i hadn't meant to write about what i wrote earlier. what i had meant to write about was what we did on our trip. so, diah, shakir, usman and i left boston around ten on tuesday night. we drove right into a snowstorm two hours later somewhere before we reached albany. and every three hours, one of us would make a bathroom call. diah wanted to see the sun rise, so we took a three-hour detour to niagara falls. which was a pretty dumb thing to do, since it was snowing and freezingly cold there. we didn't catch much of the sunrise but we had a good laugh over our stupidity. we started towards ann arbor again, but everyone was falling asleep by then. usman kept sticking his head out of the window, saying it felt like taking a cold shower, until shakir took over the wheel. then we ended up playing hang man for the rest of the journey to keep everyone awake. tooba was happy to see us. that night she took us to dinner and showed us around. we were not really being enthusiastic like we were supposed to be, everyone was exhausted by the sixteen-hour trip and staying awake was becoming more of an effort. the next day, we woke up late and tooba showed us around the umich ann arbor campus. the school is huge, it's at least five times bigger than tufts. we stole two rolls of toilet paper from the neuroscience building because we ran out of them at tooba's.later, we broke fast at the islamic center of ann arbor. i met a bunch of umich people there, including diba alwa. i wished i had time to call and meet up with some other people, but we were there for only a short time. we got back to tooba's and cooked (well, tooba and usman did) and ate and watched lock, stock, and two smoking barrels, although i slept as soon as the movie started. on friday, everyone woke up early and we went to chicago. it was an extremely nice trip. we looked for a mosque to pray in as soon as we got into chicago. we found one at a sketchy neighbourhood and another one closer to the city, and we prayed solat jumaat at the latter. we took the lake shore drive, went to downtown, went to eat on devon ave and then later visited tooba's best friend at tufts before, jee at his apartment in irving park. it was an impromptu trip, but everything went on smoothly, which made us all very happy and put us in a very good mood. we drove back to ann arbor and got in at three in the morning. saturday was the day to leave. we left ann arbor at one in the afternoon and once again drove straight into a snowstrom, this time in ohio. the drive back was more cheerful because everyone kept talking and talking and arguing and teasing. we didn't even have to play hang man anymore. but i thought it was rather funny that no matter what topic we started to talk about, we'd eventually ended up talking about marriage. i've no idea how that happened but i guess diah, shakir and usman are all in that stage of life when marriage is an issue to think and be concerned about. as for me, usman had put it rather clearly when he said, "let her graduate first,
yaar..." we broke fast an hour before we reached albany, i finally got the mcdonald's fillet i had been craving for for days. we reached boston at two thirty in the morning after an almost fourteen-hour drive.