so blake drove up last week and we went off to chicago for the weekend. i was supposed to play kickball and make dumplings with some chinese students here at purdue, but it was optional so off to chicago we went on saturday morning. got made fun of multiple times for passing 'too much' stuff. also managed to forget the ipod and camera, so we had to go back and get those. good thing i remembered while we were still in west lafayette. i can't find all my extra camera batteries and wires and charger; may have packed it in the boxes i left in STL. it took about two hours to get to chi-town and we drove all the way through the city to millenium park. We walked around millenium park for awhile, saw the bean, which is apparently called the 'cloud gate,' walked to the lake, saw the buckingham fountain, walked by the concert place, oh! and saw these waterfall walls with these creepy people's faces and they spouted water from their mouths and the images would change so the people would be normal one minute and then smiling creepily the next.
around 1:30 we drove down to uchicago to pick up kyle, apparently nearish to where obama used to live. drove up to chinatown, got lunch at 老四川 and bubble tea! at joy yee's. very yummy food, too spicy for blake. lychee bubble tea=best thing ever. there was also some random fruit and weird black bitterish jelly on top but it had lychees inside! and they were good. so we walked around chinatown for awhile then headed to navy pier.
*well, just got back from lunch and its actually time for the history and culture lesson now... i've definitely been at this way too long and probably won't be finishing during this class either.
so we parked a couple blocks away from navy pier, thinking that the parking would be less expensive. hm, not so much. but we walked down the street and stopped by a walmart so blake could get a sweatshirt and stop freezing his butt off. so we also used the bathroom, very exciting i know, but you had to get one of the store clerks to unlock their back locker rooms since they only had the staff bathrooms.
We eventually made it to Navy Pier; it was cold and very windy, like high 50s, low 60s. we walked around the amusement park area, blake got scared of the ferris wheel, decided not to go into the maze museum, walked to the tip of the pier, and went inside to the stained glass museum/area and all the kiosks. Oh! and I think I saw the boat we took during senior trip, which was a little bit exciting.
*ok, i'm actually going to finish this now. i've only been at this like all day. nobigdeal.
after Navy Pier, we said bye to Kyle, went back to the car, and attempted to drive to the Hancock Observatory. i'm assuming traffic was bad, as it apparently always is in chicago, but we managed to park in this garage just off of the magnificent mile. hancock tower didn't have that many people so we didn't really have to wait in line or anything to go up. We went up by elevator to the 94th floor and the walls were basically all windows, as you would expect. The sun came out finally came out while we were up there so it was super pretty and you could basically look out on all of chicago. But then i dropped my camera onto the carpet (all of like 2 feet away) and it broke! well it's not completely broken, just not usable at the moment, apparently there's a 'lens error.' and there's no fix for it except to send it in and get them to do it. we even went down to best buy afterwards to see if they could do anything, but they couldn't do anything except send it in for fixing. Anyway, the hancock center had this open air area where you could go out and the there was the meshy cage stuff everywhere but you could actually feel the chicago air from the top of that building. Overall, very nice experience at a pretty decent price.
So we eventually went back down the elevator and decided to go to the hotel and hopefully find some food along the way. So in order to get out of paying the exorbitant parking fee you could buy like $10 worth of stuff in this specific shopping area at 900 michigan ave. We went into this fancy mall and asked the concierge about the parking discount and what we needed to do to get it and he was like, 'well you're supposed to buy stuff, but i'll just give you a validation ticket...' sweetness! very nice man. so that definitely saved us like $15 on parking which was great!
So Blake drives us to the hotel which is like 30 minutes south of the city and we check into the super elite suite that blake got with his super elite status. Blake then starts playing Starcraft with Eric, so I decided to go swimming. The pool was a little bit icky, but at least they had one and it was at least swimmable. Definitely a little bit creepy since it was completely dark outside and there were random used towels thrown around, and there was no one else there, and I started imagining those freaky little girls you see in scary movies just standing around the pool... I get creeped out easily.
so the next day, sunday, we decided to go to the outlet mall in aurora so blake could go shopping, about 20 minutes further south, and go to all the restaurants that elaine had recommended which I had neglected to look up prior to leaving chicago. we ended up spending about 2-3 hours wandering around that place, going into like every other store so blake could buy a bunch of nice shirts. I dragged blake to all the shoe stores so I could try on/look at all the converses and contemplate buying some, but end up not getting any; i'm sure he appreciated that. and we probably spent about an hour at gap so i could try on the same two jackets like 25 times. but i did end up buying them, under blake's persuasion since apparently he knows more about fashion than i do which doesn't really say much but is still interesting nevertheless, so at least that time wasn't wasted.
then we looked up and went to the nearest portillo's so we could try some chicago-style hotdogs even though according to elaine we were supposed to go there for the italian beef. oops. I ended up getting this cajun chicken pita, which was really good, but i guess not really uniquely chicago fare.
We then drove back into the city and went to Lincoln Park; we finally learned to park on the side of the street to save on parking. We walked along the lakefront for a little bit, but it was super windy and cold even though it was a pretty nice sunny day. Then we went to the free Lincoln Park zoo, and managed to not see a single animal besides birds and fish. I dunno what happened to all the animals, but there were all these 'sorry' signs explaining that they may be inside or whatnot. Also, it was near 5pm so by the time we got to some of the exhibit houses, they were all closed.
So when parking on the side of the street in Chicago, instead of parking meters, they have payboxes every block or so. So you pay at these boxes and it prints you out a ticket to put in your window saying when your time is up. According to Kyle, the city contracted these boxes out to a private company and Chicago's actually losing money from the street parking.
Anyway, by that time our time was up so we drove a couple blocks so we were nearer to the nearest Lou Malnati's, a chicago deep-dish pizza place. Waited for a bit, had some yummy pizza, and then proceeded to drive back to Purdue. Got a little bit lost on the way in Gary, Indiana, which is basically a ghost town, since the highways were being rebuilt or something, paid a couple extra tolls, wasted some time, but eventually got back on the right way. Then, I fell asleep, which I probably shouldn't have done. oopsies. I can't help it, put me in a car for longer than 25 minutes, and I will start nodding off. Anyway, we got back to Purdue at like 11pm.
Blake left monday morning. We were supposed to have a tour of 'discovery park' which is some fancy engineering research and entrepreneurship buildings, but ended up being given an hour long presentation about all the wonderful opportunities available at Purdue/discovery park. at least that's what i think it was about; I may or may not have stopped paying attention part way through. Then had a semi useful panel discussion about working in china. Got chastised at lunch for up and leaving everyone to go to Chicago. and, I think the culture/history lesson in the afternoon was pretty uneventful.
So it was a pretty icky rainy day, but we decided to go down to Chauncey Village and get sushi for dinner. But, apparently it's closed every monday, who does that? so, we ended up going to an indian buffet instead.
I got an email about my housing situation in beijing, which isn't going so well right now. The coordinator guy found this apartment for the three of us, but it's pretty expensive and the landlord and real estate agent seem pretty greedy, so I don't think that's going to work out. So, I still don't really have a place to live in beijing, and we're currently thinking we may just live in a cheap hotel for the 10 weeks. There are a ton around the city and it doesn't really matter if we're really close to the school or not as long as we can get there pretty directly by public transportation, so everything'll be fine and i'm not worried about that.
so today morning i was definitely about 25 minutes late for chinese class, but it turns out that a bunch of people even came in after me, so it was all good. I don't even know why I show up to that class anyway. and the afternoon lecture was pretty boring as usual; i've definitely gotten into the horrible habit of nodding off during class. i think i picked it up early this past semester.
then we went to china one buffet for dinner, which i'm pretty sure is where they got the two catered lunches from. and as ning and dianna would say, i got 'probed' at dinner.
so i've mostly spent the past couple hours looking up hotels in beijing and typing this, and i think that's about it.
*well, just got back from lunch and its actually time for the history and culture lesson now... i've definitely been at this way too long and probably won't be finishing during this class either.
so we parked a couple blocks away from navy pier, thinking that the parking would be less expensive. hm, not so much. but we walked down the street and stopped by a walmart so blake could get a sweatshirt and stop freezing his butt off. so we also used the bathroom, very exciting i know, but you had to get one of the store clerks to unlock their back locker rooms since they only had the staff bathrooms.
We eventually made it to Navy Pier; it was cold and very windy, like high 50s, low 60s. we walked around the amusement park area, blake got scared of the ferris wheel, decided not to go into the maze museum, walked to the tip of the pier, and went inside to the stained glass museum/area and all the kiosks. Oh! and I think I saw the boat we took during senior trip, which was a little bit exciting.
*ok, i'm actually going to finish this now. i've only been at this like all day. nobigdeal.
after Navy Pier, we said bye to Kyle, went back to the car, and attempted to drive to the Hancock Observatory. i'm assuming traffic was bad, as it apparently always is in chicago, but we managed to park in this garage just off of the magnificent mile. hancock tower didn't have that many people so we didn't really have to wait in line or anything to go up. We went up by elevator to the 94th floor and the walls were basically all windows, as you would expect. The sun came out finally came out while we were up there so it was super pretty and you could basically look out on all of chicago. But then i dropped my camera onto the carpet (all of like 2 feet away) and it broke! well it's not completely broken, just not usable at the moment, apparently there's a 'lens error.' and there's no fix for it except to send it in and get them to do it. we even went down to best buy afterwards to see if they could do anything, but they couldn't do anything except send it in for fixing. Anyway, the hancock center had this open air area where you could go out and the there was the meshy cage stuff everywhere but you could actually feel the chicago air from the top of that building. Overall, very nice experience at a pretty decent price.
So we eventually went back down the elevator and decided to go to the hotel and hopefully find some food along the way. So in order to get out of paying the exorbitant parking fee you could buy like $10 worth of stuff in this specific shopping area at 900 michigan ave. We went into this fancy mall and asked the concierge about the parking discount and what we needed to do to get it and he was like, 'well you're supposed to buy stuff, but i'll just give you a validation ticket...' sweetness! very nice man. so that definitely saved us like $15 on parking which was great!
So Blake drives us to the hotel which is like 30 minutes south of the city and we check into the super elite suite that blake got with his super elite status. Blake then starts playing Starcraft with Eric, so I decided to go swimming. The pool was a little bit icky, but at least they had one and it was at least swimmable. Definitely a little bit creepy since it was completely dark outside and there were random used towels thrown around, and there was no one else there, and I started imagining those freaky little girls you see in scary movies just standing around the pool... I get creeped out easily.
so the next day, sunday, we decided to go to the outlet mall in aurora so blake could go shopping, about 20 minutes further south, and go to all the restaurants that elaine had recommended which I had neglected to look up prior to leaving chicago. we ended up spending about 2-3 hours wandering around that place, going into like every other store so blake could buy a bunch of nice shirts. I dragged blake to all the shoe stores so I could try on/look at all the converses and contemplate buying some, but end up not getting any; i'm sure he appreciated that. and we probably spent about an hour at gap so i could try on the same two jackets like 25 times. but i did end up buying them, under blake's persuasion since apparently he knows more about fashion than i do which doesn't really say much but is still interesting nevertheless, so at least that time wasn't wasted.
then we looked up and went to the nearest portillo's so we could try some chicago-style hotdogs even though according to elaine we were supposed to go there for the italian beef. oops. I ended up getting this cajun chicken pita, which was really good, but i guess not really uniquely chicago fare.
We then drove back into the city and went to Lincoln Park; we finally learned to park on the side of the street to save on parking. We walked along the lakefront for a little bit, but it was super windy and cold even though it was a pretty nice sunny day. Then we went to the free Lincoln Park zoo, and managed to not see a single animal besides birds and fish. I dunno what happened to all the animals, but there were all these 'sorry' signs explaining that they may be inside or whatnot. Also, it was near 5pm so by the time we got to some of the exhibit houses, they were all closed.
So when parking on the side of the street in Chicago, instead of parking meters, they have payboxes every block or so. So you pay at these boxes and it prints you out a ticket to put in your window saying when your time is up. According to Kyle, the city contracted these boxes out to a private company and Chicago's actually losing money from the street parking.
Anyway, by that time our time was up so we drove a couple blocks so we were nearer to the nearest Lou Malnati's, a chicago deep-dish pizza place. Waited for a bit, had some yummy pizza, and then proceeded to drive back to Purdue. Got a little bit lost on the way in Gary, Indiana, which is basically a ghost town, since the highways were being rebuilt or something, paid a couple extra tolls, wasted some time, but eventually got back on the right way. Then, I fell asleep, which I probably shouldn't have done. oopsies. I can't help it, put me in a car for longer than 25 minutes, and I will start nodding off. Anyway, we got back to Purdue at like 11pm.
Blake left monday morning. We were supposed to have a tour of 'discovery park' which is some fancy engineering research and entrepreneurship buildings, but ended up being given an hour long presentation about all the wonderful opportunities available at Purdue/discovery park. at least that's what i think it was about; I may or may not have stopped paying attention part way through. Then had a semi useful panel discussion about working in china. Got chastised at lunch for up and leaving everyone to go to Chicago. and, I think the culture/history lesson in the afternoon was pretty uneventful.
So it was a pretty icky rainy day, but we decided to go down to Chauncey Village and get sushi for dinner. But, apparently it's closed every monday, who does that? so, we ended up going to an indian buffet instead.
I got an email about my housing situation in beijing, which isn't going so well right now. The coordinator guy found this apartment for the three of us, but it's pretty expensive and the landlord and real estate agent seem pretty greedy, so I don't think that's going to work out. So, I still don't really have a place to live in beijing, and we're currently thinking we may just live in a cheap hotel for the 10 weeks. There are a ton around the city and it doesn't really matter if we're really close to the school or not as long as we can get there pretty directly by public transportation, so everything'll be fine and i'm not worried about that.
so today morning i was definitely about 25 minutes late for chinese class, but it turns out that a bunch of people even came in after me, so it was all good. I don't even know why I show up to that class anyway. and the afternoon lecture was pretty boring as usual; i've definitely gotten into the horrible habit of nodding off during class. i think i picked it up early this past semester.
then we went to china one buffet for dinner, which i'm pretty sure is where they got the two catered lunches from. and as ning and dianna would say, i got 'probed' at dinner.
so i've mostly spent the past couple hours looking up hotels in beijing and typing this, and i think that's about it.
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ReplyDeleteprobe!! and you even got abducted!...to Indiana. (whoa, I just realized that that name is eerily close to In-dianna...weird). anyways, Dianna and I need to abduct you back for further probing. Also, this is irrelevant to this post, but kung fu hustle is an awesome movie. It had partly made me want to learn the guqin back in high school. haha. never happened though. :( but I like your posts. I think you should post more often...keep me amused. hehe. :)
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