Hello all
As you might know, it’s finals week, and I really don’t have time to blog, but make sure to check back periodically throughout D-term for updates! Have a great Thanksgiving week!
Shalom
Megan
As I walked back from my French oral final today, it really hit me. Week ten is one day from being completely over. There is no more “I’ll do it tomorrow” or, “There’s still time,” it’s over! Everyone said this first term would go quickly, and honestly I didn’t believe them. The days are deceiving, and you always end up thinking you have more time than you do. What, you have ten days to do a final research paper? Piece of cake! Until you turn around and those ten days have turned into four and you have no idea where all your time went.Its never intentional either, running out of time, and that’s the bad part. You can go into each week with goals and time limits, every inch of your week planned down to the minute. But as I have realized this term, that is completely unrealistic. Yes, you need to schedule time for studying, hanging out with friends, exercising, and hopefully if there are any hours left if the day, for sleeping. But at the same time, you need to just let it happen. One thing I struggled with this term is freaking out about all of the time limits I put on myself. Some things are going to take much longer than anticipated, where as others you might breeze through, and it’s not something that should be stressed over.
Obviously stress is going to happen, and can not be avoided, but you can’t let it overtake you! For example, my friends and I are planning on making this delicious stuff called chicken dip and watching Ocean’s Thirteen tonight to relax! I’m really pumped about it and think that it will be the perfect way to put an end to the term and kick off finals week (most of us have finals starting on Friday).
Moral of the story: always remember to make time to relax and breathe, enjoy and take it all in!!!
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my ramblings about week ten and have a great week yourself!
Shalom
Megan
NOTICE: I have no idea why my font is purple, or underlined, so if you like it, enjoy, and if you don’t, i’m sorry!!!! Okay, on to the blog….So this past weekend my friends and I went on an adventure. I’m going to preface this post with a list of helpful information that I wish I would have known. Things to know when you go to Chicago for the day:-check the weather, it won’t be the same as it is in Naperville.-if you are trying to find someplace, DO NOT
TRUST MAPQUEST!!!!!
-never never never put any kind of a drink bottle in your bag,
-find a trolley stop, they are your best friends.
-bring gloves…always bring gloves.
-prepare to be sore by the end of the day.
-don’t worry about looking like a tourist and taking a ton of photos, it’s not like you’ll see any of the people around you ever again!
Now we have that taken care of…on to the good stuff!
So the four of us had been talking about going into the city since week 2, and by week 8 we decided that no matter what, it had to happen. So we woke up early that Saturday morning and walked down to the train station which is only about 3 blocks off campus. As we are waiting, I notice my bag is dripping, and being a smart girl, I realize that is not a normal characteristic of bags. So I open it up, and sure enough, my bottle of Gatorade had opened and spilled ALL OVER the interior of my bag, and everything in it. With my friends laughing their heads off, I proceeded to literally dump the excess Gatorade out into a trash can, while enduring many odd glances from those around us, I then zipped up my bag and pretend nothing happened. It’ll dry right?
About 45 minutes later we exited the train and entered onto the platform in Union Station and basked in all of it’s large glory. We then whipped out the map of downtown, and headed for Millennium Park in search of the giant bean. Let me tell you, that bean is one of the coolest things in the entire world. I kid you not, if you haven’t been there, go, and if you’ve only been with your family, go again with your friends because it’s ten times better. Upon arriving at the bean, we promptly brought out the cameras and began entertaining ourselves in the best way we Americans know how, by taking photos of ourselves. Have you ever thought about it though, I mean, the inventor of that bean was a genius, Americans are obviously extremely conceded, so what better type of big city attraction than an huge structure made out of mirrors!!!
Being the amazingly creative girls we are, we decided it would be SWEET to lay UNDER the bean and take photos of ourselves upside-down. Nice right? Here is one of the results of our endeavor. In case you can’t tell, which is understandable, it is all of our feet, touching the bottom of the bean. Let’s say it wasn’t the most graceful photo to take,
but it sure was FUN!!! Okay, so I think you have all heard enough about the bean! The rest of the day was spend walking up and down Michigan Ave, and waiting for a trolley to take us back to Union Station. It was truly all in all a fantastic day.
Not only was this day fantastic because of the bean, and other random events, like the pirate show on navy pier, but also due to some of the ideas the trip spawned. While walking the streets, we couldn’t help but notice the vast amount of homeless people. We decided that the next time we go into the city, we would either bring sandwiches, or buy a bunch of Mc Donald’s and hand it all out to whoever was willing to take it. From there, we moved on to discussing the knitting of hats and scarves for when it got really cold, and are now planning on going through our halls and collecting clothing from the students. Anything that they may not use or need anymore that is decent condition that may be a help to some of these homeless folks. So the moral of the story is this; despite our follies and fun, an amazing idea which contains much potential was able to come out of a simple day in the city. Wow, you just never know what you are capable of!!!
To conclude this weeks post, I would just like to say that also due to this trip, I have fallen in love with the word Shalom. It is a fantastic word, and means Peace, it’s pretty rad. So all in all, I would like to encourage all who read this post to travel to Chicago, and let your minds wander, because you never know the amazing, possibly life changing ideas you will come up with!
Until next time
Shalom- Megan
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