Chicago – My Journey Outside the Vandy Bubble
Last weekend I got to take a trip to Chicago to visit one of my best friends! I’d only been to Chicago once before and I hadn’t really had time to explore it thoroughly, so I was super-excited!
Since Nashville is a major transport hub, it’s easy to travel from here to just about anywhere. I took a nine-hour megabus overnight on Thursday (yay for choosing no Friday classes!) and arrived in Chicago at 9:30am. Chelsea and I then hung out at Starbucks until we had to catch our train back to Wheaton.
Once there, I got to go to a couple of her classes. The first was a conducting class and the intensity of their score examination made me gain great respect for our Blair students! Her second class was geology, and many elements of it linked to what I had learned in my astronomy classes here at Vandy last year. That night we also went to their talent show, which reminded me of our family weekend Athenian sing. It’s always great to see so many talented people on each college campus! :D The rest of the night we drank tea, made overnight oats, and watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Her on-campus apartment was a lot like mine here at Vanderbilt—so practical for overnight guests!
The next day we went into Chicago and got to experience all of the fun events they planned for Halloween. We got free coffee while we watched the plethora of little kids run around in their costumes. That’s totally my favorite thing about Halloween: children in their super-cute and creative costumes! We also took a 40-minute journey to get cupcakes. That might seem a bit excessive to most people, but they were absolutely delicious and it was totally worth it! We then proceeded to get hopelessly lost because of track construction on our train and wander Chicago for over two hours, saying: “ooh that building looks familiar—let’s walk there!” Finally, we made it to Millennium park and its famous bean wherein you can see all of Chicago (it’s SO cool!). Chelsea knew how to get back to the train station from there, so we were able to finally head home.
The last big thing we did before I left the windy city was to go to the concert choir/men’s Glee club/women’s chorale performance that night. It reminded me a lot of the VU concert choir’s performance I attended last year because Dexy was in it (speaking of which, you should check out her blog!). We prefaced the concert with panzarotti at a local restaurant across the street from her apartment. I had never heard of these before, but they’re apparently just like calzones, only deep-fried. Considering I live in the South, I was surprised I hadn’t heard of deep-fried pizza before! Next we talked late into the night, went to church the next morning, and took the train back into Chicago for me to leave on Sunday. We even had enough time for me to eat my first Chicago deep-dish pizza right before leaving—yum!
All in all, it was a great weekend and it was nice to be able to travel and be able to see what other cities have to offer since Nashville has so much. :) It was awesome to be able to see how many similarities there are between different college campuses, and yet reflect on how grateful I am that I chose this one.
…Until next time!