Life in Chicago

Well I've been in Chicago now doing a summer lab animal fellowship at the University of Illinois at Chicago for about 4 weeks.  I have Duke and Addy here with me (pros and cons to that) and have been spending some time with Jackie (as much as possible).

The traffic here totally sucks.  I have a 9 mile drive to work and it takes me 30 minutes in the morning if I leave around 7am and about an hour going home leaving at like 4:30pm.  Luckily I've been listening to audiobooks (Song of Ice & Fire #2) which is probably all that's keeping me sane.

Last weekend I went and saw Jurassic World solo (pretty fun movie) and took a long day of bike riding up and down lakeshore drive with Jackie - including a brief stop at the Lincoln Park Zoo.

This weekend, Nathan came down.  Friday night we got Chinese food, took Duke for a walk, and watched the last 4 episodes of season 5 of Game of Thrones.

Saturday we took Duke to the Montrose Dog Beach - with a stop at Slims for some Chicago hot dogs and frozen yogurt on the way.  Pretty tasty and reasonably priced.  Dog beach was crowded but very fun - Duke had a blast, zooming all around.  Came home, dropped off Duke, and then walked the 2 miles to Davis Theater to see Inside Out.  Huge line outside so I sneakily bought tickets on my phone and we walked past the line and straight in.  Cute movie, interesting concept, but we both thought they could have done more with it.  Long walk home and it started raining/storming on the way.  We barely made it back right as the thunder and lightning started.  Luckily I had my umbrella, though Nathan refused to use it until the very end.  We ordered some deep dish Chicago pizza for dinner and watched The Heat and Little Shop of Horrors before calling it a night.

Sunday (today) we got a late start to the morning, ate some leftover pizza for lunch, and then walked about a mile to the train station.  We took a couple of trains to the Roosevelt station and then walked about 15 minutes to the Shedd Aquarium,  Jackie's friend hooked us up with free tickets that got us in everywhere.  So we saw everything, including the dolphin/beluga/penguin/dog show.  Spent a long time there, then headed back on the train to home.  Fed the animals, Nathan packed up, then had leftover Chinese food before driving back to the train station and taking that up to O'Hare to drop Nathan off.  I went with to say goodbye.  Then the lonely ride and drive home.

Overall, I love my fellowship here, the people are very nice and the program sounds amazing, but I worry about living in Chicago.  I'm not Jackie - she thrives on the nightlife and seems to make friends easily.  I've mostly felt like I'm wasting so much time commuting, plus being lonely, it's making me question Chicago or really any big city as a potential future home.

I guess we'll just have to see how the next 7 weeks go.