UIUC Through The Eyes of A Newcomer

These are sights that most people here at the University of Illinois would have seen many, many times- that is ridiculously obvious. The places and locations shown in these photos are those that we pass almost on a daily basis, as part of our busy student lives. Familiarity breeds a sense of apathy and we stop paying attention to our surroundings apart from that which directly involve our work. In other words, we stop smelling the roses.

I guess this is one of the major perks of being a complete foreigner in a new environment. When the roses suddenly look so different from the ones back home, you STOP AND NOTICE. In this case, the roses happened to be the U of I, Urbana Champaign, and the land called America.
A month has passed since I came to Illinois, my first month in the United States (my first month away from the Equator, for that matter) and I am still trying to come to terms with how different this environment is from what I am used to back home in Malaysia. This may sound silly to the locals, but I have never seen any piece of land so FLAT. Literally. Not having a single hill or mountain in sight continues to give me the impression that UIUC is an island surrounded by miles of open water. The only place in Malaysia where one is able to see the horizon so clearly is by the sea. It is a little hard to come to terms with being surrounded by miles of open cornfields rather than water.
These photos are meant to depict what I see as the sheer aesthetic vibrancy that UIUC possesses, so much so that it looks beautiful even through the eyes of a lousy photographer. Even for someone who has spent years here, it is hard to imagine being able to walk past Altgeld Hall and not turn to look at the sunshine upon its walls, or the wide, peaceful field in front of the magnificent engineering quad. Oh, and, of course, there is the Krannert Center. No other piece of architecture has fascinated me more than the center of performing arts, with its unusual structures and design. I walk past Krannert everyday, and there is always something new to be noticed, as cliché and child-like as that might sound.
To say that Illinois is different from Malaysia would be an understatement of absurd proportions. Already, the biting cold wind and dry weather are proving to be a stark contrast to the extremely warm and humid tropical climate to which I am used to. Even more unusual is being outdoors during mid-day, under bright sunlight and feeling COLD. It is quite worrying to think that this is almost nothing compared to what winter would be like here.

All the same, as beautiful as UIUC looks in the summer, it is bound to be even more so during winter, with the snowfall. It must be a sight to behold, those fields of white, big old buildings and tall, leafless trees. That alone would be worth the adventure of coming here.