Second City Adventure

Before you begin to read this new post that I wrote while sitting in the airport waiting for my flight back to NYC. Let me express my absolute hatred for Delta Airlines. My 7PM Sunday night flight was delayed three times and then around at 11PM the flight was canceled. At that point, I was tired, hungry and had a headache, after a mediocre steak sandwich for dinner (Delta only gives a $7.00 meal voucher) we had to go and sulk at the DoubleTree hotel in the middle of nowhere, and wait for an afternoon flight the next day, which was also delayed :(

So here goes….

Ohh Chicago… What a great city.

I was recently in Chicago for the NASPA (National Association of Student Personnel Administrators) conference and decided to make a mini vacation out of the trip with my friend and colleague Isaac. NASPA was great; we learned a lot, met a lot of interesting people and got a feel for what our profession is all about. More than 4,000 student affairs professionals flooded the streets of Chicago and Isaac and I were in the middle of it. Not to bore you with student development theory, lets get down to the fun stuff. I know that is what you really want to read about.

Chicago has great food, great sights and great people. The city is very clean and all the beautiful skyscrapers amazed me. We were also lucky enough to have great weather while we were there. I was expecting high winds and snow, but most days the weather did not get below 40 degrees and one day it was even in the 60’s, so take that New York!!! You unfortunately experienced a monsoon while I was gone.

So here is a list of what I liked and did not like about the Second City:

Like

- Deep Dish Pizza

- Lou Mitchell’s – BEST BREAKFAST EVER

- Boystown – This was the Mecca for gay nightlife, so much fun

- You can text, talk and email on your cell phone while on the “L”

- Clean sidewalks

- Millennium Park – very nice

Dislike

- Not enough street signs

- Cabs come in all different colors - and some cabs look like cop cars which made me very confused, because I kept thinking I would get a ticket for jay walking!!

But in the end, Chicago was a lot of fun and exploring it with Isaac made it so much better. I have not laughed this hard in a really long time and it was refreshing to have another smart-ass Dominican next to me. He laughed at all the same inappropriate things that I would laugh at, and there will be plenty of inside jokes to carry us through to our next adventure (Vegas and/or DR, we will see). We even made it out to “Santo Domingo Beauty Salon”; we all know the lengths I will go to find someone to blow dry my crazy curly head, even if that means getting on the “L” and then a bus to find some Dominican flavor.

I am glad to be back home, I am glad to go back to work and start school again next week, and I am glad to be back to blogging. Chicago gave me many great ideas and a lot of great lines, so stay tuned.

And Delta, you still suck major ass :)