Chicago. The city. The school. The musical. *dramatic pose*
Most of you don't know this, but I've been in Chicago since Wednesday. That was fun. Basically I rode up there on the bus with Wiley and the rest of the group. I listened to some music, read some and slept a little. Anyway, we got up there and to the Motel 6 in Elk Grove village outside Chicago where everybody was staying. Now, my situation was different. My mom, my sister, a few of our friends and I were staying with some friends who lived in Chicago. So I had to get inside the city. Long story short, I wound up walking seven to eight miles from the Motel 6, out of Elk Grove and around O'Hare International Airport in a matter of about three hours. I finally arrived at Rosemont station on the Blue Line outside O'Hare and took that train to the loop, then jumped on the Red Line to Berwyn, the street on which I used to live. I met up there with the others and we walked to where we were staying. So...that was a fun three hours. Oddly enough, I was barely tired at all after carrying 20-some odd pounds of baggage for close to eight miles. My bones ached for a while afterwards, though.
The next day I arose around eight-ish to go and see Northwestern University. That was fun. It's a very pretty campus in a very pretty neighbourhood. Their communication and theatre schools are most excellent and their library looks kinda cool. I absolutely loved their campus when first I toured it. Of course, that hindsight is 20/20 is undisputed. I don't like it quite as much now, but I'll cover that later.
So then we hopped on the train from Northwestern and headed down to the Loop. We hung around downtown for a short while and headed back.
On Friday, the group toured Chicago University. It's...pretty. Very pretty. Ivy covers the walls of buildings which hail back to the age of large, hand-carved stone blocks, a time where just to make a simple brick house was a great task, yet architects and their builders crafted huge monoliths of grey stone masterfully carved into intricate creatures and shapes. The eldest of the buildings display this craftsmanship where they aren't covered by green leaves. As you walk around campus, the buildings grow visably younger and more modern than the aforementioned ones, but still eye-pleasing in architecture. The campus has a nice number of trees filling the space in between the ivy buildings and very green grass covering the ground. Inside, the wood is dark and old and it looks...indescribable. But then, I'm no historian when it comes to architecture. It is such a very pretty campus. And there's this neat statue. A few decades ago, there was to be a new building built for the Economics department. So they hired this one Italian guy to build a little statue for them. Turns out that this Italian has a helluva sense of humour. He builds a rather abstract-looking statue right outside the building so that it's in the shade of nothing. Now, every time May 1st rolls around, the shadow casts the shadow of a hammer and sickle on the ground. Needless to say, the economists were pretty pissed. So they moved out and the International Studies department moved in. The statue is still there and May 1st is their little local unofficial socialist holiday.
And that's just the outside. Chicago has a thriving English department with a great creative writing program. I won't go into details, but I love it. Combine that with the fact that it has an admissions policy, an on-campus residency program unparalleled by anything I have yet seen and a bunch of other cool things and you have the best university ever. I love it. It's the best school I've yet heard of in my second favourite American city in my third favourite American state. I feel like I want to visit Seattle and see the University of Washington, but that might only create more division. Chicago University is ideal, and if the school in Seattle is just as good, then I don't know if I'd be able to decide. So there, I've mostly decided. I want to go to Chicago. In Chicago. It's the perfect school for me, in the perfect city. It's within a relatively quick drive of New England and southeastern Canada. It has an airport which can fly anywhere in the world. It has a great public transportation system and is nice and large. I love it. I absolutely love it. And I know some people there already. That's a bit of a mixed blessing, as I am not exactly perfectly comfortable with revealing my true nature to them but they are all very liberal. I know they'd accept me, at least in some capacity.
Well, that's my vacation. We did go to Michigan City in Indiana and see some family down from Michigan, but that's not really the most noteworthy part of my vacation. After that, we hopped in the rented van and drove back to Springfield. Overall, it was a very fun trip. And I fell in love with a school. ^^
The next day I arose around eight-ish to go and see Northwestern University. That was fun. It's a very pretty campus in a very pretty neighbourhood. Their communication and theatre schools are most excellent and their library looks kinda cool. I absolutely loved their campus when first I toured it. Of course, that hindsight is 20/20 is undisputed. I don't like it quite as much now, but I'll cover that later.
So then we hopped on the train from Northwestern and headed down to the Loop. We hung around downtown for a short while and headed back.
On Friday, the group toured Chicago University. It's...pretty. Very pretty. Ivy covers the walls of buildings which hail back to the age of large, hand-carved stone blocks, a time where just to make a simple brick house was a great task, yet architects and their builders crafted huge monoliths of grey stone masterfully carved into intricate creatures and shapes. The eldest of the buildings display this craftsmanship where they aren't covered by green leaves. As you walk around campus, the buildings grow visably younger and more modern than the aforementioned ones, but still eye-pleasing in architecture. The campus has a nice number of trees filling the space in between the ivy buildings and very green grass covering the ground. Inside, the wood is dark and old and it looks...indescribable. But then, I'm no historian when it comes to architecture. It is such a very pretty campus. And there's this neat statue. A few decades ago, there was to be a new building built for the Economics department. So they hired this one Italian guy to build a little statue for them. Turns out that this Italian has a helluva sense of humour. He builds a rather abstract-looking statue right outside the building so that it's in the shade of nothing. Now, every time May 1st rolls around, the shadow casts the shadow of a hammer and sickle on the ground. Needless to say, the economists were pretty pissed. So they moved out and the International Studies department moved in. The statue is still there and May 1st is their little local unofficial socialist holiday.
And that's just the outside. Chicago has a thriving English department with a great creative writing program. I won't go into details, but I love it. Combine that with the fact that it has an admissions policy, an on-campus residency program unparalleled by anything I have yet seen and a bunch of other cool things and you have the best university ever. I love it. It's the best school I've yet heard of in my second favourite American city in my third favourite American state. I feel like I want to visit Seattle and see the University of Washington, but that might only create more division. Chicago University is ideal, and if the school in Seattle is just as good, then I don't know if I'd be able to decide. So there, I've mostly decided. I want to go to Chicago. In Chicago. It's the perfect school for me, in the perfect city. It's within a relatively quick drive of New England and southeastern Canada. It has an airport which can fly anywhere in the world. It has a great public transportation system and is nice and large. I love it. I absolutely love it. And I know some people there already. That's a bit of a mixed blessing, as I am not exactly perfectly comfortable with revealing my true nature to them but they are all very liberal. I know they'd accept me, at least in some capacity.
Well, that's my vacation. We did go to Michigan City in Indiana and see some family down from Michigan, but that's not really the most noteworthy part of my vacation. After that, we hopped in the rented van and drove back to Springfield. Overall, it was a very fun trip. And I fell in love with a school. ^^