It has been a truly amazing time in Chicago. I love love love the city and I'm really sad to be back again. Chicago is just different from Pittsburgh.. and much more happening. I can't believe that we actually carried out our last-minute plan and left for Chicago one full day earlier, skipping 1 day of school in the process. I can't believe that 4 of us shared a hotel room at the Hilton, who would have thought of that? For me, it was my first real trip with friends and I really enjoyed it.
We mostly went sightseeing in Chicago. On Tuesday, we walked around our hotel and visited the Sears Tower. On Wednesday, we had deep dish pizza for lunch and went to the Millenium Park and to the other side of Lake Michigan to take pictures. Very very nice view from the other side of the lake. And we were there during sunset so it was even more beautiful. The other 3 CMU people came to Chicago on Wednesday night. Like us, their flight was also delayed, but theirs was delayed for 2 hours cos of snow in Pittsburgh.
Anyway, we all did something quite crazy on Thursday. Woke up at 5 to watch the sunrise, in freezing temperatures of like -10 degrees. Mingwei and Jiaqi wanted to take pictures of the sunrise at Buckingham Fountain, but it was really bad timing and unfortunately, there were too many clouds. Nevertheless, the view was still really nice and I can't wait to see the group pictures :) It was Thanksgiving day on Thursday and the 7 of us watched the Thanksgiving Day parade after having breakfast. Then, 4 of us went to Hancock Tower and went to the top floor (94th floor!!). We could see the view of the entire Chicago from there, and of 4 other states. After that, we had lunch at the grandest McDonald's I've ever seen, with escalators inside and the seats designed like a quite posh restaurant. Speaking of McDonald's, I've eaten there for 4 of the last 5 days now..but considering that I haven't eaten there before ever since I came here, well I guess it was worth it. Miss the McDonald's fries. And I think I'm now known as the girl who's crazy over fries haha. Anyway, the weather on Thursday was the worst and coldest I've ever seen. The wind was really crazy. I was wearing 3 layers of clothes and my knee-length down jacket, 2 layers of pants, winter boots, gloves, scarf and beanie to cover my ears and I was still freezing cold and shivering. Can't believe I may have to face that sort of weather day in day out. Had dinner at Penang Cafe in Chinatown with a few of the guys' friends, all Singaporeans. Finally had food that tasted something like Singaporean food. I found it really amusing when the waitress asked who wanted rice, only a few people raised up their hands, but when she asked who wanted Hainanese rice, everyone raised up their hands haha. Oh and we faked that someone was having his birthday that day so that we could get a small piece of birthday cake and get them to play the birthday song haha. But we threw the cake at Jiquan's (who had his birthday on Tuesday) face anyway, twice no less haha. By the time we finished dinner, it was about 11. And I was reminded how US is so totally different from Singapore at night when we were at the subway station and it was totally deserted. I was quite scared, even though there were quite a few of us there. No one there and it was pretty scary. By the way, the subway stations looked like they came out of The Matrix and Jiquan did a nice impersonation of Neo haha. And I think the railways and old buildings look like they come out straight from Spiderman.
Anyway, Friday (yesterday) was supposed to be shopping day cos they had post-Thanksgiving sales and sales start from 7am. Obviously, if you're up early, you'd get the best deals. We set the alarm at 6.45 but then we couldn't wake up. Really really tired I guess. We woke up at 10 haha. But still in time for shopping. I thought I'd buy more but I didn't..only got myself another down jacket (from $120 to $40!!), sweater and top. Jiamin bought a really nice black hat and I couldn't help posing in it haha. We had lunch at The Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant. We had cheese and chocolate fondue, basically cheese/chocolate sauce, sometimes with wine inside (there're a few varieties) and you dip in things like apple bread broccoli (for cheese fondue) and banana brownies cheesecake strawberries (for chocolate fondue). The cheese fondue was nice, but the chocolate fondue was the one we went there for. It was really really sinful but worth it :) After that, we went to Navy Pier to catch fireworks (but we didn't in the end cos we didn't know what time it was haha), but we went up the ferris wheel. Quite nice and it started snowing!! It snowed quite heavily and there was enough snow for us to play with it. Started throwing snow at one another and I, unfortunately, got bullied :( I realized how sucky my stamina is when I had to sprint twice (one to chase after someone, one to escape) but both ended in futile and I was panting like mad (oh and I got snow thrown at me when I stopped sprinting for the second one). Took quite a lot of really funny pictures at Navy Pier too. After that, off for more shopping. And had a really late dinner.
This morning, we were supposed to come back to Pittsburgh. Our flight was at 9.30am and we were supposed to wake up at 6 cos we had to take the subway to the airport. But then, we overslept till 7.30!! It was a mad rush after that. Packed in 20 minutes and another 10 minutes to check out of the hotel, reached the airport at 8.45, checked in and did the security check and everything until 9.10 and reached the gate at 9.20. I still couldn't believe we made the flight but it was really mad haha. Oh well..now here I am at Pittsburgh airport, using the wireless connections here (I realized CMU people are quite geeky.. all 7 of us brought our laptops with us and utilized the wireless connections at the hotel haha). Going to go back to dorm soon :(
Oh well. It has been a really fun and crazy week and took so many pictures. Now for the week ahead..