Chicago Trip

Like 8 million years ago I went on a school field trip to Chicago.

I've literally been working on this post for four months. I started this post the day after the trip, but blogger has not been friendly toward me. NONE OF MY PICTURES WOULD LOAD. 

I took about 250 pictures on my Chicago trip, and the only ones that would load onto this blog are these dozen below. So, I will make-do. 

I couldn't just delete this post. This trip is one of my favorite high school memories (so far). I'm a little rusty so I hope this works out. 

(Blogger and I are still not on good terms.)

Don't talk about it. 

I had been pumped for my school's Chicago trip all this year. Every year the art department and the Spanish 3 &4 class get to take the train to Chicago and miss school for a day. My friend, Alli, and I were the only students in French 3, and after much begging and blackmailing we were finally allowed to go, too.

Honestly, I was most excited to miss school. I didn't really like Chicago that much when I went previously, because it seemed dirty, loud, and crowded.

But, I was still excited to miss a day of school and go to an art museum. The only one I've ever been to was the Louvre in Paris, and I didn't like it.

(I was 13. And I had a bad attitude about everything.)

 So bright an early one morning, I found myself and what seemed like my entire high school at the train station. I hadn't been on a train since 2009, which was a long time in Gabbie World. I was a little nervous because I couldn't remember if I liked it or not but I discovered that I adore trains.

I love taking train rides. They are the bomb. The bomb dot com. (What does that even me?)

Maybe I can be a train driver when I grow up.

We finally boarded the train and the ride to Chicago was a blast. It flew by. I sat with one of my bestest friends, Alli. We pretty much talked about her favorite thing (movies) and just acted like dorks.

She can speak Train, if you didn't know.

I find this really beautiful. I love nature, but there's just something about cities that are exciting. So much beauty.

And smog.

Lots of smog. Can't forget that.

The first thing we did when we got off the train was head to a classy restaurant for some deep-dish pizza, which was the bee's knees. Dude, it was so good. I want some now. I want some all the time. It's a good thing Chicago and it's tantalizing pizza is far away.

After the delicious deep dish (such lovely alliteration makes me happy) pizza my entire group, which was about 55 high schoolers, with four adult supervisors, walked to the Art Museum. It was crazy. I kept running into people and getting dirty looks, but I was in awe. Totally a tourist with my trigger-happy finger on my camera.
Plus, we all almost got lost. 

Thankfully, we all pretty much arrived to the museum in one piece.

The art museum was so much fun. I've never taken an art class before or anything like that, but I LOVED it. I guess I just never realized how amazing art is. It's kind of like reading a book - you get a story. You see what the artist was thinking and feeling.

My favorite exhibit was the Impressionists and an area with Georgia O'Keeffe paintings. We were technically supposed to stay in a group . . . but that only lasted about four minutes. My friends and I went off by ourselves and it was an adventure.
We wandered around the museum, playing an elaborate game of hide and seek as we tried to hide from our teachers. We are good children.  

After the Art Museum, we headed to look at more of the city. Being the mature adults we are, everyone was parkouring.
For those of you who don't know what that is, relish it.


Wikipedia defines it as: is a holistic training discipline using movement that developed out of military obstacle training.

LOL. I'm dying.
In teenage land, parkour is basically where you jump over things and do extremely idiotic tricks. For example, one might jump off a curb and spin around while yelling "PARKOUR HARDCORE!"

Yes, we are that stupid.

After much parkouring we finally got to the Bean, which my German Friend Char Char was extremely excited about.
I guess they don't have giant metal beans in Germany. How odd. :)

After taking a million pictures at the Bean, we headed to the Museum of History or Something. Charlotte took a nap on a bench in the Africa exhibit and the rest of us went and got smoothies at the McDonald's there. We also argued for quite awhile about the existence of Narwhals.
I still refuse to believe they exist.

Then it was time to head back to the train station.

Alli (AKA Flower Pants) walked like a model for about two miles on the way to the station, which was extremely impressive. Job carried my purse and walked in an extremely feminine way, which was entirely hilarious.

On the train ride home everyone was pretty tired and quiet. Someone asked me to tell a story. I said, "What kind of story?"

And they replied, "A good one."

Of course, how silly of me.
In the end, they gave me a setting (Paris) and character (23 year old art student named Laken) and a plot event (something to do with a business card).

I proceeded to tell a story that was two hours long and, oh my goodness, it was FUN. I totally made it up on the fly, which was pretty exciting for me, and the plot was actually intricate. The story was about 10 chapters long in all and had an epilogue.

Basically, Laken somehow ended up in the midst of a terrorist attack against the United States. I'm not going to give anything away because I'm seriously considering making it into a novel, but I think everyone really liked it.

At first only about five people were listening and then, during chapter four, the boy in the seat in front of me turned around and asked me a question. By the end of the trip about a dozen people were listening to my story, which made me very happy.

I love telling stories. It was just a great way to end the trip.

The trip to Chicago is one of my best memories. I had a blast all day long with my friends walking around the Windy city. The train ride there and back was very memorable. I got to spend a day with people I love and have an amazing adventure at the same time.

It was a perfect day.