Sweet Uncle :D

So today I was walking to PasQ for Zohor prayers (and also to catch some sleep :P) when suddenly I heard someone on my right said "Malaysia or Indonesia?" When I turned to my right I saw a nice elderly man looking at me with a smile. I said "Malaysia" and he said "I was right!" with a little bit of excitement while walking away.

Hahahaha adoi2 comelnyaa pakcik2 kat sinii. Thank you, you made my day! Alhamdulillah ^v^

22 :)

Assalamualaikum :)

Alhamdulillah, I have been blessed to live another year and reach the age of 22! :) Boy how time really flies ya? :)

 

So this time around papa asked if he could just send my an e-card instead of a real card XD I said sureee why nott hahaha and here's the e-card! :) hehe it's nice to see how your parents try to be more 'up-to-date' ;p but I really loved it!! Tankiu papaaa! :) 

Lots of love and thanks to mama, Aida, abang and dear friends and family for all the wishes and gifts!!! :') <3 <3

 

*Drawings from a talented junior of mine;Fiqri! Haha tankiu for the awesome drawings!! XD*

Well eventhough I didn't have any cake for my birthday this year, I did still manage to celebrate with another two March babies!! XD

 

*Yu Peng n her Nasi Lemak Kari Ayam! XD*

 

*Me n awesome Chelsea!! :D*

Both Chelsea and Yu Peng share the same birthday; 14th March! :D We celebrated with lunch at Penang ^^ <3

 

*unexpected card n gift from Chelsea! :D*

 

*sob2 thank you Chelseaaa :') :')*

I also received a piece of artwork from my dearest sisterrr Aida! :D She drew this all on her own!! Thank you soosososo much Daa! Loveee u miss uuu very2 muchhh!! Wait for me to come back home yaaaa insya-Allah!! Just about 2 months left :)

 

*Bestest gift from Sistahhh!! :D*

Well papa did wanted me to get a camera for myself, but being me-of-not-using-camera-that-much as I always take pictures using my handphone instead, I asked for another birthday present from papa. While talking on the phone I think a week before my birthday, I said to him "papa, can I have a Pikachu sweater?" hahahahha :P Papa just said cannn cannnn but I know in his head he's like "WAT IS THATTT" :P and the funny part is when he did ask mama what it was, mama said alaaa that pokemon thing the yellow color one that goes pikapiipikachuuuu adooiii mama2 u so cute laahh XD

 

*Tadaaa :D Me-22 already, but still very childish :P :P*

 

*konon nak nmpak comel, but looks like I'm sneezing :P*

 

Then I also had 'ACCIDENTAL' purchases when I went to Minnesota for Spring Break; an Adidas tennis shoes! As my old sport shoes da haus da at the bottom :P (mind u I think it's already a few years old XD) So I got that for myself, also a Coach handbag; another ACCIDENTAL purchase for my birthday hahaha XD

 

 

*Only $99! :D cheap2!*

So there you goo~ a little bit late of an update, but was very busy the past few weeks :) Looking forward to Grad dinner and graduation coming up really2 soon! :)

Thank you again everyone for the wishes and gifts, I couldn't have asked for moree :) Alhamdulillah, thank you Allah for all of the wonderful gifts you have given me, and also yet another day to breath and live by healthily, happily, with many lovely and wonderful people in my life. Alhamdulillah, oh Allah :')

sincerely,

Iliani :) <3

Minnesota

Assalamualaikum! :)

So for my very last Spring Break here in the United States, a few of my friends and I decided to spend the break by visiting some friends in Minnesota :)
(well it was also because my dear friend TARAN asyik cakap "CEH JANJI MANIS kate nak datanggg" :P)

Alhamdulillah, I managed to fulfill my words and visited Minnesota! And yes, Minnesotans were very terharu that we came all the way to Minnesota and spend our Spring Break there with them, and FOR themmm :P

*'Rainbow' cloud: part of the view we get subhanAllah! :D*

So all four of us (me, Bai, Umar and Izzat) went to Minnesota by TRAIN for the first time wohooO!! XD sgt best and relaxinggg and eat a lot hahaha ;p Amtrak was certainly a good ride; from lewistown all the way to Chicago :) then we headed to Minnesota by Megabus, which roughly took us about two days total wahahaha :P

*The train arrives wohooo XD*

*Train station:Lewistown :)*

But even though the trip it was long, I didn't think it was very tiring because we weren't driving (that's the first wohooo XD) so Alhamdulillah! :) And the only problem I had on the way was during the night I think there was something wrong with the heater and it was COLDD AAAHHhhh XD but other than that, the journey to Minnesota was so much fun!! :D :D

*yay2 hadiah sbb buat bising :P*

*Police station in Pittsburgh XD*

*Transit Amtrak at Pitts :D*

*Our night train is double-storied ahaha is this right?*

*Snowy place otw brrrr*

*Viewing deck on the train! lalala :D*

Oh2 and not forgetting, the train also had wi-fi and also manyyy manyy power slots to charge your laptop or phone etc etc :D It even had a small cafeteria area for us to eat, also a fine dining area to order and eat something freshly cooked on the train! :D Not forgetting that the seats were HUGE (okay, I might be exaggerating) but it is certainly bigger than an aeroplane seat! XD so it was very2 comfortablee zzzzzz XD

Alhamdulillah we arrived safely at Minnesota around 6pm I think? And Taran and Matun came to fetch us huuu terharu2 T^T sampai2 je we saw this dome which looked like a stadium, but also saw a huge banner which had "Mall of America" written on it. Well luckily it wasn't the mall if not mmg singgah terus la kan? :P

So sampai2 terus dpt tgk a little bit of Minnesota's downtown, and we headed back to Taran's and Matun's place; our home for the week ;p of course the guys stayed at Taran's place, the girls at Matun's and Shasha's place! Thank you sooo very muchh guysss!! :D

Our first restaurant to visit that Taran n friends brought us to was Quang Minh; a HALAL Chinese Malaysian restaurant wohooo!! :D

*Char Kueh Teow! nyum2*

*2nd time at QUang Minh :D*

 
*Hainanese Chicken Rice! :D* 

Went there twice during the whole Spring Break :P The foods were delicious and cheap!! :D

The first time around, Taran gave us a heads up that the shop owner is also the server, the cashier and almost everything else except for cooking (lead by his wife) and washing dishes (one of their employees) and that's IT! There's nobody else working in that pleasant restaurant hahahah so we could expect the service to be a little bit slow.

And then came the second part: pakcik ni gatal skit hahaha :P Khabarnya he likes to maybe tap shoulders or just pat your back; but he always does that only on GIRLS. So unfortunately I find that to be true just not so long right after huuu sobbss T^T

Well the uncle came along and I was about to order Nasi Lemak n Sotong sambal (you can either have this or chicken curry) and I told him that I wanted nasi lemak. He wrote that down and asked me 'chicken or squid?' while putting his hand on my SHOULDERS. Okie because of that I Blanked out and ordered CHICKEN instead!!! aaaaaahhhhhh uncleeeeeeee T.T and after I finished my order he suddenly pointed to me and said 'cantik' while smiling.
After taking Taran's order, Taran turned to me and said kann da cakappp. I was like aaaahhhhh TARANNNNNNNN T.T

Well putting that aside, the food were indeed deliciouss!! But I was also definitely afraid of going there when we indeed went there for a second time :P I made sure this time my guy friends ordered for me+ asked boxes for me muahahahaha thank you my dear friendssss T^T

Then we headed back to get a good night's sleep and WOKE UP LATE THE NEXT DAY :P *this is the first time that we did not have to worry about getting up early everyday to go to our next destination like we used to almost everytime :D*

At first our plan was to have lunch at a Somali restaurant, but turns out that not many girls usually go there *old bad memory flashes back gaaahhh* so the guys went to get the food for us and brought back to Taran's place :) And the food was delicious and A LOTTTT!! We could eat at least twice with the amount with had per person; at a very cheap price too!! :D

*Somali Food sedapppp n banyak! :9*

After stuffing ourselves, Taran brought us to Mall of America! :D I think it is the biggest mall in the US, so we were quite excited to see how big it was. It didn't look very big from the outside, but once you get inside it is sort of like the large shopping complexes you can find in Malaysia :D Like Sunway Pyramid, Midvalley etc etc. But I guess it was bigger in the sense that it even had an indoor theme park and an underground Aquarium! :)

*Mall of America! :D*

*A mini golf area for amatures :D

*our score record book: which we had no idea how to write our scores :P*

Taran brought us to this mini golf place in the mall and it was fun trying to hit the ball with golf clubs having none of us with any golfing experience (I presume haha XD). Soon after it did get quite boring after let's say 10 holes? XD So we decided to skip the last few and went on to explore the mall further :)

So here you go, collection of pictures from the Mall! XD:

*Cantaloupe drink=HONEYDEW TASTE AAHHHH XD*

*GODIVA chocolate shop :)*

*The strawberry milkshake at GODIVA: mahal but OMG SEDAPPP*

*LegoLand was HUGE! And we found Spongebob haha XD*

*Pirates of the Carribean :D*

*This helicopter was made out of LEGOS!! XD*

*Star wars :D*

*Dragon=Lego :D*

*^^*

*HUGE LEGO Transformer!! :D*

*wuyooo :D*

*this one is huge too!!*

*cool Lego ship! :D*

*Me,Spongebob n Taran! XD in Nickelodean land :D*

*4 player Pacman! Played with only 3 people though :P*

*Pardon My French Shop! Desserts mahal but mmg one is enough for your taste buds XD*

*A LOUNGE in Nordstorm's TOILET :P*

*Expensive tea shop (can't remember the name :P)

*Played air-disk thingy with Umar n I WON BAHAHA :P*

We also got the chance to visit Best Buy in the mall; which had closed rooms for you to test guitars and drums!!! :D We also got to play dance2 on XBOX 360 that was available in the store hahaha loads of fun giving physical therapy to the two guys with injured legs bahahaha :P

And yeaah we also played games at the arcade which was loads of funnn!! :D

Okie I can't really remember the exact events of everything, but I'll just write the ones that I remember (the important ones of course lalalla :P)

So we also managed to visit the campus of Minnesota :) 

We walked around with Taran n Matun as our tour guides! :) We also had Sab n Syaza joining us on our tour; friends all the way from RIT! :) so here you go, the collection of pictures! XD:

 

*University of Minnesota! :)*

 

*On the bridge connecting the campus! XD*

 

*view from the bridge :)*

 

*Bowling in the campus! XD*

Taran kindly treated us to play bowling sob3 terharu2 T^T

 

*score screen! XD*

 

*Curly Fries Taran blanja! :D*

 

*Underground tunnel in Minne: to avoid the freezing weather during winter to walk around campuse :D wohoooo Pennstate should have one of these!*

 

*the new building in Minne; very advanced n beautiful! :D*

 

*Another campus building :D*

 

*Library :D*

 

*Nice architecture! :D*

 

*An Iraqi student, Malek! Very pretty and happy-go-lucky!! :)*

 

*First time trying Jamba Juice! :D A little bit expensive, but it is surely delicious!! :D*

 

University of Minnesota was surely HUGE and have really nice buildings and environment! :D I also liked that they had a flat geography; you can see lots of bikers cycling around the campus. You would definitely be out of breath had you cycled to campus from where I live XD (or maybe that's just me because of lack of physical activity? NOOOO XD) and Pennstate has a hill-geography; so you're kinda like going uphill when you are going to campus and going downhill when you head downtown :)

And yes, while visiting their downtown which had TALL and BIG buildings, which were similar to the buildings in New York... I was like THIS IS NOT DOWNTOWNNN XD well compared to Pennstate, our downtown are only 1-storied building or 2 storied at most for most shops, and even the apartments are not that tall! So that is why we were 'excited' to see their downtown hahahaha XD

 

*see what I mean? Minne's DOWNTOWN :P*

We also had the priviledge to try Shasha's cooking weeee tankiu so much Shasha sanggup masak2 for uss sob3 T^T Also to Kuteng for his great baking skills and making us cheese cake, and also a junior yg pandai masak (Zaida kot nama dia :D) for cooking loads for us!! Tankiu2 everyoneeee!! We are so very veryy gratefull for all the great food :) :)

 

*kuteng's cheesecake: YUMMY!* 

 

*Shasha's RENDANG nyummm3*

 

*Shasha's orange/peach cheesecake? I forgot!! Tp sedapp! XD*

There were also loads of HALAL restaurants all around Minne to get food from at a very CHEAP or affordable price!! :D Alhamdulillah, I did not get to go to Minne and study or I WOULD HAVE BEEN SUPER DUPER TEMBAM BY NOW :P I even gained a little bit of weight just by staying in Minne for a week!! XD 

 

*Halal OVAL pizza at Crescent Moon. DELISCIOUS!*

*Buffet at Marina: ALL HALAL middle-Eastern food. AAAHHH SEDAPPP* -Shasha's treatt, tankiuuuu :) :)*

There's another restaurant called Annie's Parlor which was famous for it's malt drinks: you can create your own malt mix! I tried strawberry with honey malt and it was DELICIOUS!! :D but it's more like ice cream and not a milkshake because you can't even drink it through the straw (it was too THICK! XD)

Then Muhaimin treated me n Umar to pizza downtown which had a variety of different combination and were very good!! :D

 

*Yes, the slice was HUGE too :P*

We also managed to visit the international market in Minne (Bai wanted to go there :D) and when we drove it was about HALF AN HOUR away from Taran's place!! XD XD (back in Pennstate it's just about 10 minutes away) but we then knew why; the international market was SUPER HUGEEE!! It was at least as big as a WALMART! And it had loads of things in it of course! :D

 

*LIVE fishes in IM! OMG :O*

 

*We found this!! HAHahaha old timesss*

Then right after visiting the IM, Izzat was having bad stomach cramps and we headed home quickly for him to rest. We tried to help him out but the cramps were just not going away, and we brought him to the hospital. He had to stay there for I think about 2 days; the doctor said he is perfectly healthy, but there's this virus that's messing up his brain signals to the intestine; maldigestion and malabsorption leading to the stomach cramps.

Alhamdulillah he was discharged from the hospital clear of the virus! :) Since he was a little bit weak, me n Umar had to go back first while Bai stayed back to continue taking care of Izzat (koff3 of course laaaa ;p). And since we were going back to and from the hospital and Taran's place, I had that roads memorized hahahha :P and thankfully the hospital was just about 5 minutes away from Taran's place :)

Thinking back everyone else at least had similar foods like what Izzat had, so it was definitely not from the food or food poisoning. So being unable to actually identify the main cause of his sickness, we were all very glad that he was well after being discharged from the hospital :) 

We managed to visit Minne's HUGE downtown before going back too! :) It was surely more like New York compared to Pennstate's little downtown hihi XD

 

*A building downtown with music sheet notes! :D*

 

*A shopping mall I presume? XD*

 

*Matun, me, Shasha n Umar! :D*

 

 

*The famous Cherry on the spoon place :P*

 

*Charlie's Angels? wahaha XD* 

 

*A huge glass fish! Very pretty! :D*

 

*Mirror wonderland, well sort of :P*

 

*can see your reflection n see through the mirror! :D*

 

*Nighty nite cherry on the spoon :)*

So off we went, back to State College via megabus to Chicago first, then to Lewistown from Chicago via Amtrak. When we went back, we sort of had about 12 hours or so at Chicago before our train departs at around 6 that evening. So me n Umar jalan2 around Chicago, and pleassseeeeee we are NOT DATING for the last timmmeeeee XD (due to unexpected circumstances of Izzat falling sick, so we had no choice but to go back first without Bai n Izzat sobs3 T.T) And don't you worry, nasib baik Umar tu lelaki baik2 n also my best friend!! ^v^ so I actually had a great time in Chicago wondering around the streets with Umar n gelak golek2 merata2 hahaha :P

 

*Found this; mcm Sony Ericcson's LOGO! But definitely not it XD*

 

*Halal Indian restaurant in Chicago! Loonnggg chat with Umar over lunch! :)*

 

*The view on the way to a masjid in Chicago :)*

 

*The brothers here were very welcoming and friendly!! :) managed to take a nap there after lunch :D

 

*One of the many2 bridges in Chicago :D*

 

*Garrett Popcorn!! XD* 

Finally managed to taste this famous popcorn known for it's deliciousness! XD And it was sure goodddd especially the pecan caramel popcornn!! :D

Well that was basically it, we didn't travel much around Chicago as we had already been there before, and we did only have less than a day to really go around Chicago. Alhamdulillah we then took the train back to Lewistown, and Hani+Sab kindly picked us up there and brought us back to State College :)

 

*Pittsburgh terminal :)*

 

*View from the train ^^*

 All in all, I really had a good time visiting Minnesota :) Apart from the good food and great places to visit, I really did just enjoy visiting good friends there+even making some new friends! :) To be honest, me and Bai really didn't have any plans to visit Minnesota itself, but we simply wanted to meet our best friends there :) We gained more than what we have anticipated, Alhamdulillah, thank you oh Allah :')

 

*Milkshake at Chilli's :D*

 I was also blessed to start off my Spring break with some close friends before we head off to Minnesota by eating together at Chilli's :) then I accidentally got into a boy's lepak-ing session :P and to my surprise, they actually talked about a lot of stuff that we think boys wouldn't actually talk to each other about; well the stereotype out there is that boys will not talk about their problems or will only talk about technical stuff or the same sort. During that time, I really just listened a lot to what they were talking about, unexpectedly leaving me smiling :) 

Well, there's so much more I have to write about!!! :D Alhamdulillah, many good things had happened and I will insya-Allah share it here ASAP!! :) 

Till next time, Assalamualaikum :)

Hugs and kisses, Minnesota!! :) :) <3 <3