Back from Chicago. Great trip. God really showed me how He has been working to transcend racial lines in the midwest... How He has been breaking down barriers that allow Sunday mornings to be the most segregated time of the week. (People go to their respective churches which sadly are for the most part, mono-ethnic...) I spent Thursday and Friday with my bros KL and S, who are championing the cause of evangelizing across racial lines. Both are Christian DJ's using Christian hip hop to evangelize to the youth in Detroit. I dig that. Had dinner with my bro AC who just moved out to Chicago after spending six months in SF. AC came to Lumps maybe 3-4 times and he taught Sunday School at SCBC for about a month before heading back to Chi-town for dental school. It was just cool to see him and see how he's doing. Afterwards I went with him to check out a young adult fellowship of about fifteen to twenty at a small church in Skokie. Most were UIUC grads who knew AC from back in the day. Good people who were really warm and friendly and went out of their way to make me feel welcomed. On Sunday, I checked out the CCUC, the big Chinese church in Chicago. The people weren't very welcoming nor friendly. Not one person said hello to me. However, I will say that the message was decent (though i didn't really like the style, the pastor was preaching on Genesis and he didn't go over a single verse in Genesis, which to me, is kind of weird...he went very quickly over a bunch of verses from Psalms, Isaiah, Matthew, and Revelations. It just didn't seem very deep... I guess I'm kind of spoiled at SCBC). One thing though is they were promoting a multi-ethnic church conference for the Chicago area which I thought was really cool. God doesn't show favoritism....
As for the rest of my trip, Chicago is a fun town to visit. At first, I didn't really like it because I thought it was too cold. Being a life-long Californian... you just get spoiled with beautiful weather... I got in on Thursday late afternoon... had dinner at a cool Italian restaurant... then checked out ESPNZone which wasn't all that. It's definitely a place you should go with a bunch of people. Being by yourself makes it kind of boring. Friday, I had my interview at Northwestern Law which went pretty well. Hope I get in because I really like the law school and I would definitely rank it as one of my top 2-3 law school choices... then I had lunch with my bros KL & S and a bunch of other people, afterwards, checked out the Shedd Aquarium and it's dolphin show. Definitely cool. Because KL & S had to go pretty early and KL wanted to meet up with his buddy J who goes to med school at UIC, we had to leave Shedd very early so we didn't get a chance to see much more but it seemed like a cool place to spend a few hours. Thursday night after KL and S left for Detroit (so that they could attend a Christian hip hop conference the next day), I checked out the Hancock Center tower which is 98 stories tall. I went up to the top and just enjoyed the wonderful city skyline. After, I went to a jazz club near my hotel called the Jazz Showcase. Very cool, just a real mellow night listening to good music and sipping Chamomile tea.... Saturday, I checked out the Field Museum of Natural History and the Art Institute. The Art Institute's the bomb. Lots of Impressionist art (Renoir's, Monet's, and Van Gogh's)... lots of Japanese and Chinese art, lots of contemporary art... it was great... Not a whole lot of sculptures but some of the paintings they had were amazing... Also had lunch at a Chicago deep dish pizza joint called Lou Malnatti's (sp?) with LH's boyfriend, J, who's a pretty cool guy. He's doing a PhD in Psychology in Richmond, Virginia. After I left the Art Institute at 4pm, I had hoped to go to the Museum of Science and Industry which was rated to be one of the top 15 museums in the world by Time-Life magazine but it was closing at 4:30 so I decided to just go shopping along the Magnificent Mile instead. Man, is there a lot of shopping in Chicago. Most of the stores though you can find in San Francisco. It just a ton of walking around... Chicago's downtown area is much larger than San Francisco and Los Angeles. It's just huge. Sunday, went to church (see above) and flew home.
There were a bunch of things I didn't get a chance to check out in chicago that I had on my to-do list:
Museum of Science & Industry, the Adler Planetarium, Navy Pier, Lincoln Park, Evanston, the Green Mill Tavern the United Center, Wrigley Field... you definitely need 5-6 days in Chi-Town to visit everything... I think I'd like to visit again this summer, when it's warmer...
As for the rest of my trip, Chicago is a fun town to visit. At first, I didn't really like it because I thought it was too cold. Being a life-long Californian... you just get spoiled with beautiful weather... I got in on Thursday late afternoon... had dinner at a cool Italian restaurant... then checked out ESPNZone which wasn't all that. It's definitely a place you should go with a bunch of people. Being by yourself makes it kind of boring. Friday, I had my interview at Northwestern Law which went pretty well. Hope I get in because I really like the law school and I would definitely rank it as one of my top 2-3 law school choices... then I had lunch with my bros KL & S and a bunch of other people, afterwards, checked out the Shedd Aquarium and it's dolphin show. Definitely cool. Because KL & S had to go pretty early and KL wanted to meet up with his buddy J who goes to med school at UIC, we had to leave Shedd very early so we didn't get a chance to see much more but it seemed like a cool place to spend a few hours. Thursday night after KL and S left for Detroit (so that they could attend a Christian hip hop conference the next day), I checked out the Hancock Center tower which is 98 stories tall. I went up to the top and just enjoyed the wonderful city skyline. After, I went to a jazz club near my hotel called the Jazz Showcase. Very cool, just a real mellow night listening to good music and sipping Chamomile tea.... Saturday, I checked out the Field Museum of Natural History and the Art Institute. The Art Institute's the bomb. Lots of Impressionist art (Renoir's, Monet's, and Van Gogh's)... lots of Japanese and Chinese art, lots of contemporary art... it was great... Not a whole lot of sculptures but some of the paintings they had were amazing... Also had lunch at a Chicago deep dish pizza joint called Lou Malnatti's (sp?) with LH's boyfriend, J, who's a pretty cool guy. He's doing a PhD in Psychology in Richmond, Virginia. After I left the Art Institute at 4pm, I had hoped to go to the Museum of Science and Industry which was rated to be one of the top 15 museums in the world by Time-Life magazine but it was closing at 4:30 so I decided to just go shopping along the Magnificent Mile instead. Man, is there a lot of shopping in Chicago. Most of the stores though you can find in San Francisco. It just a ton of walking around... Chicago's downtown area is much larger than San Francisco and Los Angeles. It's just huge. Sunday, went to church (see above) and flew home.
There were a bunch of things I didn't get a chance to check out in chicago that I had on my to-do list:
Museum of Science & Industry, the Adler Planetarium, Navy Pier, Lincoln Park, Evanston, the Green Mill Tavern the United Center, Wrigley Field... you definitely need 5-6 days in Chi-Town to visit everything... I think I'd like to visit again this summer, when it's warmer...
posted by AlfDaBruin at 10:56 AM
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