Life In A Suitcase : My trip to Chicago

I guess it is finally time for me to share about my fabulous trip to Chicago. It's been almost exactly one month, but gee it feels like so much longer! I planned to blog as soon as I returned from my trip, but having a week away from my courseroom, my classes were in major need of some hard core dedication. Well, and being back I had to catch up on sleep, school work, house work (although Charlie had cleaned my whole house for me), my pups, Charlie, the Js... yeah, you get the point. I have been busy, but now I have 3 weeks until my next quarter starts so who knows, I may just post all kinds of fun blogs :)

Where to begin... I was so super anxious about traveling by myself for the first time and I played all of the "what if" scenarios through my head and then just prayed I would be safe and return safe.

But guess who lost her boarding pass at the Atlanta airport --- ME! Of all things, and I had been there for like thirty minutes!! I called mom in a panic and she told me to find a TSA agent (duh! why didn't I think of that?). So I go up to a nice gentleman -- picture this, a 25 year old woman almost in tears, trying to explain that she had misplaced her boarding pass. I swear he must have thought I was 16 because he said "oh sweetie, it's okay they can print you out another one at your gate". Luckily, I knew my gate number and got that taken care of quickly.
That was pretty much the only bad thing that happened all week! Haha!

Once I landed, I see the thing I've been anticipating most about my Chicago trip --- SNOW! I was sad that it wasn't a ton like I had always imagined, but I had no idea what was to come later that evening :)

The Chicago airport was so fancy! They had the coolest toilets I had ever seen (yes, I took a picture).

After riding the hotel shuttle, I arrive at my hotel - my goodness it was so nice!!

I walk in and see this:

I just thought it was so neat that we had our own banner, I mean we would be there for a week, but still :) Being in an online program, you often loose sight that you are actually in school with other human beings and this week helped to bring that to more of a reality... starting with the cool banner :)

Next I go to my room and tour the hotel:

This was on the TV screen!!

I had planned to do some sight-seeing when I arrived, but I was so tired and it was starting to snow, so instead I decided to take a nice nap!

I love naps after traveling! :)

2 hours later.... I woke up....

To all of this:

And stood on my balcony to take some pictures ;)

I was so excited so I went outside to look at all of the snow, the doorman asked if I was waiting for a cab and when I replied, "no, just came to see the snow" he laughed and said, "everyone else is rushing to get out of the snow and you're the only person I've seen rush to go out in it!"

Well... I love snow! :)

So while traveling to Chicago, I didn't know anyone. However, I did have my roommate that I had connected with several weeks before the trip, so once she arrived on Friday, we immediately bonded and ventured into the city together for a day of sight-seeing. Walking from the hotel to the train station was probably the creepiest part of the day - except for the people on the train. LOL

It was so cold!!!

Having never been to Chicago, I was unfamiliar with the train system & my roommate was as well, but we figured it out. There was a blue line, a green, red, pink, purple, orange (okay, I'm probably making up those last colors but it was very confusing) I just knew we would end up lost at some point during the day. But guess what? We discovered that we were pretty sweet navigators and we never got lost!!

The three things I wanted to do while in Chicago was visit the famous Bean Statue, eat Chicago deep-dish pizza, and visit the Willis Tower... and thankfully, I accomplished all three :)