The Ultimate Relaxation

It's always a pity when you wake up just late enough so you're not tired enough to go back to sleep, but still early enough that you could have gotten a significant chunk of extra sleep time. The original plan was to wake up at eight, get dressed, and head out to the gym with Maxime. What actually happened, though, was I woke up at 7:20, stayed in bed for a good half an hour hoping to fall asleep again, then eventually gave up. Not exactly optimal. On the bright side, this meant that I was perfectly on time as we left the dormitory building and began our short walk to the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center. I ran a few miles on the treadmill, then we returned to take showers and head down to breakfast before the dining hall closed. Breakfast was fine, if not great, as was expected. I spent my remaining few minutes before the next scheduled event reading the assigned chapters in my textbook.

For the "Group Activities," all of Thangaraj house walked to the lakefront and chilled at the small, grassy peninsula. It was a nice walk, and I met a few people from my house that I had not spoken to before. Upon our arrival, we split up into a few different groups. I walked over to the north side to get a glimpse of the downtown Chicago skyline, where I both pet a very sweet (lab?) dog and got a nice picture of what I had actually come over there for. As I looked around, I saw I few guys tossing around a disc on the main grassy field. This instantly caught my attention, and I walked over right as one of them suggested we start a game of ultimate (hence the title). Only a few of us knew how to play the game, so it was pretty relaxed, but still fun to throw the disc around. It also helped me remember the names (usually a struggle) of Alex, Cruz, Kevin, Max, Gabriel, and a few others (not named because I'm unsure of spelling, not because I forgot).

After about an hour or so, we had to stop the game and meet up with the RAs so we could all head back together, and I familiarized myself with a few other faces. Lunch began as we arrived, and the pasta salad and pizza were both pretty good. I have a feeling that I'm going to be eating more pizza than I should over the next three weeks. After lunch, I chilled in my room for a couple hours, alternating between working on my pre-class homework and scrolling through Reddit (Those chapters are #^&%$*@ long). The next item on the agenda was a short meeting to discuss public transportation. The main takeaway was to use the Transloc Rider app, which seems to form a pretty solid plan for getting basically anywhere in the Chicago area. After that was a bit more free time, and I did exactly the same as I had before, relaxing in my room and studying.

For dinner I had some pasta with a meat sauce alongside a slice of pizza and some peach cobbler. Once again, better side of mediocre. House social activities followed immediately afterward, and I went for the table with Bananagrams (which I only kind of sucked at), which was followed by a queer slapping game (still with cards), then Egyptian War (ERS to some), then good ol' BS. It was a fun evening, and I'm looking forward to class tomorrow.