1. January 21, Martin Luther King's Day. Everyone but me had holiday.
2. Jazz concert at Bar Night.
3. Watching basketball game with Jill and without actually watching it.
4. Wrestling proven to be gayest sport. Pictures obtainable from editor.
5. Yours truly not good at beerpong.
6. God exist - or not. Proof not obtainable from editor, but can be reproduced - or not - for anyone who has two hours to spare.
7. Yours truly was eye-witness of assassination of Jesse James.
8. Ellipsis is coolest topic in linguistics and beyond.
9. Stop sign disappeared from 54th and University to mysteriously turn up again in 53rd and Woodlawn.
10. Snow in Chicago but no opponents found for snowball fight.
11. So-called Belgian chocolatier in Chicago is no fraud.
12. Time to do laundry...
Tuesday 29 January 2008
Sunday 20 January 2008
Miscellaneous stories from the deep freeze
It's winter in Chicago. I know because I can't feel my legs anymore after a ten minute walk to the library. I know because my breathing literally creates ice drops in my scarf. I know because it is becoming a problem that the radiator in my room doesn't work. There's something missing though...oh right: snow!
After a week of moderately cold weather and me reading for my semantics class and syntax seminar (Yes, I am doing linguistics here...That's why I don't post any story during the week. Most of you wouldn't be able to take that much excitement), the cold and the weekend kicked in hard. UChicago, where fun come to die? No way!
On Friday I went to Greek town with Alice, Jasmin, Peter, Ryan and Niko, all linguists, and Jasmin's cousin Felicia. All very nice and funny people, I had a wonderful time and a great laugh. Peter was right: this is the fun-loving crew of the department and I wanna be part of it! Thanks guys!
Saturday evening, dancing queen! I let my frozen legs walk me to the International House for a party and I will let them do it again soon. The I-House is where most exchange students reside, which means that parties there exhibit other dance styles than grinding. Excellent! We even had a short salsa session. And they bring in pizza round 11. Dancing and food, right on! (Maybe that's why you see less grinding there...not to spoil each other's appetite)
So, I-House, great discovery. Another part of Chicagoan spirit I came across is the slang (I'm still a linguist). Some words I've learned so far: word - you can use that practically in any context, as affirmation for instance -, for real(s) - meaning 'for sure', 'really' -, legit - for anything cool or appropriate -, ricoculous - and any other creation where you replace dic in ridiculous with the name of a male body part. It's not much yet, but it still beats relaxt, the only slang term I heard - not: picked up - during my four months in the Netherlands.
I don't want to leave in two months!
After a week of moderately cold weather and me reading for my semantics class and syntax seminar (Yes, I am doing linguistics here...That's why I don't post any story during the week. Most of you wouldn't be able to take that much excitement), the cold and the weekend kicked in hard. UChicago, where fun come to die? No way!
On Friday I went to Greek town with Alice, Jasmin, Peter, Ryan and Niko, all linguists, and Jasmin's cousin Felicia. All very nice and funny people, I had a wonderful time and a great laugh. Peter was right: this is the fun-loving crew of the department and I wanna be part of it! Thanks guys!
Saturday evening, dancing queen! I let my frozen legs walk me to the International House for a party and I will let them do it again soon. The I-House is where most exchange students reside, which means that parties there exhibit other dance styles than grinding. Excellent! We even had a short salsa session. And they bring in pizza round 11. Dancing and food, right on! (Maybe that's why you see less grinding there...not to spoil each other's appetite)
So, I-House, great discovery. Another part of Chicagoan spirit I came across is the slang (I'm still a linguist). Some words I've learned so far: word - you can use that practically in any context, as affirmation for instance -, for real(s) - meaning 'for sure', 'really' -, legit - for anything cool or appropriate -, ricoculous - and any other creation where you replace dic in ridiculous with the name of a male body part. It's not much yet, but it still beats relaxt, the only slang term I heard - not: picked up - during my four months in the Netherlands.
I don't want to leave in two months!
Monday 14 January 2008
The Chicagoan dating/dancing scene
Any European has seen movies about this, but the American dating scene is even more complicated than the movies are willing to show. And more different from what I am used to than I expected.
So I figured it is time to tell you something about my flatmates. They are all very sweet guys and I like hanging out with them. The bunch of them reminds me a lot of my brothers and their friends back home. A very nice crew to be around. (Of course, my dear Jesse and Senne, they will never replace you!)
Now these guys took me to a party this weekend. Despite the fact that almost everyone was at least four years younger than I am - not that anyone noticed my greater maturity, but still -, I had a good time. The people who know me a bit better know that I am a real party animal and love dancing even if no-one else dares to thread the dance floor yet. However, dancing is a relative notion, it appeared. Not only do people stare when you're dancing on your own, they like to come ridiculously close, in spite of my - and their! - sweat and the vast space behind them. You might have seen this dance-style called grinding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_%28dance%29) in Dirty Dancing. You might even have tried it just for fun at some party. You might also have caught yourself thinking - as I have - that some people should NOT dance like that. Here, however, they don't care about other people's appetite - and why should they? There's no food at this party anyway - and go on rubbing their - bleep - against each other's legs all night long. Hey, I know taste is subjective. Only, please, don't try humping towards me like a monkey if I don't look in the least interested. I wasn't!
However, laughing at drunk people in their face can be fun too. I like it here. :-)
PS: I noticed that the slideshows don't always load as quickly, so here's the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/home
So I figured it is time to tell you something about my flatmates. They are all very sweet guys and I like hanging out with them. The bunch of them reminds me a lot of my brothers and their friends back home. A very nice crew to be around. (Of course, my dear Jesse and Senne, they will never replace you!)
Now these guys took me to a party this weekend. Despite the fact that almost everyone was at least four years younger than I am - not that anyone noticed my greater maturity, but still -, I had a good time. The people who know me a bit better know that I am a real party animal and love dancing even if no-one else dares to thread the dance floor yet. However, dancing is a relative notion, it appeared. Not only do people stare when you're dancing on your own, they like to come ridiculously close, in spite of my - and their! - sweat and the vast space behind them. You might have seen this dance-style called grinding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_%28dance%29) in Dirty Dancing. You might even have tried it just for fun at some party. You might also have caught yourself thinking - as I have - that some people should NOT dance like that. Here, however, they don't care about other people's appetite - and why should they? There's no food at this party anyway - and go on rubbing their - bleep - against each other's legs all night long. Hey, I know taste is subjective. Only, please, don't try humping towards me like a monkey if I don't look in the least interested. I wasn't!
However, laughing at drunk people in their face can be fun too. I like it here. :-)
PS: I noticed that the slideshows don't always load as quickly, so here's the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/home
Monday 7 January 2008
Slam poetry!
(Let's start with another question, for a change ;-))
Can you say "this night is just perfect" if right after that it gets more perfect with every second? Is perfect quantifiable? I think it is. Read on to be convinced.
Tonight Kirsten took Ezra and me to The Green Mill, the bar where Al Capone used to go. This fact alone got me thrilled, but it gets better. Every Sunday this cozy place programs an event they call Poetry Slam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry_slam). It's a poetry contest where poets of all ranks read out their creations in an entertaining way. Now, the guy who came up with this idea in 1984, the legend Marc Smith, he's some performer! Even if every poet in the slam is rubbish, he would save the day. And today was even more special because it was the birthday of Carl Sandberg, the poet who put Chicago on the art map at the turn of the last century. Party!
You see, this poetry slam is no dull happening, it's pretty interactive. Whenever you like a poem, you can of course do the obvious thing and cheer or clap your hands. If you think it's awful, on the other hand, you snap your fingers, stamp your feet onto the ground or even boo the wanna-be poet off the stage. When the poet is not being the most women-friendly person, you produce the female hiss; when the poem is giving men a hard time, the Green Mill gets filled with male grunt. And when you can 'guess the rhyme', you shout it out loud. Yes, as said before, Chicago is the right kind of crazy.
Still, there's more to come (as I predicted in my previous post as well): not even were the poems very high-standard tonight, Marc Smith always selects three judges from the audience who have to give scores to the contestants. And guess what: I got to be a judge! Imagine Belgium, 7 points! Very Eurosong, but this tiny girl stood her ground :-).
Last but definitely not least, when the contest was over, Marc Smith called me to the stage and I got to defend my country's honor (possibly for being a tough judge, but who says being satisfied easily is a good thing? ;-)). So, all you Flemish people, I sang Mia by Gorki, both with the Flemish and the English lyrics, accompanied by the band in the Green Mill, during my very first week in the States. Beat that! (And yes, I'm still kinda shaky)
Can you say "this night is just perfect" if right after that it gets more perfect with every second? Is perfect quantifiable? I think it is. Read on to be convinced.
Tonight Kirsten took Ezra and me to The Green Mill, the bar where Al Capone used to go. This fact alone got me thrilled, but it gets better. Every Sunday this cozy place programs an event they call Poetry Slam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry_slam). It's a poetry contest where poets of all ranks read out their creations in an entertaining way. Now, the guy who came up with this idea in 1984, the legend Marc Smith, he's some performer! Even if every poet in the slam is rubbish, he would save the day. And today was even more special because it was the birthday of Carl Sandberg, the poet who put Chicago on the art map at the turn of the last century. Party!
You see, this poetry slam is no dull happening, it's pretty interactive. Whenever you like a poem, you can of course do the obvious thing and cheer or clap your hands. If you think it's awful, on the other hand, you snap your fingers, stamp your feet onto the ground or even boo the wanna-be poet off the stage. When the poet is not being the most women-friendly person, you produce the female hiss; when the poem is giving men a hard time, the Green Mill gets filled with male grunt. And when you can 'guess the rhyme', you shout it out loud. Yes, as said before, Chicago is the right kind of crazy.
Still, there's more to come (as I predicted in my previous post as well): not even were the poems very high-standard tonight, Marc Smith always selects three judges from the audience who have to give scores to the contestants. And guess what: I got to be a judge! Imagine Belgium, 7 points! Very Eurosong, but this tiny girl stood her ground :-).
Last but definitely not least, when the contest was over, Marc Smith called me to the stage and I got to defend my country's honor (possibly for being a tough judge, but who says being satisfied easily is a good thing? ;-)). So, all you Flemish people, I sang Mia by Gorki, both with the Flemish and the English lyrics, accompanied by the band in the Green Mill, during my very first week in the States. Beat that! (And yes, I'm still kinda shaky)
Sunday 6 January 2008
Chicago, my city
Does it still count as 'un coup de foudre' if you fall in love after two days? That's still pretty fast, no? Because Chicago is getting to my heart swiftly. Despite the - true - prejudice of Chicago being a dangerous city, I'm starting to love it more and more.
During my first days here I haven't had much time yet to really explore the city, but the LSA conference did take me downtown. The skyline is a-ma-zing! It's so overpowering that in one restaurant they've even made a gingerbread version of it. Eat that! (or not)
Talking about food, though, there's a tiny bit of a disappointment in that respect. A few days ago I went out with Ezra, his extremely funny "Chicagoan" friend Kirsten and his slightly goofy (in a good way!) colleagues Raj and Roni. We ended up in a Belgian restaurant where they had a lot of (needless to say - good) Belgian beers and food that was supposed to be Belgian, but didn't taste Belgian (i.e. good) at all. Apparently, Americans put loads of salt on everything! Literally, as you'll be able to read later. Apart from this tiny food disappointment - which might in fact help me keep my New Year's resolution of surviving three months of America without gaining 20 kilos - Chicago is wonderful. On our drive home Kirsten was an excellent tour guide, complete with 'on your left...on your right...' and everything. She showed us the Chicago Bears station for instance, which looks like a spaceship landed on an ancient Greek temple. Yep, the city's got tons of unexpected loony aspects. Another example is "the bean" in Millennium Park. Officially it's called Cloud Gate, but it really is a bean. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Gate or wait until I remember to take my camera with me.
We also went to a 'haut chocolate' shop, Vosges (http://www.vosgeschocolate.com/) where they've got the most original combinations with chocolate. Some are delicious, such as the dark chocolate with hot chili pepper and the curry-coconut (of course) one. Other combinations are more 'unexpected', such as the Barcelona salt and almond bar or the one with bacon flavor (!!!). Not exactly my kind of treat, but hey, I'm in America. Nothing can surprise me now.
Despite being a genuine country-girl, I really like all those huge and prettily lit buildings. And on top of that: it turns out that Chicago has this lovely theater scene. Yesterday I got to experience that myself: wow! The play was called "Too much light makes the baby go blind" and it's not an actual play at all. It's 30 plays in 60 minutes! Everyone got a name tag - I was X-mas - and to see how much you had to pay, you had to roll a dice. Just my kind of crazy! Then, every time the actors said curtain, the audience had to shout the number of the play/sketch they wanted to see (we all got a 'menu' with 30 titles, like "These women are communicating their needs to you as clear as day, and boy, you better deliver", or "Unleash The Bucket Insurgency", or "Hot lesbian semi-historical love vignettes starring Barbie and Barbie"). Oh and they have this motto when we sell out we order out, so they ordered a pizza and we could all take a piece at the end. I'm definitely going back there (because they change the plays every week)! Check them out: http://www.neofuturists.org/)
So, these were my first few days in the big city. There's more to come, I'm sure...
Cheers!
Lobke x
During my first days here I haven't had much time yet to really explore the city, but the LSA conference did take me downtown. The skyline is a-ma-zing! It's so overpowering that in one restaurant they've even made a gingerbread version of it. Eat that! (or not)
Talking about food, though, there's a tiny bit of a disappointment in that respect. A few days ago I went out with Ezra, his extremely funny "Chicagoan" friend Kirsten and his slightly goofy (in a good way!) colleagues Raj and Roni. We ended up in a Belgian restaurant where they had a lot of (needless to say - good) Belgian beers and food that was supposed to be Belgian, but didn't taste Belgian (i.e. good) at all. Apparently, Americans put loads of salt on everything! Literally, as you'll be able to read later. Apart from this tiny food disappointment - which might in fact help me keep my New Year's resolution of surviving three months of America without gaining 20 kilos - Chicago is wonderful. On our drive home Kirsten was an excellent tour guide, complete with 'on your left...on your right...' and everything. She showed us the Chicago Bears station for instance, which looks like a spaceship landed on an ancient Greek temple. Yep, the city's got tons of unexpected loony aspects. Another example is "the bean" in Millennium Park. Officially it's called Cloud Gate, but it really is a bean. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Gate or wait until I remember to take my camera with me.
We also went to a 'haut chocolate' shop, Vosges (http://www.vosgeschocolate.com/) where they've got the most original combinations with chocolate. Some are delicious, such as the dark chocolate with hot chili pepper and the curry-coconut (of course) one. Other combinations are more 'unexpected', such as the Barcelona salt and almond bar or the one with bacon flavor (!!!). Not exactly my kind of treat, but hey, I'm in America. Nothing can surprise me now.
Despite being a genuine country-girl, I really like all those huge and prettily lit buildings. And on top of that: it turns out that Chicago has this lovely theater scene. Yesterday I got to experience that myself: wow! The play was called "Too much light makes the baby go blind" and it's not an actual play at all. It's 30 plays in 60 minutes! Everyone got a name tag - I was X-mas - and to see how much you had to pay, you had to roll a dice. Just my kind of crazy! Then, every time the actors said curtain, the audience had to shout the number of the play/sketch they wanted to see (we all got a 'menu' with 30 titles, like "These women are communicating their needs to you as clear as day, and boy, you better deliver", or "Unleash The Bucket Insurgency", or "Hot lesbian semi-historical love vignettes starring Barbie and Barbie"). Oh and they have this motto when we sell out we order out, so they ordered a pizza and we could all take a piece at the end. I'm definitely going back there (because they change the plays every week)! Check them out: http://www.neofuturists.org/)
So, these were my first few days in the big city. There's more to come, I'm sure...
Cheers!
Lobke x
Thursday 3 January 2008
first impressions
1. It takes you almost nine hours to get from Brussels to Chicago, a flight that luckily is more bearable in the right company (Thanks, Mister Mike ;-)). That means home is 7 hours faster than me now.
2. The windy city is not that windy at all! :-)
3. It is very cold though...
(note to myself: wear a hat next time you go outside! you still need your ears).
4. They've got snow everywhere, even inside tunnels.
5. Cars are significantly bigger here. Except for the taxi that drove me from the airport. Bummer.
6. They've got such lovely houses! Amazing!
7. The university campus looks like Hogwarts, but without the witches and wizards. Very pretty. Oh and today also without the lady from the International Office and without Prof. Jason Merchant, which made my walk there today pretty useless. Not funny in such cold.
8. My room is very nice. I got scared a little when one of my new - very sweet - roomies told me the heater is not working, though...
9. Fire engines look like X-mas trees.
10. Those dimes, quarters and pennies are going to be the end of me. They're going to be the reason why it will still be obvious I'm not American after three months.
People, I have arrived in Chicago!
2. The windy city is not that windy at all! :-)
3. It is very cold though...
(note to myself: wear a hat next time you go outside! you still need your ears).
4. They've got snow everywhere, even inside tunnels.
5. Cars are significantly bigger here. Except for the taxi that drove me from the airport. Bummer.
6. They've got such lovely houses! Amazing!
7. The university campus looks like Hogwarts, but without the witches and wizards. Very pretty. Oh and today also without the lady from the International Office and without Prof. Jason Merchant, which made my walk there today pretty useless. Not funny in such cold.
8. My room is very nice. I got scared a little when one of my new - very sweet - roomies told me the heater is not working, though...
9. Fire engines look like X-mas trees.
10. Those dimes, quarters and pennies are going to be the end of me. They're going to be the reason why it will still be obvious I'm not American after three months.
People, I have arrived in Chicago!
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