Chi-Town

This weekend I made a great trip to the windy city to visit a friend (Samantha) who is doing part of her student teaching there. We started the weekend off at the Navy Pier and then headed to downtown Chicago just as it started to rain. It started to rain pretty heavily so we headed into a grocery store which turned out to be a gem. It was a mix between a Trader Joe's and a great coffee shop/cafe. Every once-in-a-while I have a laugh attack and forget to bring my epi-pen with me...this is when it happened. We were getting our coffee at the bev. station and it hit me like a brick wall. I lost all control and about peed myself. So that was pretty enjoyable. We headed out to brave the storm and it actually had calmed down a bit. My favorite stores had to be crate & barrel (definitely could throw down a few thou on some amazing decor ideas), H&M, and Niketown. I ended up only spending about $15, exercising some extreme self-discipline.

Later that night we headed to china town for some deliscous couisine...or so we thought. It started off by having to fetch the waiter to get our order because he was definitely not going to be over to our table in a while. So, the choice order was a Thai rice dish in a pineapple. We had seen a few other people order this and it looked awesome... I mean, it was in a pineapple, what else could you ask for?! So let's take a moment and dig through why this was a bad choice. Reason number one: Having the title be so broad as to say "Thai Rice" and make all judgments based off of that. Clearly, if there are no descriptions with a few ingredients you are getting yourself into a night of pain. Reason number two: Looks mean nothing. I feel like maybe I learned this lesson in kindergarden, but for some reason, the rule of not judging a book by it's cover had completely vaporized itself into a gust of chicago wind. So, what happened you may ask....well, as I dug through the pineapple to serve out some rice, I pulled out a little baby squid. As I refrained from throwing up, Samantha coaxed me into eating one of the tentacles. I didn't really get a good taste to even recognize what it would be like before I decided to straight up swallow it. To top the night off, we both ordered bubble tea...one my favs. So I ordered a coffee flavor and could hardly contain my excitement. But, the flavor was, in fact, not coffee but ash tray. The taste of drinking a cigarette. Enough to feel no remorse of tossing that thing in the trash.

So, all-in-all it was a great trip. I enjoyed the windy city and maybe not the cuisine of china town...but I will give it another shot sometime.