Day 1:
I attempted breakfast crepes. It failed horribly, and I ended up swallowing floury mush. This was not a good idea, because it caused me carsickness as soon as I stepped on Mike's car.
Stop #1: Brian's house. Brian lived in the very northern parts of Michigan, and it took two hours to get there. Brain awaited us with awesome, awesome lunch: curry, rice, eggs, dumplings, and cookies.
All hail the Food God!
After we picked up Brian, we continued our way into Chicago.
We first stopped by the Shedd Aquarium, and watched the fish. There were a lot to look at; big fish, small fish, colorful fish, and creepy fish. I realize I sound real ignorant referring to all the different breeds as simply, "fish", but please save the species labelling to the marine biologists. Creatures with gills, scales, and tail are fish to me. We also saw other creatures such as poisonous frogs, alligators, otters, and jellyfish.
Exhibit 1: FISH.
After walking around the aquarium, we took a tour round the area, then headed to Chinatown, where we had dinner at Joyee's.
Joyee's was a delicious place: great range of foods, and a variety of bubble tea filled with various fruits and jellies. Mine looked like this:
and Mike's looked like this.
He did not know it was supposed to be that big.
My rendition of the incident: my memory was hazy on his shirt.
The food was great, actually. We had a good time eating, drinking, and discussing the arts of shrimp peeling, to help Mike who had a bunch of shrimp in his soup and needed help eating them without taking his sweet time.
Professor Antai says: Bite the head off.
I say that my method of "twist the head off, and pry it apart" was more tasteful than the "Bite the head and legs off" method, but Mike preferred the manlier way.
After dinner, we again went on our annual Mission: Hotel Room Smuggling, as we tried to fit in eight whole legal adults into one room, and took great lengths to avoid suspicion, such as moving in groups of two or threes at a time when entering the room, and maintaining a quiet noise level in fear the next door will hear us. The first day went by pretty peacefully.
Day 2:
Time to actually travel around Chicago. We started off with the morning with Mike trying to find a certain coffee house that he wished to go, but due to poor sense of directions, we just ended up walking half an hour in the freezing cold, which eventually ended with grabbing breakfast at Dunkin Donuts and a very pissed off Kara shouting at Mike.
After eating, we decided to split off into groups to accomodate each of our touring preferences. Kara and Antai went off to shop and look around, while I was with Maggie, Mike, Brian, Heidi, and Manlee to see the body exhibit. The exhibit was... fascinating; a little nauseating, as well. I held onto various people to prevent myself from running away going "aaaaaaaaa" at times. Afterwards, Heidi and Brian went to the bookstore, Maggie and Mike to the massage place (which turned out to be nonexistent), and Manlee and I started shopping.
At the end of the ordeal, the two of us each got a Hello Kitty perfume. Spare the judgments, it smelled pretty, and you would have bought it too despite the namesake!
We then met up with Maggie and Mike, and had Chicago-style pizza, which was absolutely delicious.
The place was also filled with graffitis all over the restauran,t and I really mean all over. Our waiter actually gave us a marker so that we can also leave our marks in the place, which we promptly did.
Maggie later got a nice hat for herself when shopping.
We then went to the Millenium Park, where we all took pictures and posed at the metal bean, and later went ice-skating.
Kara turned out to be a pretty good skater.
Dinnertime took place at The Cheesecake factory, which was quite satisfactory: the food was great, the atmosphere was nice, and of course, the wide selection of cheesecakes were simply divine. After dinner, we went to a stand-up comedy show in The Second City, and enjoyed the skit very much.
Day 3:
While everybody went to the coffee house for breakfast, I slept in, so I headed to the John Hancock tower (where we were all supposed to meet) with Kara and Antai, who also decided to skip out on the coffee house.
Being in the company of two of your good friends, who also happen to be dating each other, always leaves the awkward dillemma: should you chat and have fun with them as good friends and deprive them of their loving gazes, or should you take a step behind and let them have their lovey dovey time? Conveniently, I woke up feeling kind of cranky, so I mostly stayed quiet and let the two have their lovey dovey time (not that it required me stepping out to make them have a lovey dovey time, anyway. Argh so adorable).
Exhibit B: The couple of D'AWWW.
The observatory of the tower offered some great views.
Afterwards, we took one last visit to H&M, picked up Heidi at the University of Chicago and headed towards Mitsuba. Not that it was important or anything, but the cranky feeling in the morning turned out to be the ever-persistent Angst Mode, which makes me doubt everyone's intentions, twist them around in my head, and leaves me in a pool of self-loathing because you think everyone secretly hates you. Even after all this time, that damn Angst will creep up every now and then. THIS IS WHY BULLYING IS BAD, PEOPLE. Long-term effects of mental scarring is long.
Exhibit C: Unhappy Me.
Luckily, Mitsuwa lifted up my spirits.
Mitsuwa is a Japanese market and food court area. I ate chicken soba for lunch, and bought delicious Japanese candy, Matcha powder (fucking finally!), and a pack of origami paper. Also, the place offered Matcha soft serve, something I hadn't had since leaving Korea last summer, and I was very, very happy to eat it again. IT WAS SO DAMN GOOD.
On the car ride the way back, we decided to play a game of questions, where we asked trivial, silly, and serious questions about each other and answered them. It was a great game to pass the time, as well as an opportunity to get to know each other even better. I wouldn't have known I was the token
So, the trip was great. I got to see much of Chicago, and enjoyed my time with friends. To finish off, I shall leave with this gem of a quote from the car trip on the way back:
Preach.
