple fraternity guys picking up some sorority girls. Before this day, I had never seen frat guys and sorority girls, so when I saw them for the first time, I was blown away by looking at them and appreciating how beautiful they were. It was a sight I won’t forget and it made me question how many things I had missed until that point in my life.
Anyway, we spent the rest of the evening exploring a nearby lake and doing a small hike, before heading to a Thai place in the college campus.
The next day, I was supposed to catch a flight back home and report to work.
Even though I spend only a couple days with Nidhi and Nitesh, I thought it was a good way to spend some time with Nidhi as we hadn’t made any extensive plans to meet each other. This was the last time we ever met, so I am looking forward to meeting her again and rejoice all the lovely moments we spent together.
Next stop: Plymouth, MI, USA.
stochasticity 