Thursday, April 23, 2015

Chicago Conference

I recently spent four days in Chicago attending an educational research conference.  While I was thankful to be doing two presentations (one Literacy and one Math), I was really looking forward to visiting Chicago because C and I lived there for two years many moons ago.  We’ve only been back there a couple of times since, most notably to attend a Blackhawks game when we were completing our tour of all of the NHL arenas.  Chicago is such a great city!



















I shared a hotel room with another doctoral student and so we also traveled together.  We flew to Chicago first thing on Thursday morning, checked in to our hotel, and were pleasantly surprised to learn that our room was ready and it was only 8:30 in the morning!  We stayed at Hotel Chicago, which was a beautiful hotel.  Our room was on the 11th floor with a pretty decent view!



We were right next door to these two buildings and I took more photos of them than I care to admit because I was a little obsessed with them.


One of the things about this particular conference is that it is huge.  Sessions and events are spread over a number of hotels, so you find yourself constantly traveling from place to place, depending on what you want to attend.

My two presentations were Saturday morning and Sunday morning, leaving plenty of time for other sessions.  This also meant that we had time to wander the city a little bit, which was awesome because my friend had a Flat Stanley with her and she was on a mission to photograph him in as many places as possible!


One of places we visited was new to me…Cloud Gate, or as it’s more commonly known, The Bean.  It was constructed after C and I moved away from Chicago, so it was great to finally see it in person!




On Saturday afternoon after my presentation, my friend and I met up with another fellow doctoral student who had managed to get us tickets to the Cubs-Padres game.  While I appreciate the history of Wrigley Field, I am very much an American League girl, and always cheer for the White Sox over the Cubs.  I kept that bit of info to myself during the game, and was just excited to be back at Wrigley Field, which we visited on occasion when we lived in Chicago.

As you can see from the photo, we had pretty good seats.  We couldn’t see the outfield scoreboard, but I was happy to not be sitting in the sun.  Or so I thought.  The photo is deceiving, because while it looked a beautiful day, it was freezing.  Soooooooo cold, thanks to the wind.  I had jeans and a hoodie on, which provided some warmth, but I had worn flip flops, which proved to be a huge mistake.  I had walked around in flip flops the previous day and it was more than warm enough, so I didn’t even think about wearing other shoes to the Cubs game.

When the Cubs entered the 9th inning up 6-2, I thought for sure they’d get a quick three outs and we’d be able to go somewhere to warm up.  The fact that I wrote that last sentence should tell you that is not what happened.   But I was far from the only person thinking that, as scores of people left the game at the beginning of the 9th inning.

The Cubs allowed four runs and the Padres tied the game, forcing extra innings.  The good thing about so many people leaving was that we were able to move down to seats closer to the field for the final two innings and watch the Cubs win in the bottom of the 11th.  Clearly I’d never seen the Cubs win at Wrigley because I heard the Cubs victory song, “Go Cubs Go,” for the first time.  It’s hard to not get swept up in such a jubilant atmosphere!  So despite the frozen feet, I had a fabulous time at the game.



The only other thing worth mentioning was the pizza and the popcorn!  We had lunch one day at Giordano’s and the stuffed spinach pizza was just as delicious as I had remembered, and we stopped at Garrett's for some of their famous popcorn.  So yum!





Both presentations went quite well and even though it was a tiring four days, I was glad to have found time for some fun along with way!


Happy Tails to you!

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