your friend had a degu, i had three of them before, and they are friendly little things too,
chinchillas are the best pet for someone who is not home a lot during the day, but it home in the evening and at night, since they sleep most of the day anyway,
i give mine almost an hour of run around time each at night, and i have to let them out one at a time, so that is like 3 hours of play time starting around 7pm
maybe if you are hoping to get one in the future, you could start to get a home organized for them and study up on them before you do, they do need a big cage, and some of them are pretty costly, i managed to build mine a cage out of an old armoire, it was cheap to do it that way, as i am saving up to buy a few really big ones, as i do want to breed mine, and maybe keep one more,