CTA's, trains and aimless wandering

Hey all,

I hope that this post find you all well. As most of you know, i traveled to Chicago on Saturday with my parents so they could drop me off for orientation on Sunday. Traveling went better than expected. We made it here in about 3 1/2 hours, which was good. Then we headed downtown... and then to a quaint little Irish pub for supper. Then on Sunday we left the hotel and went to IKEA and then headed to orientation.

Orientation thus far has been interesting to say the least. On the first day I met my fellow teammates, Sam and Bethany, which was super exciting. They are both lovely people and our time in Sweden should be very fun. I also had the opportunity to meet the teams that are going to England, Brazil and Paraguay. The first day was pretty much a get to know you day... which was good. It was exciting to learn where all my fellow house mates are from and what they like to do. 

On day two we worked on our house covenant, which is basically a list of suggested rules that we should abide by while living in the house. It was a very extensive process and tiring as well. The second half of the day was basically CTA and bus route training, so we can find our way around the city when we have our free time. Then we went to the library to get our very own Chicago library cards, so if we have to urge to check out a book or movie we can. The Chicago Public Library is huge. I've never seen anything like it. The trip to the CPL wasn't the greatest because it rained the whole time, which made the walk to the train very unpleasant. After we went to CPL, we came back and my team, with the help of the Brazil team made supper. That was a very exciting experience.  I was in charge of making dessert with Sam and Dan... well one thing led to another and the oven got turned off, so we had to bake our lovely DUMP cake for another hour. The whole thing was really funny. Then I spent the rest of the night playing blokus, a very addicting game to say the least. 

Day two was spent wandering around our neighbor while using our new found mapping skills to find various locations. During this process we met some very interesting, but helpful people. The locating part was slightly stressful, but we managed, up until the point when we were suppose to return. We decided that it would be best to walk out Central Park St. and look for a bus stop. About 2 miles later however, we found ourselves at the park in which we needed to be. This was very stressful, but it also turned out to be a good learning experience because as it turns out there is no bus that runs along Central Park St. That night we went to get hotdogs and fries at a local stand. The hotdogs were okay, but the fries we so amazing that I had share another bag with my fellow housemate, Lee. After that, we headed back home and played blokus once again late into the night. After the game had ended, we watched the Office.

Day three, which was today, was spent out wandering the streets of downtown Chicago. We had yet another scavenger hunt. For this we were given new teams and mine was Craig, Sam, Dan Becca and myself. This part of the day was very exciting. Not only did we get to see the downtown area, we got to go to Lincoln park which happens to contain a zoo. After walking around the zoo with Dan, and consuming lunch, we broke up into our map team, which consisted of Scott , Sheralynn, Lee and myself. With our new quest in hand, we took to the streets of Chicago again. This was when the day became stressful. We needed to get to Division Street, so we hopped on a bus that would take us there. We rode it for about 45 minutes and still hadn't found it. So we began frantically looking out the bus windows in hopes of finding our street. Then a man sitting next to us ask me we needed any help. I said yes and told him our destination and he proceeded to tell me that the street that we were looking for was 2 miles that opposite way. So we quickly got off the bus, found the train and took it to our destination. Turns out that our mishap got us to our destination sooner than expected. At this point I was in dire need of coffee, so Lee and I took off to find some, we found it and then headed back. Once we got back our huge group headed to millennium park and and found out we were to eat with just one dollar per person in our group. It was a little weird, but in the end, it was okay. During this time, Sam, Bethany and I walked around for a while, got our food and went back to our house

So this concluded my extremely long blog. I will hopefully update tomorrow.