[MSJ] - Day 10: Tasting Chicago

A rainy morning

My original plan for today was to go to the Taste of Chicago festival with friends this morning, and then do work, chill or watch a movie. Our plans changed when we woke up to a grey sky and a wet ground. The weather app said the rain would stop in the early afternoon, so we decided to reschedule. I worked on homework for econ and did some other work in the morning after I woke up. I grabbed a "brunch" of sorts around 11 so that I would still be hungry when we went to the festival, because what fun is a food festival if you don't eat? 

We left around 2ish to walk to the bus stop across from the dorm buildings, then after a 10-minute bus ride, we got off at the L stop for the green line (the metro system in Chicago that would take us downtown). About twenty minutes later we were in downtown Chicago, close to the festival. I wasn't sure what to expect, but as soon as I had heard a few days ago that there was a famous food festival in Chicago I knew it was the perfect event for me (if you can't tell by reading this blog). The way it ended up working was as a massive line of pop-up, food truck style restaurant stands along a path through a large park, offering every kind of food imaginable. Of course, this was too perfect to be true, and the inevitable catch was crazy expensive prices. Instead of buying food with cash or card, you had to buy strips of fourteen tickets each. One strip cost ten dollars. An appetizer-sized amount of food would run you 12ish tickets, and so I ended up running through thirty dollars worth of food over the afternoon. It's a lot, but it's also why I work over the summer.

Alex and Tyler in the L

There were huge crowds and a large atmosphere. I guess what I mean is that I was blown away by the scale of the whole event. We walked for a while along the path for at least 20 minutes and didn't find the end, and that was only half of the path. I tried some jerk chicken, fried chicken, pork tacos, Italian lemon ice cream which was amazing, some churros, chicken meatballs and waffles, and a Jamaican donut. After an awesome afternoon, we went back to the dorms to freshen up after a 3-hour stint in eighty degrees Chicago weather.

Me in front of the Taco stand

In the evening I ended up going to the park with Clara to play tennis. She had brought rackets and balls, and we had seen tennis courts the other day on the way back from Target. I had thought that the two weeks of tennis camp I took in eighth grade might still be in me somewhere, but I was proved very wrong. Clara, who is on her school's tennis team, was nice enough to give me some coaching and we ended up just doing a couple of volleys before heading back to the dorms.

Left to right: Jonathan, me, Clara, Kate

Because of the very late lunch (linner? dunch? afternoon food?), we didn't eat dinner at the dining hall (it closes at 7:30). Some of us ordered Chinese food to keep us going for a little longer, which I needed to write this blog. As I'm writing I'm finishing up some laundry, but after my clothes come out of the dryer it will be bedtime.

Dinner. Left to right: me, Ethan, Clara, Angela.
Emma took the picture.