This is not the end, just a thank you

Apologies for the low volume of posts recently. I have some more stuff to post but I have been ridiculously busy. Tomorrow tho, I will be on holiday and will be travelling about & will hopefully have some more stories to tell. But, enough about me. I just met a friend for coffee & it got me thinking about my time here and the people I have met.

I just want to say this, thank you to everyone who has touched my life in some way while I have been here. Whether you just came up and chatted to me, whether you invited me to meet your friends and spend an evening with you. Whether you indulged me by coming to an American Football game with me or some other random thing I wanted to do. You made more of an impact on my life than I probably did on yours. Most likely none of you know quite how much it means to me to have had people reach out, almost strangers, and offer that arm of friendship and companionship. Having offers to join people on different occasions, even just for coffee makes what can essentially be a lonely existence, so much brighter. Thank you & if you are ever my side of the world, wherever that is, I would love to return the favour!

Things I see out and about

Today was Labor Day here. According to Wikipedia it is supposed to be a celebration of the American Labor movement and is similar to Vappu in Finland (May 1st). The two however are marked rather differently, mostly due to the differences in drinking culture. In Finland, Vappu = hangover from the night before. My impression was from colleagues that people here use it as an opportunity to spend time with friends and family and have BBQ's.

I celebrated Labor Day by waiving my day off in favour of working on the course that I am organising this autumn in Finland. I did however make it to the beach with the friend who came to the football with me. Possibly one of the last beach opportunities that I will have in Evanston. I even made it into the lake for a swim and it was COLD. The ice bucket challenge has nothing on the temperature of the lake water this year. Chicago experienced an exceptionally bitter winter this year and a cool summer (i.e. not 35C and 95% humidity for two months), which means that the lake has barely warmed up. I tried swimming and barely lasted a few minutes since my fingers were starting to feel funny.

Campus area over the summer. If you look closely you can see the Chicago skyline in a couple of the pics. I just love the shark in the centre photo.

Anyway since Saturday's architecture post had some pretty big hits I figured you guys might want to see some of the places that I saw on my run north to the Baha'i Temple, including Evanston's very cute Grosse Point Lighthouse. The top set of pics are what I have seen on various runs around the campus area.

Evanston's Grosse Point Lighthouse, some other houses I saw on my run yesterday. Bottom right are some of the sorority & fraternity houses on campus.

Tomorrow it is back to work as usual to start the second to last week before I finish up here in Evanston.

Evanston Architecture

Here in the USA, I live in a very beautiful area known as the Evanston Historical Lakeshore District. I shouldn't hold out hopes that I would ever be able to live in such a beautiful place if I ever moved back here - as you can well imagine it's not cheap to purchase a place in this area. Running along the streets here and along the lake is such a pleasure, every house is different and unique. There are about thirteen architectural styles here. Here's a sample of what I see on a daily basis. Which one do you think I live in?

Go Wildcats!

While I don't really watch sport, one of the things I did want to do while I am here is go to a football game. And by football I mean American Football, not regular football - soccer in these parts. Part of my interest came from the fact that one of the #I2CFellow interns is on the Wildcats' team. Today was the kick off to the season which runs through the Fall, and I was lucky that it was a home game. Having managed to persuade my friend to join me today, I headed out this morning to get some purple to properly support my team. It was a good excuse to add a Northwestern shirt to join my Harvard tee (when I am back in St. Louis in a couple of weeks I fully intend to get a Cardinals shirt).

Ticket - check. Purple - check. Hat - check.

We headed out, on the free game day shuttle, to the stadium at Ryan Field - home of the Wildcats. On the way we passed a park full of people tailgating. Tailgating is when people come to the match with cars, SUV's and camper vans to have a pre-match cook-up/party with full size BBQ's and coolers full of food and beer next to their vehicles. I was told that it could be possible to take some food with me and ask if I could borrow someone's grill if I offered something in return. I don't lack confidence but I am definitely not bold enough to do that. Although I imagine it would probably not be a problem, especially with my accent - which is, no word of a lie, loved here. Maybe next time.

We wandered round inside the stadium and picked up some hot dogs since I had decided I was gonna go full out Americana today (hence the cap). Although I was gutted to find that the stadium was a dry stadium. The place was full of people of all ages mostly in purple Northwestern gear. There was a bunch of pre-match stuff going on. The players practising, the band and then finally everyone stood up while the National Anthem was sung just before kick-off. Here's some footage of the teams coming onto the pitch, accompanied by fireworks http://youtu.be/Bi8KwVtyPLQ

Wildcats v Bears (California) was not a conference match. A conference is, if I understood correctly, like a league in the sense that you don't have all colleges across the US competing against one another. Instead it is a specific group of colleges who compete. I don't know whether the top teams in each conference then play each other to see who is best. Today's match was a bit of a big deal since the Wildcats beat the Bears in last year's opening match. It was time for the Bears to even the score. Additionally this was also the first time the Wildcats had played an opening season match at home since 2009.

College football is massive here. College football is also big business, which contrasts massively to UK university sport. In the US those who are in the team usually receive a full or part scholarship for their education. In the 2012-13 seasons basketball and football generated $4.7 billion in revenue. Apart from the scholarships the players receive no part of that money and no compensation in case of injury, even if they are star athletes set to turn pro once they complete the obligatory three years at college that is required by the NFL. At the moment there is a battle going on to try and unionise college football players so they can receive benefits such as injury compensation. The point to this digression is that the Wildcats are not recognised as a particularly great team, probably because Northwestern expects them to actually graduate with decent grades in an appropriate amount of time, rather than just scrape by academically (i.e. studies rather than football practice is prioritised). However I was expecting them to do well against the Bears considering last year's opening game results. The other reason why college football is big business is due to the advertising. In almost every down time there was some form of stupid competition or advertising. Such as, "John Doe here is gonna try and throw four balls through the uprights in a minute so he can win a year's worth of chicken wings from the Great American Chicken Wing Company...cheer him on!" or some other such nonsense.

I was amazed at how many people there are on the team. Although there are only 11 players on the pitch, there are different units that play at any one time, depending on the state of play. There are offensive units, defense units and special units. Each have different player types and the players have different padding depending on which position they play. There must have been well over 50 players at the match. Unfortunately my friend didn't play - he would have if someone had been injured. The amount of time that is played is 60 minutes divided into four quarters of 15 minutes. The reality is that maybe 90 seconds of play happens at most before play stops for some reason (couldn't quite fathom out why it kept stopping). This meant that 60 minutes of play took nearly 4 hours to complete (mostly due to the advertising). By which time my butt was numb from sitting on the metal bench.

It was a lot of fun, although somewhat slow, which meant we could sit and chat as well. It took me almost the entire time to tune myself into being able to follow the game. After the first half, the Wildcats were getting creamed by the opposition. I think the first half ended 7-24. The funny looking scores are because of the three ways that a team can score: touchdown (6 points), points after conversion which is a drop-kick post-touchdown through the uprights (1 point) or a field goal which is a place- or drop-kick through the uprights without a touchdown (3 points). I think there are other ways of scoring but that was more than enough for me to get my head round. There were cheerleaders and a marching band. When the Wildcats finally woke up after the 1st half and started scoring there were fireworks let off with each touchdown and the cheerleaders would tumble (those are the tricks that we usually see on American college movies). I have a lot of respect for these players. They train extremely hard. My friend was training for several hours before a full working day at the office and then was training after work. These guys may look massive but they are extremely fast on their feet (that observation also comes from first hand experience with watching the Surrey men's Hockey team playing the Surrey American Football team at touch rugby. We got our asses handed to us). The crowd were pretty lively, much more civilised than any soccer crowd I've been part of. But it was fun to get up and shout with the rest of them. Sadly we lost, a respectable 21-31. It was a great way to spend an afternoon in the outdoors, with the sun on my back and feeling like I was experiencing a true part of American culture.

A week of finales and goodbyes

This week was a sad week in some senses. First off was the last day at Kellogg. I've had a great time there each Monday learning about different aspects of management and spending time with some great students. I won't go into my experience at Kellogg anymore because I write about it on the other blog.

Notice anything missing? Check out how Northwestern is spelt.

The other point of sadness was the fact that the interns I have had the pleasure of working with had their last week at INVO. From next week onwards it will be much, much quieter. The other interns were on the I2C Fellows on the I2C program organised by INVO (innovation to commercialisation). They adopted me in my first week at INVO and I have had the pleasure of working and socialising with them for the last couple of months. They're a great bunch of people from many different backgrounds and stages of their university education. Some are almost finished with their PhD's, some are in the middle, some are undergrad and we even had a lawyer! It's been great to make some good friends over here and I'm gonna miss them dearly. I mean who am I going to have lunch with now??

Lunch at Edzo's, Evanston. Apparently famous for their Nutella Milkshake. Their burgers are pretty damn good too. #I2CFellow (inside joke...)

On the interns' last day, after their amazing presentations about their two months' work, we headed downtown for drinks at the Trump Tower to celebrate. The Trump Tower is really pretty and has a terrace on the 16th floor which is only about a 3rd of the way up. It is part hotel and part private residences. Judging by the drinks prices I don't even want to imagine what the cost of an apartment there is. It was a great experience to go there and a lovely finale to the last couple of months. However, I don't think I would make it a regular habit. The bill for six drinks came to $134 including tip! I guess you have to think of it in the terms that they could have charged less for drinks and asked for $10 entry fee, because the view was fantastic.

I love this pic. This was some of the fabulous crew I got to work with - you guys are great! (photo credit to #notasillymonkey)

The one drink was followed by dinner at an Irish pub, called D4. In our defense, we had tried going to a Japanese barbecue place which had a 45 minute wait and we were starving. The fish 'n' chips was the best I've had outside of the UK. Shame I couldn't wash it down with a beer - apparently my Finnish driver's license wasn't good enough ID!

How many pieces of fish!? This portion was ridiculously large. So I thought I would take the remainder in a doggy bag and give it to a homeless person. It was too good to waste. 

Friday morning was pretty lazy, after a quick conference call to Finland, I headed over to South Evanston to Hoosier Mama's Pies (try saying it out loud) with some of the interns for breakfast before clearing up at work. I don't normally eat sweet stuff in the morning but it was an opportunity to hang out with these guys some more (and eat pie). Hoosier Mama's makes their pies on site. While it takes a little time to get them, they're well worth it. I love citrus fruits and key lime pie is a quintessential American (Floridian) dish. A small pie is only a couple of bucks more than a slice, so being greedy (and following everyone else's example) I ordered a "small" key lime pie. I still have over half of it in my fridge. The pie was great when I could find it under all the cream. By the way, have you ever seen a key lime? They are tiny, well at least the ones in my local Wholefoods were!

My key lime pie is the creamy looking one. Thankfully my friend loves cream and "helped" with finding the filling underneath.

We've had a lot of laughs together and I think I have made some good friends. I never imagined when I came here that I would actually meet such a great bunch of people. Especially people who I can see myself keeping in touch with when I head back to "not America" as one of them put it! #I2CFellow - INVO won't be the same without you!

Chicago Botanical Gardens

The other week I mentioned that I had made a list of places I should go and see while here in Chicago. Today was a chance to make a dent in that list. It's been a hazy sunny day, warm and not beach weather so I decided to visit the Chicago Botanical Gardens. This proved to be slightly more of a pain than I hoped since my only way to get there is by train, which runs once every two hours. I was tempted not to go with those limited options, since I would have to really get my timing right to catch the train home. The dealbreaker was the fact that I found out that they had a kite festival. Having attempted to fly kites on multiple occasions, only to get them twisted up, I thought it would be interesting to see what exactly a kite performance to music entailed. It's not the most exciting thing I have ever done, but I didn't think I will get the chance again. I also had nothing better to do except work related stuff, so why not?

I know some people think gardens are boring, but I actually really like Botanical Gardens, and this one is free to go to. Most are pretty amazing, Kew is a must see for anyone visiting London who wants to see something more green than Hyde Park. The one we went to in Croatia last year was not so great... very dry and more like a desert. In a past life I used to work in a garden centre and did work experience at a manor with large grounds in Kent. I think I might also have entertained ideas of becoming a landscape architect. I do like to do my best to turn my balcony into a jungle every summer when I get the chance. Sadly, that hasn't happened this year for obvious reasons. So you can see why coming here was interesting to me.

The train ride north was pretty average, although I do like to see the greater Chicago area. Some of the houses are amazing, and typically American in the fact that they are enormous by European standards. I thought the trolley bus that picks you up from the station to take you to the gardens was pretty cute. As was the station I arrived at.

The botanical garden was busy, but not so crowded that it detracted from the enjoyment of being in the countryside. The gardens is essentially a series of islands in a lake connected by various bridges. The islands have different garden themes. Some are more cultivated than others. There was a native garden, with species that are home to the Midwest. To be honest this wasn't particularly exciting and a lot of what I saw was very similar to what we see in the UK.

I wandered through the landscape gardens and some other areas for a bit. Before heading over to the kite display by the Chicago Fire Kite Team. These guys were skilled, and I liked the music choices. Watching these guys was a nice way to spend some time. It was quite entertaining when a large bird, maybe a hawk mistook one of the kites for something more edible. Fortunately whatever it was realised it's mistake before the performance went a bit Pete Tong.

Coming in to land

You can find some short videos of the performances here: http://youtu.be/e-nXts3P6oo and here (my favourite) http://youtu.be/OhxI6HdsiAE. For some reason blogger is super slow to upload, otherwise I would have embedded them here.

After a quick hot dog (are you noticing a theme here?), which was slightly marred by the misfortune of overhearing the conversation of some pretty horrible and precocious teenage girls in the hot dog queue, I headed off to the plant science centre. As you can see from the pictures there are actually real labs here. I love the fact that the labs have one glass wall so the public can see the scientists at work, and what they actually do.

Inside the plant science centre (top left). A living roof experiment to see which plants survive best (top right).One of the labs where someone was actually working (bottom right). 

The remainder of the time I just wandered round enjoying the sunshine and the calm of the gardens. I missed the butterflies exhibit and some of the other pieces. I think I'll save them for another time. Otherwise I would have had to wait another two hours for my train and I was starting to get sunburnt. Which I would have avoided if I hadn't left my suncream somewhere in St. Louis and then forgotten to get another. Will need to pick some up for next week - the plan is to hit North Beach and join half a million people to watch the Chicago Air and Water Show!

Bridge to the Japanese Garden (top right). Waterfall Garden (centre).

Fried chicken and Ferris Wheels

Saturday evening saw me heading downtown to Lakeview with one of my fellow INVO interns to go and meet one of the other interns who happens to live in Lakeview. The plan was to have a wander round the neighbourhood, get some fried chicken and head to the Navy Pier Ferris Wheel.

Lakeview is supposed to be one of the nicer neighbourhoods and I haven't been there before. I was starting to get cabin fever having been home ill for the last couple of days, so it was a great opportunity to get out, see some friends and talk to a live human being as opposed to a screen (me being ill means I can skype people at normal times during the week!).

I was wondering about the significance of us having to have fried chicken. Although I am relieved that we didn't have ice cream before as one of our party suggested....!?! But apparently this stuff is some of the best, so it had be had. Crisp is a small fast food restaurant that serves Korean style fried chicken and it was good! The Buffalo sauce was ok, although the mild option was still a bit on the spicy side. I dread to think what the suicide option would be like - I have a feeling if I took a certain person there he wouldn't be able to help himself but order that option, with regrets the following day. I tried my friend's chicken with the Seoul Sassy sauce, which was lovely, not too sweet and not too hot and very tasty. I wish I had followed my instincts and picked that one.

A bit further up the road was Smoque, a smoke shop for vapers. The verb "to vape" is used to describe the use of e-cigarettes. Since I am the only vaper in the intern crowd I thought it was really kind of them to think of me and take me to it. Smoque was really nice. The guys there were really friendly and were recommending different e-liquid flavours to try. They had a little comfy seating area with chairs arranged around a table on which was what can only be described as an electronic hookah. There you could hook up different chambers with flavoured e-liquid (no nicotine according to state laws) and give them a go. A nice alternative to ordering random flavours off the internet without having a clue what they will be like. I needed some new heads for my e-cig and I was delighted to find they had mine in stock. The guy wanted to borrow my current one for some kind of test which involved drilling extra holes in the base of it. The experiment worked and he gave me a few of their own hand-mixed flavours to try out as a thank you!

Smoque

My free e-liquid haul!

We were running late so we grabbed a taxi down to Navy Pier. The biggest tourist trap in Chicago. Not my favourite place and you have to keep your eyes open. Where there's tourists there's usually pick-pockets. Having said that, it was really pretty at night as you can see below.

We took the Ferris Wheel in the hope of getting to see the fireworks. Which we failed at since we misremembered the time they were gonna happen. Got some great views of the city instead.

I still don't feel amazing and am not sleeping very well, so those of us who had to get up to Evanston decided to call it a night. Which was wise since it took us nearly two hours to get home. But on the way we saw this.

St. Louis and floating down the Meramec river

This weekend was pretty amazing. I went to visit a friend in St. Louis, someone who knows me from my time in Surrey and shares my enthusiasm for Finland and (almost) all things Finnish. I headed down on Friday to St. Louis on Amtrak.

Start of my journey near Union Station, Chicago

The journey was pretty good except for the hour delay 10 mins away from St. Louis. Amtrak suffers from the problem that the tracks are owned by freight companies, which means that freight gets priority. It was no problem, I had plenty to read. It was great to be able to see the scenery, although the majority of it was small towns and cornfields, not surprising since Illinois is a part of the cornbelt - an area that is so rich in photosynthesis from all the cornfields it can be visualised from space. Arriving into St. Louis I got to see the Arch - the Gateway to the West. So called because the pioneers who travelled westward from the east coast would pass this way in the effort to find land and settle.

Gateway Arch from the train window

First impressions of St. Louis were that it is a lot more run down than what I have seen of Chicago, but I was assured that it does get better. Like Chicago, St. Louis has some good neighbourhoods and some bad ones.

We headed out to the Wildflower, where I got to experience some decent mac 'n' cheese and the first place with a proper outdoor terrace. We were also joined by some of the crew would be going on the "float" the next day. Despite the fact that I hadn't seen my friend for about 9 years and had not met any of these people I felt at home and relaxed with everyone and I knew it was gonna be a fun weekend.

St. Louis at night

The following day we headed out as soon as we were ready to the Huzzah Valley Resort for the float. It's remote enough that around a mile from our destination there was next to no mobile phone signal. Those of us who had already arrived pitched our tents and waited for the others. After a few mishaps, everyone managed to join us down by the riverside.

Where we picked up wood for the campfire. Yes, that is a real animal skull on the post

                            

Wood chopping & pitching tents

We had been told that the river was too low for inner tubes and that we could either canoe, kayak or raft down. We picked up 2 six-man rafts and put a cooler full of beer (and Gatorade) in each raft and headed off. Our plan was to do the minimum amount of work possible and just float down the river and join in the madness further downstream. I reckon on the 5.5 hour, 4 mile trip we must have bumped into well over 500 people doing the same thing. There were people in rafts, inner tubes, canoes and kayaks. Some had coolers that played music. Some had water guns. Some had pimped out their boats. We saw a pirate ship, a Hawaii themed raft with an inflatable palm tree, and a bachelorette party. We had so many laughs on the way and there was plenty of mucking about on the raft. We didn't stick to the one raft we had each started out in, there was plenty of boat hopping going on.

Some of the float crew (photo courtesy of Victor Akunyili)

The Float (photo courtesy of Victor Akunyili)

The Float (photo courtesy of Victor Akunyili)

The Float (photo courtesy of Victor Akunyili)

Some of the people on the float had decided to chill out on sandbanks and eke out the length of their float. I was glad our crew didn't. Due to the delays at the start we didn't get floating until 1 pm which meant that we spent the last mile with the sun behind the trees and we got cold. I think at that point pretty much everyone had had enough. Some us stayed in the water because our t-shirts were soaked and it was warmer in the water than on the raft.

Eventually we got back to camp and in dry clothes and set about making dinner. A huge fire was lit and we had a smaller bbq grill on the side. Everyone had bought stuff to share which meant we had masses of food from hotdogs to chicken, homemade burgers and fresh corn on the cob :).

                              

Telling scary stories round the camp fire

I had thought we were going to carry on drinking a bit longer, but most of us were absolutely knackered, which meant an early and sober night. Shame I can't say the same for other people on the campsite. At one point in the night a few of us did get concerned we were going to be run over like bowling pins when we heard a truck fire up following some crazy drunk girl having an argument. I was also gutted I didn't get to see any raccoons. Apparently they come out in the dark and rip apart any trash bags you leave out, in the hope that there's food there. 

  

                                               

Morning @ camp

We packed up and headed to Cracker Barrel, where I finally understood why some people hate US coffee. I've drunk better dishwater. The pancakes however went down a treat. We split our ways and went back to St. Louis to shower off before I headed back to Chicago. It was such a great weekend, hanging out with some wonderful people. There was no one there that I wouldn't love to see again. Looking forward to seeing some of them later in September when we head back down that way.

Homesickness and Wicker Park

I've spent time away from home before - a few summers ago I was away for nearly a month. But the last time I lived anywhere for an extended period of time was when I moved to Finland for my exchange year, many moons ago. So, I should have a pretty good idea of what to expect. But last Sunday, I couldn't understand why I felt so lethargic and quite frankly, miserable. Until it dawned on me that I was probably feeling homesick. It's passed now, thanks to a phone call that made me laugh. But last Sunday was definitely not the best day I have had here.

Weekends aren't the best time since I don't have my class or workmates around me for 8hrs a day, and the two days seem to streeeetccch (unless weekends are magically longer here in the spirit of everything being bigger in the US). I now have a list of all the things I want to do and see here in the couple of months remaining. Plan is to do at least one thing on the list every weekend. On the list is kayaking on the river downtown one evening. I have been trying to get some company with no luck so far, but screw it, I'll do it alone if need be. Other trips are going to the Field Museum & the Contemporary Art Museum, and a trip north to the Chicago Botanical Gardens. An American football game or two are definitely on the cards! Might see if I could even go north to Milwaukee for the weekend. 

My homesickness last week was relieved somewhat by a trip downtown to Wicker Park on Sunday evening. My colleague at work lives there and loves the place and wanted to show us around. Wicker Park is west of the city and isn't the most easy neighbourhood to get to. In distance it's about 10 miles from Chicago, in time it takes 90 minutes to get there. As someone helpfully pointed out the other day, people round here measure journeys in time not distance.

A cannon in someone's front yard

The Wicker Park Festival was on this weekend, a free-ish festival down one of the main streets with music and street food.

A really tasty Serbian street food offering - spicy sausage in a type of pita bread

'Nuff said

I really liked the vibe and the crowd were pretty interesting. It's definitely an eclectic neighborhood and there looked like there were some fun shops and restaurants and bars to hang out in. Food was had and we met some of my colleagues' friends who, like everyone else I have met here, were really friendly and fun to hang out with for a few hours. I'll definitely be going back to see what it's like sans festival. Photos will be coming later when I get back home - currently on a train to St. Louis!