Sunday, July 17, 2016

. - Complete, Perfect, Whole Day

Dear Reader,

Have you ever heard people say life's a beach? 'Cause if life was the beach on Lake Michigan, life would be amazing. Our cohort + honorary cohort member, Doris, went to the city. By city, I mean downtown Chicago, though my Bay Area infused mindset still thinks of San Franscico as the City. Something I love about our cohort is that however much we split apart and meet with new friends, we always come back at the end of the day to write our blogs and hang out.

The weather reminded me of California on July 16th, 2016. The humidity was at a minimum, the sky was absolutely cloudless, and the temperature was perfect in the mid-70s. At about 1 PM, our cohort got on the 6 bus that went straight to Millennium Park (stop: Michigan/Madison). Ravenous from missing lunch, we headed immediately to Shake Shack, recommended by Alice, which had delicious burgers and shakes but was overpriced (but since everything in the area was overpriced, I guess it could be considered average). California's better-priced equivalent to Shake Shack would be In-n-Out. I normally don't like burgers, but this onewas yummy. :3 Maybe I was just hungry, or
maybe it was really good. After eating at Shake Shack we headed down the street to some Chicago tourist shops where I picked up a sweater and small gifts for a friend. We then crossed the street to take standard touristy pics with the Bean (more formally known as the Cloud Gate) and see wedding pictures being taken! It would have been nicer to take pictures if there were fewer people, but it was cool nevertheless.
I was surprised by the size and placement of the Bean. I thought it would lead into something as a gateway, but it's just a very shiny piece of artwork placed in the middle of a concrete park. After seeing something as large and heavy as the St. Louis Arch, the Bean's size was, in comparison, less impressive, but still admirable.
We hit more stores on the way down the MagMile, from Garrett's popcorn (insane caramel goodness), to Lids (where Ryan got two shmackin' hats), to Uniqlo (where Mauricio fell in love). We went through a bunch of stores trying to find reasonably priced beach shorts for Mauricio, and came across prices from $14 to $250. After spending a considerable amount of time in this hi-tech Uniqlo (I've seen quite a few Uniqlos, but this is the first with revolving mannequins) and trying to pry Mauricio away from the aisles of joggers and blazers, we finally headed to the beach.

It was SO FUN. It's hard to beat a word that encompasses as much as the word "fun". It was nearing the evening and the water was getting cooler, but the sun hadn't set yet so we splashed out into the water and got completely soaked. I was wearing regular clothes but it was worth the pleasure of running into the lake and going crazy. I had my camera with me for some of it, and took some pretty good shots from out in the water.
On the sand, we put together our official new competition photo for the ILC out on the beach. Ryan found this rather dangerous wooden stake that we used (along with lake water) to write out the letters of UChicago across the sand. While we were making it, some guy was looking and walked past and commented "Wow, you guys are (insert cuss word here) nerds." whereupon we looked at each other and burst out laughing.  We took a ton of cute pictures with the words and some of them feature Ryan's fabulous shark towel, our new mascot (totally not the phoenix).

We debated about going to the Willis or Hancock Tower to check out the view, but no one really wanted to spend $20+ for a view you could get from Google Maps, so we opted out of that and went to a Thai place called Silver Spoon that was absolutely delicious and gave portions that justified what you were paying for. We ate family style, getting fried rice, pad see eiw, pad thai, yellow curry, and edmame, sitting and talking and having an overall great time.

After dinner, we got on the Red Line back to the dorms and showered before curfew (or at least, I did). Ryan, Mauricio, and I were in the study hall, writing our blogs, but I fell asleep in my chair...whereupon I was woken up and walked to my room and finally, finally fell asleep.

Yours,
eh.

1 comment:

  1. The way you describe Chicago you would think that all of those TV shows from yesteryear were making things up. Glad you’re seeing the fun stuff.

    ReplyDelete