Wheaton vs. Chicago

Jenn and I have been in Wheaton for about a week now. She's been keeping very busy working as a TA for a chamber music camp. We went to Chicago yesterday for one of the camp's two concerts. I was not there for the children's concert; No, I have definitely sat through enough of those as a kid to last until I have my own. The primary reason for tagging along was to go to Chicago.

Like every city, Chicago has its own feel and culture. I admire its architecture and the way that the "Loop," or the train system that loops around the downtown area, fits into the plan of the city. Our group, Jenn, May (Jenn's soon-to-be-roommate, who also works at the music camp), J.D. (another worker) and I, actually came into the city by car instead of by train. Our first stop was Chicago's China Town for lunch. We ate at the type of restaurant in which carts of food are rolled by the tables and you pay by the plate. It was delicious.

China Town

The concert took a good three hours or so altogether. I got a lot of reading done (currently finishing People Before Profit: The New Globalization in an Age of Terror, Big Money, and Economic Crisis by Charles Derber; It's quite an excellent book which I highly reccommend if you are interested at all in the topic of globalization; I find Derber's solutions much more ideal than Thomas Friedman's).The concert hall.

Afterwards Jenn, May and I walked around Chicago. We started at Grant Park and worked our way up the Magnificent Mile. There is a long stretch of stores there, and not a single McDonalds as far up as we went; I was impressed.

May, Jenn and Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park.

Chicago Skyline

Apparently this is a great place fore concerts and naps

THE BEAN

Where's Waldo?

The Kinda Creepy Faces Fountains

...that spit...

I love Reeses! (actually, I didn't mean to take this picture.)

Jenn and I in the Hershey's store in the Magnificent Mile

At 10 o'clock we started towards the Neo-Futurist Theater to watch an hour-long production by the troupe Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. It was a series of 30 humorous, philosophical, random and/or tragic skits that is performed in the exact time frame of one hour. They apparently rewrite a number of their skits every week, so you can never see it enough times. In front of the stage was a clothesline with each of the skit numbers on it, and the audience gets to call out which one they want next. We got through all but number 28 before the hour was up.The Stage at TMLMTBGB

The Stats

This one Saturday was much more exciting than my whole week put together. The only picture-worthy moment was the first time that I have ever gotten stuck behind a train while driving:

Final Schedule (before school starts, at least)

My schedule on ScheduleMan.org

It's finished! No more waitlist, no more worries.

Road Trip Part III

Here we are in Wheaton after the final leg of our journey! It's nice to know that it's over, because both Jenn and I were getting tired towards the end. At the same time it's somewhat sad, especially since I have over two weeks in Wheaton without much to do (except blog!).

Here are some pictures of our trip. There aren't many because we just drove most of the time. There's only so many pictures of the great midwestern clouds you can take (though we did take a lot of those!).The beautiful clouds.
You know you're in Texas when...Bushland is actually an exit you can take.
Road kill.
Jenn was goofing off with the camera.
Relaxing...a bit (I believe I told Jenn to put the camera away at this point.
We ran into a couple good storms. Look at those clouds!
The arch at St. Louis, the 2-D version.


The view through the arch.

Scheduled

Rachael is registered for classes! Actually, I'm waitlisted for two of them, but I'm first and second on the list, so I hope that will be okay. I hardly ever got my first choice class, but my schedule will definitely be manageable. Maybe if I had gotten up at 4 instead of 4:45 I would have received better options.