random ponderings of a blind seer: Chi-town

I just got back from Chicago and I loved it! I never thought I would like such a large, yankee city, but it turned out to be lots of fun. I thought often of Moscow and St. Pete and enjoyed the L there (that's the metro). We worked out of a local church and so we spent a ton of time there. One day we cleaned the whole building, one day we visited nursing homes, one day we spent a few hours at the Great Chicago Food Depository (packaging milk in a 40 degree room) and one day we went sight seeing. The church there is small in number, but large in size and personality. I really connected with a old lady that went with us to the nursing home; her name was Jan and she was young at heart.

While at the nursing home, she entertained an older man who was in a wheelchair. He was very quiet but quite mischievous. He wanted an RC cola, so Jan bought him one. He then wanted the change because it was pretty. She didn't give it to him. He then offered me a drink of the soda, I reached up and he pulled it away and told me to smell it. As I put my nose up to it, he pushed it up rapidly and hit me in the nose. What a stinker! Later, he kept threatening Jan with pouring the soda in the song book bag. It was quite an experience and, come to find out, the guy hasn't spoken much at all until this last visit. Pretty amazing.

We spent Tuesday at the Field Museum. It was really neat, but very dated too. There were a ton of exhibits, but they all need to be updated. I loved the dinosaur skeletons though; super cool! We also explored the "Magnificent Mile". It's a strip of some of the top end stores in America. I didn't go in many of them (the Lego Store, Vic Secret, Eddy Bauer, were about it) but I did enjoy the walk. For dinner, we hit up Ed Debevic's place. It is set up to look like an old diner and the waiters insult you. They're quite rude and it gets to be quite entertaining. Weird right? I paid to be insulted and waited on horribly. Christ, KT and I were the only ones that went and it was worth the long walk (almost a mile off the mile). We got to ride the L train back to the Mag Mile, so it was worth it. Altogether, we walked over 14 miles.

I should mention at this point that I woke up early every morning and lifted weights and swam for at least 30 minutes. I was proud of myself and once again showed that I don't oppose getting up early, but that getting up at 5 is too much (I was up at 6 most mornings). However, I just weighed in and I definitely gained weight. I'll tell myself it was muscle, but I'm still disappointed. On Tuesday, I met a Russian down in the pool and we got to be good friends and speaking with him was something I looked forward to every morning. His name was Anatole. I wish I could have gotten his contact info.

Anywho, fill in the other days working in the church cleaning or preparing the food supplies. There were some adventures in there (like walking to McDs at 10:45 pm on Thursday night), but nothing real big. Friday, we hit up the Lincoln Park zoo and then hit the road. Chicago: been there, done that.

The trip was eye opening for me because I have really become intolerant of people. I tried my best to put up with stuff, but I just constantly found myself cursing under my breath, rolling my eyes or just plain ignoring people. I won't get into the details, but I found myself questioning the sincerity of people's prayers, the immaturity of people being loud and obnoxious and people presuming to be experts because they once did this one thing a million years ago. I'm praying about it regularly and trying my best to help others instead of just criticizing them. I'll survive, I guess I'm just not a college kid anymore but if I want to be a professor someday, then I need to learn to cope.

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Sue