My roommate and I have this ongoing joke. Every time we get in her car she asks, “Do you want to just skip town and go to Memphis?”

I always respond with an enthusiastic, “Yes!”

We’ve never officially made it there. But in these last few weeks of the semester especially, we’ve been pretty eager to escape C-U.

We’re two city girls who, after four years spent somewhere between the fluorescent lighting of the Undergraduate Library and the back corner at Murphy’s, have always longed for the nearest skyscraper.

No matter how tempting the pole at Joe’s was, how sweet the home-grown corn at the Urbana farmers market tasted or how many administration scandals brought the University to the national news, we were never able to bleed orange and blue.

But this past weekend, I may have bruised a bluish-orangey hue.

It only took a total of three long walks and one short drive around campus for some of my best memories to permeate my previously jaded impressions.

Walking and reflecting, I remembered that this campus has been home to a variety of firsts for me. The Quad was the first place I ever stargazed at midnight. Joe’s was the first bar I ever entered. One of the houses surrounding Frat Park, which I’ll keep anonymous, was home to my first and last frat party.

Visiting Holi, the Hindu Festival of Color, on Saturday, I was reminded of the multicultural microcosm this city truly feels like at times. On campus, I’ve made friends from places as far as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. I’ve danced at Garba, played the west African djembe drum and tasted my first Korean bulgogi here.

Beyond these moments, I’m thinking of the friends who have been there with me through them all. The friends who convinced me that sneaking into the Music Building at 1 a.m. to watch “City of God” on the giant projector screen was a better idea than studying for my CS 105 exam. The friends who sang “I Will Survive” with me during our free ride on the Karaoke Bus down Green Street. The friends who applied the finishing touches to my makeup as we prepared for Allen Hall’s annual Halloween Zombie Mob.

Before coming to C-U as a freshman, I remember venting my concerns to my older cousins about attending a school surrounded by farms.

“But that’s the best part!” they exclaimed with a slight hint of jealousy that their four years at the University were already up.

Four years later, I now understand that it’s the small-town monotony that pushes us to do things like sneak onto the top of the Armory on a Wednesday night, or walk along the Quad screaming a mix of Van Morrison and Beatles songs at the top of our lungs in between class.

Its charm lets us enjoy picking out fresh pumpkins from the Curtis Orchards pumpkin patch, tree-climbing in Carle Park and running early in the morning down Lincoln Avenue, passing the cows by the veterinary building.

Champaign-Urbana isn’t a place where I envision spending the rest of my life. But these past four years have brought a variety of memories and experiences that would never have been possible without these twin cities as my backdrop.

When I got into my roommate’s car Saturday night, she asked me again, “So, should we go to Memphis?”

We didn’t go, and I don’t know if we will.

Instead, we got out of the car, and we walked to the Quad with her iPod on speaker setting, belting out Van Morrison and Beatles songs along the way.

_Rebecca is a senior in LAS._