My Sissy and Me in Chicago

On Friday morning, our dad took Liza and I to the train station for a well-planned trip to Chicago. The trip wouldn't be long but we had much to accomplish. However, the train had other plans. After much extra time spent at the train station...

the train finally arrived, we boarded, and were en route to Chicago...1.5 hours late, ugh.

We quickly hopped a cab to our fancy hotel - Hotel Amalfi where the door guys hurried to open the cab doors and get us inside. Then a guy in the lobby rushed over to pull out our chairs to sit at the check-in desk. I thought it was funny that his job seemed to only involve waiting around for people to come in so he could pull out their chairs.

Our fancy-esque room

After checking in and finding our room, we re-grouped and set out for lunch. We had been due to arrive at noon and it was now about 2 and we were starved for lunch. At this point, we had 2 choices: take the bus to the museum (while hunger consumed us) and hopefully grab a bit once we got there or find food now and take a cab to the museum. We had a specific time to be at the museum and I really wanted some pasta. So, a quick phone call to Dad steered us in the right direction to Portillo's/Barnelli's to which Liza had never been. After wolfing down our food, we exited and I hailed a cab right there on the corner. After a rather windy ride, we arrived at the Museum of Science and Industry. HP fever caught on as we entered and saw the flying Ford Anglia!

We looked around at the trains and baby chicks and then it was our turn to enter..."Harry Potter: The Exhibition." They asked some trivia questions which were ridiculously easy and then there was a mini sorting ceremony. The museum lady called on this kid in the front who had short hair, glasses, was wearing HP robes and had a wand. She kept referring to the kid as "he" until she asked the kid's name and got the answer "Zoey." Hmm. Lady asks "are you a boy or a girl?" "A girl." Super awkward. The lady quickly covers and tells Zoey her costume was such a good diguise that she didn't even know. Yikes. Then, armed with our auido guide and with cameras kept in our purses (no pics allowed), we were off on our self-guided tour. We saw SO much stuff from all the HP movies. There were props and costumes galore. We also saw models of house elves, Buckbeak, and a dragon. It was really neat to hear about how they designed specific props, sets, and costumes. We got to pull mandrakes out of their pots and throw Quaffles into goal posts. The way it was set up made you feel like you were really walking through Harry's world and that was awesome. The exhibit was definitely a good foundation to build our trip on.

We wandered around through some more exhibits including the whispering gallery. Then it was closing time and time for us to get back to the hotel. We were all set to take the bus and went to wait for it when this guy yells out that the #10 bus (the one we wanted, of course) is super backed up and will probably be super crowded. Not good news. So we were at a loss and asked him what we should do. So this guy (self-proclaimed as homeless) checks our map and directs us across the street to the #6 which will get us about the same distance from our hotel. Liza gave him some money for food since he asked for it (and he was helpful) and we booked it to the #6. It got off to a slow start but then turned into an express bus. After a couple wrong turns on foot, we were back at the hotel. My friend, Brian (from study abroad), was waiting there to meet up with us. Our hotel gave us 4 free cocktail coupons so we got our drinks and went back to the room. Liza got ready for our night out while Brian and I chatted. I haven't seen him in over a year so it was great to hang out, even if it was only for a little while.

Me and Brian

I changed quickly and we grabbed a cab to Geja's Cafe. This man with a car (from a car service) tried to get us to go with him and kept avoiding my "how much" question. He finally said $15 and said a cab would be more but I was not convinced. Liza thought, oh he's trying to save us money and I thought, he is such a liar! We got a regular cab and I was right, it was so not even $15. The restaurant was super cute and cozy and after all our rushing around all day it was nice to finally sit, relax, and take our time. We ordered some sweet wine (since Liza didn't have as strong of an opinion as I did) and when the lady brought it, she poured me a tiny bit and I was thinking, come on, pour me a real glass and Liza covertly informed me that I was supposed to taste it because the lady was still standing there. Whoops. I approved and she poured us some real glasses of wine. The cheese fondue was super delish and the chocolate topped it off well. We ate everything and I made sure we polished off the wine. Oh it was so good. And we were there for like 4 hours...like I said, taking our time.

Dressed up for our night out.

Then, Liza thought we could walk back. We did...and it took 1 whole hour. No joke, it took us an hour to walk back, straight back to the hotel. According to MapQuest, it was 2.41 miles. It didn't feel like that long but the feet sure hurt by the time we got back. Then it was quickly to bed. In the morning, we got some free hotel breakfast, checked out, and stored our bags at the hotel. We set off towards the water for our architectural boat cruise along the river. We learned some interesting facts about Chicago architecture but man was it hot on top of that boat. Liza was having a major heat attack so we went down below to cool off which made it a much more pleasant experience. We got to go under some of the open bridges because sail boats were out and needed them open to get through. We saw more buildings than we probably knew were there. Many pictures below.

We had some time before lunch so we wandered in the direction of the lunch restaurant. We wandered down Michigan Avenue and I quickly spotted the Gap so, of course, we had to go. We both found some great sale stuff and we continued our trek up Michigan. We were meeting Liza's college friend, Beth, and another one of my study abroad friends, Brett, at Cafe Ba Ba Reeba for lunch. Brett directed us towards his place so he could walk with us since it was on the way. However, we were far, far away from the restaurant. Blisters were forming and sweat was plentiful so, thankfully, Brett came to our rescue and picked us up near his place and drove us the rest of the way to the restaurant where Beth was waiting for us with a table. (MapQuest assessment of Gap to where Brett picked us up: 1.85 miles) We had many rounds of tapas and a pitcher of sangria. It was great to have time to see Brett and catch up with him, too. My mom's boss gave her a $100 gift card to certain Chicago restaurants which she bestowed upon us (that's how we chose Cafe Ba Ba Reeba) so we were able to provide lunch for everyone.

Me and Brett

We went to a cute little store with Beth and shopped a little. We took a cab back to her house for a tour. Beth & Jamie's house is SO nice and cute; it would have been great if we could stay a little longer but it was already after 4 and our train left at 5. Beth drove us back to our hotel to get our bags and then to Union Station. The minutes kept ticking by and I was getting stressed that we wouldn't make our train but we did, and in time, too. It was a quiet ride back and the parents picked us up at the train station.

Liza and Beth

Whew! What an exciting and fun weekend. We did so many cool things and it was great to see friends, too! It was nice to be able to hang out with my sister for a while and I think our first trip together was a success!

So...Summer...

Despite having more free time than normal, I have been a total blog-slacker. I have thought of random things to post but none could make a significant post all by themselves so here you have an assortment of events.

• Super Dad comes to the rescue. On Friday, an incredibly hot day, I was driving to the library. While driving I was thinking, wow, isn't it amazing that I've never had a car battery die? False. About 10 minutes later upon exiting the library, I attempted to start my car only to realize that the batter was dead. What unfortunate luck. After tracking him down, Super Dad came to the rescue, complete with tools and battery-buying funds, to save the day and get me back on the road.
• SPF 15 applied once over a 3-4 hour period of swimming is not enough. My mega sunburn proves that. Next time, SPF 30 applied hourly.
• Wal-Mart does not have everything. I was looking for an eye dropper and found a worker in the pharmacy. She was of no help "Um, I don't work in this department" (looks around the aisle she's in, shrugs, and goes back to stocking shelves.
• My roommate for Puerto Rico is awesome. We are on the same flights from Atlanta to San Juan and back so we will meet and get to hang out before we even get to P.R. Also, she is currently reading the Twilight Saga and has read all HP books - I have a feeling we are going to be BFF. Without Facebook, I would not know what she looks like or any of the above facts.
• So You Think You Can Dance is a great show and my favorite of the summer. Thanks Liza and Warren for forcing me to watch it.
  

Saved By The Bell Awesome-ness

Ok, this is absolutely amazing! If you were ever a fan of 'Saved By The Bell' you will love this. Jimmy Fallon has been trying to get the cast together for a reunion. I saw a couple weeks ago that Lisa (Lark Voorhies) agreed to do it and then I stumbled upon this. Here's Mark-Paul Gosselaar from the other night.

My Day With Caden

On Wednesday, Liza brought Caden over to spend the day with me. Here's a rundown of what we did:

11:00am Liza and boys arrive. Caden looks around the house for a while and continues to wear his backpack. There was much jumping off the stairs.

11:15am We go up to my room to play Hi-Ho Cherry-O and Candy Land. Caden seems to enjoy the games as long as he wins.

11:55am Caden requests lunch so we head to the kitchen for PB&J, Sun chips and mandarin oranges and eat in the dining room. The following are examples of our lunch time conversations.

C: Foofa (character from Yo Gabba Gabba) can't run fast.
J: Oh, really?
C: Yeah, neither can Toodee.
J: What about Brobie and Plex?
C: They can run fast.

C: (after we pray for our food) God was died on the...on the...he was died on the...on the X.
J: Oh, on the cross?
C: Yeah. And then he went up and we are saved.
J: Where'd he go?
C: To heaven!
J: You're right. Where did you learn that?
C: From my book. (I later learned that he meant his kid Bible)

12:45pm We go back up to my room for "quiet time" while watching a movie. Caden picks out HSM2. He wanted to sit on the floor to watch.

1:50pm Caden is finally done with "quiet time" despite my attempts to continue it. We play the games again and he becomes quite distressed when he realizes that I am going to win Candy Land. Candy Land goes back in the box.

2:30pm We make chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen. Caden really enjoys mixing things and dumping the ingredients I measure into the bowl. He stands on a chair with his cup of milk to watch the bix mixer do the hard work. Cup of milk spills all over the floor, Caden's shorts, and Caden's shoes. We both laugh at the milk all over the floor. Caden changes into his extra shorts and I take off his shoes and sock (yes, singular) to dry. He refuses to take off the other sock.

Soon after this picture was taken, I was adding ingredients to the mixer and Caden yelled, "Auntie Jenna?" "Yeah?" "I love you." SO sweet!

3:30pm Cookies are in the oven so we play Mario Kart on the Wii. Again, Caden is happy as long as he "wins." He did very well and only needed help a couple of times.

4:00pm Caden enjoys running all over the house - in a loop around the first floor and up and down the stairs. We play cars for a while. We slide them down the front banister as they fly all over the entry-way. This is an awesome game. We go outside to "swing on the big chair" (aka porch swing), run up and down the ramps in front of the church, and run repeatedly down the ramp on the side of the house. Caden gets tired and hot. We go inside for a drink to cool off.

4:30pm We get in the car to go pick up dinner at McDonald's. We bring dinner back to the house to eat since Caden didn't want to eat AT McDonald's but at the house. He asks many questions about the drive-thru process.

5:00pm We eat dinner in the dining room. Caden asks me to read ALL the stuff about Hot Wheels on his Happy Meal bag. He plays with his toy.

5:30pm We gather all his stuff from my room to head off to Bible School.

Back in my room, Caden asks, "Hey Auntie Jenna, is this your suitcase fan?" Apparently he's very in to suitcases.

6:00pm Arrival at Bible School.

8:00pm I take Caden home from Bible School and follow HIS directions to get back to their house (no joke, his directions were 100% accurate). I attempt to help him re-tell the events of the day to Liza and Warren. He said he had fun.

Euro Blog - Finale

Finally, over a year later, the conclusion of Chelsea & Jenna’s Mega Euro Backpacking Trip 2008 is here. Our days back in Bilbao were filled with much fun and relaxation. The days blurred together as I felt back at home and not as much on vacation anymore. Teresa provided exquisite cuisine including many of my favorite dishes and desserts. On our first afternoon back, I was anxious to visit my favorite places in Bilbao so we took the metro into the city to visit Casco Viejo. We did much shopping and I was able to buy more/replacement wine glasses for my dad and a replacement earring for myself. We stopped in at the best calimocho bar for the traditional Bilbaino drink which Chelsea seemed to enjoy. It felt so good to be back on familiar turf. We went to visit Maitena but were disappointed. The English-speaking bartender wasn’t there and neither was Malibu. Maitena = bust.

Chelsea enjoying a calimocho

Another day we went to visit Deusto and it was so pleasant walking the familiar route to school which, of course, included a stop at the gummy store. I bought a sweatshirt at Deusto, noticed that the computer lab was no longer there (preventing us from checking email for free, darn), and had a quick visit with Ana. I stopped in at the CIDE office to see many shocked faces since Ana was the only one who knew I was coming. It was nice to see some familiar faces there since none of my classmates were there this time around. We also walked around the Guggenheim and I got to see Puppy with all the bright summer flowers. Back in Algorta, we walked along the cliff above the beach just like I used to.

Puppy and the Gugenheim

We also spent time at the beach, my favorite place in the world. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that warm (when I left last year the beach was scorching hot) so we couldn’t lay out much but we still had some quality time at the beach. We took the metro all the way out to Plentzia which I had wanted to do before but just never got around to it. It was like going through a forest until we reached the end of the line. We had to walk around quite a bit to get to the beach where some hippie-juggler people entertained us. Then, in typical Bilbao fashion, it started raining, so we headed back to the metro. An old man offered us an umbrella saying something about how it wasn’t right for two beautiful girls to get wet. That afternoon, Teresa took us out to Sopelana, another beach, but it rained again so it was back to the apartment.

The beach

One of our other favorite activities was lounging on the siesta couch. Chelsea said she felt lazy and I felt like I did when I lived there. On our last night, the fam (Teresa, German, Yoli, and baby) took us out for pintxos. We went to a few places, had many different kinds of pintxos, and had lots of wine. We said our goodbyes that night to everyone since Teresa would be off to work before we got up. In the morning, we packed up and ate. I carefully packed up all the tocino de cielo, cheese, and bottles of wine Teresa gave me along with my boxes of Cola Cao and we attempted to cram more of Chelsea’s stuff into my suitcases.

Out for pintxos

Our trip wouldn’t be complete without another humorous anecdote. Chelsea was convinced that we could haul all this stuff to the metro, ride it to the bus station, and then ride the bus to the airport. I wanted to take a cab. Since Chelsea had the most stuff and was confident in her abilities, we went with her option. However, it was raining and too late to call a cab and we had to hurry to get to the metro to make the bus in time. We booked it through the rain with ALL of our stuff to the metro. We had to stand in the back of the train with all our stuff while an old man tried to tell us how to take the bus to the airport. Um…thanks but we knew what we were doing. We got ourselves and our stuff over to the elevator in the metro station. If you’ve ever been to Europe, you know how small the elevators are. So we cram ourselves, our 2 large carry-ons and 4 extremely large (and full) suitcases onto the elevator with this other guy who clearly could’ve waited for the next elevator. Just as Chelsea is getting on with her last bag, this crazy lady with a huge comforter-type thing (not in any kind of bag) busts in with her. Chelsea can’t not get on since her stuff is already on there with me so this crazy lady pushes her way on whilst cramming her huge comforter thing in our faces. The man just stands all crammed in reading his paper while Chelsea and I are so aghast that this lady just pushed her way in. CLEARLY she should have/could have waited for the next elevator.

Anyway, we got on the bus and Chelsea made friends with this random African guy named Kevin. We got on our flight to Frankfurt and went straight to the next gate. We had some Euros to burn so we bought magazines and chocolate. When getting our tickets, they couldn’t put us together really so our options were 1: sit together in the middle of the middle row (I said no way) or 2: sit sort of in the same area and hope someone will switch with us which is what we decided to do. So we get on the plane and in my seat is a lady with a baby who wants me to switch with her husband so they can sit together. I had to tell her I was already trying to switch. Finally, Chelsea’s neighbor arrives and agrees to switch with me so we do. Then that girl decides she cannot sit by a baby and un-agrees to switch. Annoying. Meanwhile, the lady by me is speaking all kinds of German to the flight attendant because there’s an empty pair of seats by the window a few rows up and she was trying to get them for us. After boarding was complete, the flight attendant tells German lady that we can move. Thanks, German Lady! After all that, we got to sit together, by the window, just us together, and the girl formerly by Chelsea sits in the back of the plane where a baby cries for a long time. The kid she would’ve sat by hardly made a sound. We played cards, watched the Office, ate, etc. on the way back. What a looooong flight! There was a glorious Pfiester reunion upon our arrival (which I missed because they made me go through something else since I had food in my bags – I really should’ve lied about that). Then we chit-chatted all the way back to Central Illinois.

In-flight entertainment

Summer Travel Dreams Coming True

We all know that I have been bitten by the travel bug; ok, not bitten, more like it latched on when I went to Europe and then burrowed inside my body and is now here to stay. Over the winter I was getting quite restless not having any plane tickets on the horizon. I get kind of anxious when no trips are planned; I have not a lot to look forward to. Then came spring break - a great trip jetting off to California. But that was just a tease - I needed more. The semester was bearing down hard and the potential to crack was growing by the day. Then...Puerto Rico became a reality and a trip to NC with my mom and sister began developing, oh happy day! I now have one (maybe more) exciting trip in place for each month of the summer. I hope this will pull me through summer classes/clinic with ease...that and spending some quality time at the pool.

June - Liza and I will train it up to Chicago for 2 days/1 night for the HP exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry, architechture boat cruse, fondue, and more!

July - I will feel at home on a plane while flying to Puerto Rico for a long weekend Bilingual Speech Therapy Conference. What an oasis in the middle of the summer school desert; clear waters, white sand, and Spanish - yes!

August - The day after finals, I go to beautiful Wilmington, North Carolina with my mom and sister to take in many a Dawson's Creek site, some more beach, and other fun stuff. Also in August, The 312 House will be going up to a cottage at a lake in Wisconsin to relax before the semester.

There you have it, the 3 excursions that will make me a much happier camper through summer 2009. Expect many details and pictures about each trip in the future.

What Time is it? Summer Time!

Yep, it's my vacation. After finishing the worst semester ever, I was given the amazing gift of 4 weeks off from school. It is quite an adjustment from going full-speed ahead with a school-focused brain to a complete halt and nothing to do. This is the first time in grad school that I've had this much time off. I have done many things in the first two weeks of break, some of which I had been wanting to do all semester and just never had enough time:

• I saw both 'Angels & Demons' and 'Up.' Both were awesome.
  
• did a lot of hanging out with kids and their moms (Liza and the boys, Kortny and Livi, Anne and Grace, and Adsen)
• went shopping a couple times
• got my hair cut
• cleaned my room, like mega cleaned it, cleaned it enough to produce a couple bags of trash and a large bag (requiring 2 people to carry it) of clothes to give away
• washed my car
• went to work
• hung out with Liza and did chocolate fondue while we watched Dawson's Creek
  
• did some screenings at the clinic
• hung out at the pool
• went to a wedding and brought my friend Jared who came for the weekend
• spent some leisurely time hanging out with friends who are still here
• dinner with the fam for Dad's bday and Memorial Day
• read a non-school book and started another
  

Seems like I've been busy, but I have spent plenty of time getting copious amounts of sleep and watching TV at home. It's going to be hard going back to doing things when I have to but for now, I'm enjoying the last two weeks off!