THIS IS MY FRIEND ELLIE AND SHE DROVE ME HERE!!!

Nothing takes the edge off arriving alone in a new city than being picked up at the airport by your best friend. You should have seen the glee of our reunion by the luggage claim. You would think it had been two years since we last saw each other instead of two weeks.Meeting Ellie made coming into this adventure feel a little more like coming home.

Ellie and I met our Freshman year at Bard. She lived across the hall from me, and the sign on her door warning of her guinea pigs drew me in. She let me hold them and the tentative friendship began to form. The friendship became less tentative after I ran across the hall to the sound of screaming. Ellie, my dear city girl, was being terrorized by a stink bug, something she had no context for.

A large part of the foundation of our friendship is making fun of each other for where we’re from. I tease her about being a bio major who’s terrified of nature, and she teases me for not knowing how sidewalks and public transportation work. The other part is built on the fact that she’s the kind of friend who picks me up at the airport, and I wrote an essay to get her out of a parking ticket. Ellie’s one of the best people I’ve ever known, and a large part of why I’m here in Chicago now.

“Chicago has two seasons: winter and construction.”

-Ellie

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The Green Line

I want to put a disclaimer on the beginning of this post. I have not done extensive research on the Chicago public transit system. After today, I'm thinking maybe I should. The disclaimer is that this post is based almost entirely off of my own impressions from riding the Green Line and the things people I know have said to me about it, and not on any empirical data. That being said, I'm not technically living in the city right now. I'm living in Oak Park, which, if I remember correctly, is the first suburb west of Chicago. I did not understand that it was a suburb until I really went into the city. For the folks back home, Oak Park reminds me a lot of Concord. From what I've seen of it so far, it's pretty similar in terms of size and how much stuff is going on. It feels like a city to me, but I came out here to experience Big City, so I go into Chicago pretty frequently. I've mostly stuck to the Hyde Park area so far, because that's where Ellie lives ...

Pride Fest

I almost decided not to write about this, and it was the strangest feeling. I love to write. Writing makes me feel more connected to myself and the world. I don't think I've ever had something special and thought, Wow, I really don't want to write about this before. For some reason, this time, it almost felt wrong. It felt like letting go of something I desperately want to hold onto. I guess the tradeoff of writing like this is that I end up having to share what I'm writing about with the world, or however much of the world wants to listen. I'm not sure if I want to share this. There's a piece of myself that wants it to belong entirely to me. That doesn't feel quite right either, though, so I'm going to follow my usual instinct and write. Hopefully, as writing always seems to, it will bring me answers. On Saturday I attended my first major pride event, Pride Fest, with Chloe and some of her friends, at least some of which are now also my friends. I wa...

Chicagay

I spent the morning out in the suburban area I'm staying in right now, Oak Park, with my friend Chloe, her mom, and my roomate Sylvia. We went to see the live-action Aladdin remake, which was actually really good. They changed enough to keep you wondering what would happen, but kept true enough to the original story that it didn't feel like a betrayal. After the movie, we stopped in a bookstore across the street, The Book Table. There were a lot of interesting books, but the thing that caught my eye and absolutely floored me was the small display of pride flags in the window. Honestly, the display wasn't anything fancy. It was just a couple plastic bins filled to the brim with pride flags, but it was filled to the brim . There were so many pride flags, some I didn't even recognize. With shaking hands, I picked up my own pride flag, the bi pride flag. It was the first time I'd ever seen one in person, not just in a picture or a drawing. It was a real, tangib...

Chargo

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