Midwestern Bound

Tomorrow I leave to spend the Christmas season in the land of cows, beer, and cheese.  Oh, and family, too.  Hooray!  ps:  This is a cow toy that my friend sent in a letter from WI.

Blowin through the Windy City

On the way home from Luzerne I made a couple stops to visit friends, the first one in Chicago.  I love this city!  A good friend of mine just moved down there to start at Northwestern, so we met up for a day and made breakfast, walked around, went swimming in Lake Michigan, and had sushi and Thai iced coffees (so good).  Swimming in Lake Michigan is wonderful; I've swum in the Atlantic, Pacific, Caribbean, Mediterranean, and various rivers and lakes, and I think the best swimming experience I've ever had is still in the good ole' gigantic midwestern lake.  Not that the others weren't awesome :)  While at the beach, a bunch of planes flew across the sky and wrote an advertisement - neat.  You don't often see skywriting in real life.  
At night I walked around the city with another friend, stopped for Vietnamese food, went to the top of the Hancock building for a night view, and watched fireworks by the water.  Not a bad visit!