you can use that one, if purchasing fails (not suer why) free samples may work. i had few sample ICs from Microchip, great service. but 16F877 is great pic with plenty of I/O and there are tons of sample projects. as for project, how simple it has to be? i was under impression that university projects should be challenging in some way, perhaps an inverted pendulum or similar. simple project would be a lock, chasing lights, some sort of meter (voltage, frequency, capacitance...) etc.