Day 1 of Chicago Living

July 11, 2011

So, I count today as my first day "living" in Chicago - to celebrate this, I acted like a complete tourist. After riding around on the trains for a bit, Heather and I spent the majority of the day at the Field Museum, where we encountered whales, the t-rex named Sue, and the seemingly never-ending Americas exhibit. We stayed until closing and were unceremoniously chased out by the museum workers, snapping pictures of dinosaur bones as we left. I'd been to the Field before on our orchestra trip when I was fifteen, and had very fond memories of it. Of course, since most of my high school experience was also defined by the fact that I explored the museum with a certain punk-cool guy I had a crush on, it wasn't quite the same! Oh, high school...if my future husband had come to the museum that day instead of going to Navy Pier, maybe I would have been hanging out with him! However, I wasn't disappointed - I think it's definitely changed since then, and I just am a total dork for museums.

In front of Sue :)

Heather and I with some interesting Native American art things. Very accurate, I know.

After getting kicked out of the museum, we decided a visit to the tallest tower in the Western Hemisphere was in order. This I hadn't done before, though I do remember going up into the observatory in the John Hancock center. We wandered a bit before finding the entrance to the part where you can actually go up into the Sears (Willis) Tower, but then decided food was in order first. We had seen several restaurants in the businessy part of the tower, so we went back up there and ended up in a Mexican restaurant that in retrospect we probably weren't supposed to be in. We were definitely the only non-businessmen there. It was good though, and no one told us to get out, so a little awkwardness was all we really endured. The tower it self was pretty impressive:

Once we got to the top, the view was absolutely magnificent. I loved seeing the whole city sprawled out beneath us, and the little Skydeck was a pretty neat experience. It was basically just a little plastic box jutting out from the side of the building, but looking down and seeing the whole city beneath your feet is still a bit intense.

This is a picture of a picture, so quality's not great. Still cool.

Also, the tower was a museum in an of itself - all along the walls they had information about the city and famous people and events. I especially enjoyed the wall of Chicago authors.

Gwendolyn Brooks and Carl Sandburg are my favorites.

Overall, it was a good start of to living here, even though it made me feel very much like a tourist. I still can't really believe I'm not just on vacation. The next day, I spent the majority of the day at work with my new colleagues, who I love. We did some excellent planning and I'm now completely excited about teaching American literature. I've always been leery of teaching juniors because *insert English teacher tears here* there's no Shakespeare, but our line up of literature is actually pretty great. We're teaching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Beloved, among several other almost equally awesome novels. I've said it before, but I'm so excited to be working at ChiArts. I feel extremely blessed by this opportunity and am only looking forward to getting more involved here! Of course, Andrew is sad not to be up here yet and is fussing at me for doing all the fun stuff without him, but I know I'll be willing to do it all today! :)