| What I did on my summer vacation... Part the last! Finally! |
[Jul. 7th, 2005|10:27 pm] |
| [ | Spirits |
| |  accomplished | ] |
| [ | Voices |
| | TMBG - The Famous Polka | ] |
So, I finally decided to resume those French lessons, after multiple weeks off (est-ce que vous avez beaucoup de l'argent? ...Mais non! Je n'on ai pas.). My mp3 player was turned up to full volume so I could hear properly. The lesson finished, and I was about to go upstairs when... POLKA!
It was, needless to say, one of those moments of sheer awesomeness that you experience from time to time.
So, I decided to finally finish up my vacation story. The "original" plan for today was to visit all of the attractions we were planning to visit on the first day: The aquarium, planetarium, science museum, Field museum, Sears Tower... whew. That's a lot to visit in half- or three-quarters of a day, so we decided to cut the list down a little bit.
All Chicago pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joyuna/tags/chicago/
Sorry you'll have to comb through them, I don't feel like making a "Misc. Chicago" set.
First we went to the Sears Tower, which according to my all-knowledgable father is the 3rd or 4th tallest building in the world, now. Either way, it's high. Something like a half-mile high.
Before we went up we watched a really lame Chicago tourism film. There was a group of people speaking Portuguese behind us, which was pretty awesome even if it was only awesome for me. Portuguese is a gorgeous language.
Also, I got a text message during the film. Hi Lu!
On the elevator up, my ears popped. It just added to the impact of the whole thing. We went up and there were windows all around, as well as screens that displayed and labeled all the sights that could be seen from that particular window - in English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese and Polish. Sorry, I just can't keep language off my mind. That was a big fun part of it for me between the airports and all.
After this, we drove around some. Got lost some. You know, the usual. Eventually we got to the "Magnificent Mile", a bunch of stores and malls, where Dad and I proceeded to drop Mom and Paula off so they could do their own mother-daughter bonding thing and we could do our own nerd-geek bonding thing. We went to the Field Museum.
The Field Museum is great. We have our own natural history museum in Cincinnati, sure, but it's just not the same thing at all.
The Field Museum is HUGE. I don't think we even saw a third of it, and we were there for hours.
The first thing we went through was an exhibit on newly discovered dinosaurs from China. Dinosaurs are cool... and stuff. I don't really remember many specifics, but quite a few of them were like the dinosaurs I grew up with (brontosaurus, triceratops, stegosaurus), only smaller. Which was interesting.
I can't really write anything intelligent on this subject. Dinosaurs are cooool and this one had a really really long neck. @_@
Sorry.
While Lu was in Transylvania [Lousiana], Dad and I started through the labyrinth of DEAD STUFF! WOOHOOOOO!
The Field Museum has an insanely massive collection of taxidermied animals from every corner of the planet. I'd like to think that I'm pretty knowledgable about animals, particularly mammals, but some of the stuff I saw was just too weird/cool, and completely unknown to me.
Among others, I saw this goat...thing, and a pig with horns that went straight through his snout on top, as well as a deer the size of a cat.
The goat's nose is like that because it lives in a cold climate, and it uses its nose to heat up the air before it takes it in. Nifty, eh?!
Dad was really wise in splitting the family into two groups for the afternoon. Dad and I wouldn't be able to bear spending hours looking at sparkly handbags, and Mom and Paula certainly wouldn't enjoy the museum. It worked out quite nicely and Dad and I had fun talking about evolution and all that good stuff.
Along with exotic stuff, the museum also had relatively run-of-the-mill animals... Deer (and more deer and more deer), bears, local animals and the like. And also pigeons.
Pigeons. PIGEONS ARE COOL NOW.
Sorry. I really had no idea that there was such variety in domestic pigeons. I think that pigeon breeders must not get out much; why else would they breed pigeons with huge ruffs of feathers on either side of their head? Pigeons with feathers fanning out from their feet? Pigeons the size of owls? It's all a bit strange. There was a display case of all these different pigeons, and one right next to it with wild pigeons. The domesticated ones were much, much weirder.
I know this is boring... Sorry. : )
We also saw some man-eating lions. Yeah, nifty!
You hear about these things on the Discovery channel from time to time or whatever, and their bodies will be on display in some far-off museum that you'll never visit. But I did visit this one so it was kind of neat.
These were male lions without manes, that killed 140! people. Pretty creepy and also intruiguing.
Okay. TIME TO RELIVE CHILDHOOD MEMORIES!
I'd actually been to Chicago once before. When I was 6. That was ten years ago, and my one surviving memory of it is going to the Field Museum and seeing a mummy. I was completely entranced with Egyptian culture when I was little - Loooved it. Mummies, gods, hieroglypics, I was interested in it all. I don't know why; I was like that. Mummies and dinosaurs and unicorns were just my thing.
So I remember going into the exhibit, looking down and seeing the mummy. It was part really cool and part scary but I was little so I don't know. But that's my one memory of it.
Back to the recent past -- We went into the Ancient Egypt exhibit, a recreation of a tomb. We walked into the first room and I saw a glass-covered hole in the ground. I looked down, and I saw the head of the mummy.
It was insanely creepy deja vu. It was very memorable. :']
So that was that. We saw a lot, but barely scraped the surface of the museum but we had to start getting ready to go. I got a book on Napoleon and the Rosetta Stone and stuff from the giftshop, which I have yet to read because I already have way too many books on my list. But I intend to read it eventually. And I swear I didn't just buy it 'cos it had the word 'Linguist' in the title... >_>;;
We left, and collected Mom and Paula from their shopping. They got me a bag and some melon-scented body wash stuff.
I had ONE purse, just a year ago. It was awesome, it fit my CD player and everything I needed.
Now I have FIVE. And none of them have been bought with my own money. Mom just goes out and buys me purses. It perplexes me.
Mom bought some stuff to plump and redden her lips. "For that bee-stung look". That's what it says on the tube. I put some on my hand and 15 minutes later it looked like I had a rash on my hand. I do not trust that stuff.
The drive home was mainly uneventful, but that doesn't mean it was bad. We put into the car's CD player Paula's newly-burned TMBG CD and we sang the whole drive back. It was nice.
And THAT is my vacation. The rest of my summer will be spent mainly monotonously, but that's okay. I still have to learn to drive. I should do that, shouldn't I? Heh.
~Joy is FINALLY FINISHED writing about her vacation. Whoa. |
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cheerful
excited
pleased
thankful