Amusing Museums

I cannot believe how close we are to the end of the semester! This is actually my last full week at work, since we have Good Friday and Easter Monday off and Easter inconveniently fell on the last weekend of our semester in Chicago this spring. This whole experience has just flown by.

Two weekends ago I went on a museum-ing adventure around the city. On Saturday morning I went up to Lincoln Park to see the Chicago History Museum. My sister had visited the museum after she spent the weekend with me and discovered that they have an exhibit on Fort Dearborn. Fort Dearborn stood where Michigan Avenue meets the Chicago River, and it’s a pretty big deal in my family because its namesake, Henry Dearborn, was my great-great-great-great-great (that’s five greats) grandfather. I don’t think he actually had much to do with the fort itself, but my siblings and I love to joke about how we basically own the city of Chicago, given its Fort Dearborn roots and all. I’m pretty sure that’s a completely inaccurate claim, but it doesn’t stop us from bragging about it anyway :)

That afternoon I hoped to go to the Shedd Aquarium, but, as usual, the line to get in was well over an hour long. Instead I went to the Art Institute. I had never gone to the Art Institute by myself before, and I found that I actually enjoyed wandering around alone. It was nice to be able to do things at my own pace and only stop to see the things that I thought were the most interesting.

This past weekend there was a huge 8K race in Chicago, the Bank of America Shamrock Shuffle. It’s the largest 8K in the world with 40,000 registered participants—almost as many as the Chicago Marathon! I worked Chicago Athlete’s booth at the Shamrock Shuffle Health and Fitness Expo all day Saturday and actually enjoyed it a lot. I also got a free pair of socks from one of the booths, which may or may not have made my day. On Sunday I tagged along with our editor-in-chief while he took photos at the race itself. The weather was very un-April-like: somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 degrees at the 9 a.m. start. I was awfully warm, but a strong breeze of the lake kept it from being too unbearable. Thankfully the race was held really close to my apartment, so I was able to get back home and make it to church before the 10:45 a.m. service started. Normally the roommate that I go to church with and I take the train to and from church, but since the weather was so nice yesterday we decided to walk back to our apartment along the lake. Even though I was hardly dressed for a 3.5 mile walk, it was absolutely gorgeous. Living so close to Lake Michigan just might be one of my favorite things about Chicago.