chicaaaago

oddly enough, the more time you spend in the midwest the more your accent kind of gets corrupted and midwestern. i swear to god i was saying "chicaaaago."

chicago is in the midwest, but it's most definitely a huge city. i always wanted to go there, and i was not disappointed. it's a big city but it's so open and not overwhelming. this morning (really freaking early) we dropped off arielle in evanston and went to get breakfast before meeting up with her again at the beach there. we napped on the beach for a while, recovering from about 3 hours of sleep, and then arielle left us for lunch with her sister and we took the El in to downtown (after brief shopping detour where dan bought a terrycloth tanktop). we went to lunch for noodles/asian food and then walked down michigan avenue. dan had to stop me from shopping. actually he promised me that i could go back later to H&M. we walked down to milennium park which is really pretty and we got to see the bean. mostly i just like the bean because it's called the bean. the BEAN. so much fun to say. it's cute. it's like arielle and fuzzy things. all that was just on the way to the art institute, which was awesome. i got to see so many things that i have always wanted to see and have never seen in person - the impressionist room is ridiculous. also the contemporary art was entertaining too, mostly because dan was loudly speaking about how useless it was. there was one artist whose stuff you were allowed to take - mostly because it was a bunch of candies on the floor in a rectangle and a stack of papers against the wall. dan and i both took a piece of paper. dan left his behind on a stairwell in a statement of some kind and i dragged mine around with me all day (free souvenir! also hilarious!). i kept asking him to hold the paper every time i went to the bathroom or anything like that, and he wanted to toss it every time, especially because i kept calling it "my art." "hey dan, will you hold my art while i go buy postcards?"

after the art institute we rode the el all the way back to evanston and then drove back down to the south side and his grandma's house where we ate pizza and watched the phantom of the opera. tomorrow it's madison (wisconsin again) and miguel!