The First Week In The City of Wind

First of all, I am dedicating this blog to all my friends and some of my family back home because I miss them and know that the time difference might make it difficult to keep in touch as often as we once did on chat in the Golden State. I hope some of the things I discover and post about will bring you guys over to visit me some day.

Day 1 and 2- August 31st-September 1st
My dad and I arrived in Chicago and took a taxi to the hotel I booked. As the taxi drove us to the city and past the tall buildings, I realized how similar Chicago is to New York as opposed to San Francisco because the cities have old rooted streets, buildings, and subways compared to cities like Seattle and Portland where there are fewer alleys and brick buildings. We spent the afternoon getting bus passes and the bus map from the Randolph Street Metra Station before heading back to the hotel where my dad enjoyed watching back to back episodes of "Operacion Repo." The next morning I took a picture of the view from the 14th floor window of our room. It was the first time I saw downtown Chicago in a long time and thought it would be best to capture it in a photo.

As I looked down below, I spotted a Dunkin Donuts which must be a MidWest and East Coast thing since I never encountered one in San Francisco. That morning at breakfast, I was excited to see the hash browns on the menu of Dunkin Donuts. The product showing up on the menu meant that the work the Research and Development Lab at ConAgra Foods Lamb Weston were working on back in 2007 became a success. 

Another taxi ride later I ended up at my future home for the next twelve months. Let me just say it was horrifying. There were paint chips and melted M&Ms on the floor, and the place was rather dirty. I always thought complexes cleaned the room before a new tenant moved in, but I sure was wrong. The first night, we slept on mats and garbage bags. 

Slowly but surely over the next three days my dad and I traveled to Costco and Target to get things for my apartment and worked hard scrubbing the floors everyday.

My table is made of cases of water

My headboard is made of cardboard

Kevin's neon dog made it to Chicago and was living with my bear until I moved him to the lab where I work for support :)

The tall building is Sear's Tower

It was crazy hot.

We had to seal the kitchen off from the closet because they cut the wall open. We lined the bottom of the cardboard with aluminum foil so the heat generated by the motor of the fridge wouldn't be a fire hazard.

Finally, the place looked decent and we actually got everything ready before the work week.