Safari

Well, I finally found the CDs my pictures were on so here is a little sampling of my Safari in Tanzania.

On day one, we headed out from Arusha toward Lake Manyara National Park. Having been to every national park in a 500 mile radius of Utah I wasn't so excited about this. I wanted to get to the Serengeti!

But before we even got to the park, we saw this guy and some of his friends on the side of the road. 

They are kind of like deer are around here only maybe a little more rare. That is, they mostly stay in the wild and don't get close to people but you will occasionally see some close to the road. 

When we actually got to the park I was a bit more excited when we saw some of these:

They were in troops of about 25 just chilling by the side of the road near a stream. It was pretty cool and I decided I liked Lake Manyara National Park a lot : ) I was happily watching these little guys when I caught something moving out of the corner of my eye. 

I glanced over and saw AN ELEPHANT!!!!!! 

It was an insane, surreal moment. I was standing in a Land Rover with 6 other people, looking out of the retractable roof, watching an elephant as tall as the car come lumbering toward us. In what kind of crazy situation does that ever happen?! That's when it hit me that I was on SAFARI!!!! In AFRICA!! AMAZING!

Here's a video of the moment:

When the Elephant walked past us, he stopped to drink from the stream and as he left he sprayed water at us. I think he must be used to tourists.

As we continued through Lake Manyara we saw lots of other animals- several kinds of monkeys, impala, zebra, dik-dik, gazelle, more giraffes and elephants, birds, and hippos. Some of them were too far away for my camera to get good pictures of but here are a few. 

The picture above is of zebras and a few wildebeest but it also showcases the Great Rift Valley, which stretches for hundreds of miles across Africa. It was another surreal moment as it sank in that I was standing in a place that I had read about in textbooks thousands of miles away. It was the abstract becoming real

As we left Lake Manyara that evening the hippos were coming out of the lake and wandering through the streams looking for food. The round looking rock in the picture below is actually the backside of a hippo. 

The next day we headed out to the Serengeti. (Which I did not know is also a National Park). This picture doesn't want to center, but here is a view of the Serengeti from a rocky outcrop. 

 

Serengeti means "endless plain" in Masaai and I would definitely agree with that description. When we first pulled in all you could see was a vast parched plain, not unlike parts of southern Utah, intersected only by one long dirt road stretching forever into the horizon. I wasn't sure how we were going to see any wildlife. Eventually you find little turn offs that take you to small watering holes and more rocky outcrops. It is pretty much exactly like what you see in The Lion King. 

The first creature we saw in the Serengeti (besides more gazelles) was this terrifying beast:

That's an ostrich and they are perhaps the scariest looking animal I have ever seen. My safari friends laughed when I told them that those birds are the stuff of nightmares, but I was dead serious. First off, they are HUGE. Like over six feet tall. And their bodies are MASSIVE! There is no way that their bodies weigh less than 200 lbs. Then they have these giant reptile like feet with talons on them that will rip your guts out. And their heads look like velociraptors. I don't have any problems with birds in general, but these things really freak me out. So I was a little nervous when I learned that we would be camping in the Serengeti. Outdoors. With the wild animals. In tents. 

Actually I wasn't really all that concerned about the animals, I just really don't like camping. My philosophy is if you are within 100 miles of a hotel why on earth would you sleep on the hard ground in the freezing cold only to wake at the crack of dawn with your neck kinked and your muscles feeling like you spent the night wrestling a bear?

Fortunately for my safari friends we weren't within 100 miles of a hotel so we camped. Here is proof:

See how excited I look?

And we actually awoke before the crack of dawn to see the sunrise on the Serengeti. Now, I am not what you would call a morning person. I have been on more than one sunrise hike and hated every one of them. Mainly because you get up during prime sleeping time to trudge through wet bushes and sit on the hard ground while the sun "comes up." Except the sun doesn't "come up" because you are in Utah and the mountains block its rising. So it just gets gradually lighter as you grumpily sit in silence with a bunch of exhausted, equally un-enthused teenage girls while shooting daggers with your eyes at the loopy leaders who made you do this and tried to force it to be a spiritual experience.  Needless to say, I did not have high expectations for sunrise on the Serengeti. 

I was pleasantly surprised.

Because it is a flat plain, the sun rises like a burning orange ball from the ground and illuminates the vast, quiet world around you. It was truly beautiful and I am so glad I got to experience it. 

After watching the sunrise we went out looking for more animals and hit the mother lode: Lions, feasting on a fresh kill of Zebra.

There were two lionesses and at least 8 cubs enjoying their breakfast and we got to see it up close and personal. Its amazing how close you can actually get to these wild animals. This picture shows a good perspective.

Lions get completely exhausted after they eat. They are like a combination of Americans after Thanksgiving and the laziest house cat you ever saw. You get tired just watching them walk! 

The cubs have significantly more energy though.

We spent the rest of the day driving out of the Serengeti and toward Ngorongoro Crater. This was a hyena saying goodbye. (I think hyenas look really cool and The Lion King definitely doesn't do them justice.)

Before going to Tanzania I had never heard of Ngorongoro Crater but it is actually very well known and has a large concentration of different species. The first one we saw was this baboon, mocking the sign he was sitting on by eating food he had stolen from a tourist on it. (Sorry about his indecency). 

They are actually very serious about this and if they catch you purposely feeding the animals you get fined. I wouldn't attempt it anyway because baboons are actually pretty intimidating. Not ostrich scary, but definitely not puppy cute either : )

I included this picture because everyone in East Africa LOVES Obama. So you see him everywhere. Probably more than you do in the US. 

These elephants wandered into our campsite and helped themselves to the water in our tanks. (Yes, we camped twice on this journey. I think that fills my quota for the next decade) 

Good thing we brought bottled water to drink : )

These "rocks" are actually hippos. They spend most of the day like this and only leave at night to go foraging.  They are surprisingly uglier than I expected, mostly because their ears are sort of red and inflamed, kind of like baboon bottoms. Still pretty cool though, and the babies are adorable.

We caught the tail end of the great migration, where the wildebeest and zebra move by the hundreds of thousands into Kenya. They go together because the wildebeest know the way and the zebra don't but the wildebeest have really poor vision so they rely on the zebra to help get them there. 

I would have figured that zebra were smart enough to figure out the way themselves, but after watching a zebra leave the safety of his heard and go wandering off on his own while two lionesses were stalking him I can believe that zebra are too stupid to know the way. Seriously, even after he saw the lionesses he kept wandering farther and farther away from his heard. And it took them forever to move out of the way of our vehicle. Not very bright creatures at all. 

We saw a lot more creatures on the last day of Safari, including more lions, flamingos, crocodiles, and rhinos, but I wasn't able to get great pictures of them. The rhinos are especially shy and don't come close enough to see well without binoculars. But here is a picture of some warthogs we saw.

And that was my safari (which means "journey" in Swahili by the way). And it was a great journey. If you ever wondered if you should go on a safari, my answer would be: YES! Most definitely! It was incredible and I sometimes still can't believe it really happened. I guess that means I will have to go again someday, just  to make sure : )

Baobabs

I still haven’t found my picture CDs but the good news is that they are backed up on the team computer in Tanzania and I can get them when the rest of the team comes back. That will be sometime in the next couple weeks. In the meantime I thought I would tell you about Baobab trees.

I first heard about Baobab trees when I read The Little Prince. In fact, the Baobab trees are about the only thing I remember from that story. Mainly because I was reading it in Spanish and my comprehension skills at the time in that language were…non-existent. I remember that the little prince talks about weeding out Baobab trees on his planet and I assumed they were something he made up, because they were so fantastical. They were giant trees that took up massive amounts of space and overtook everything in their path. (Or something along those lines. Like I said, I was reading in a language I didn’t understand.)

So I was surprised to learn that Baobabs are real trees and they are massive. So massive in fact that people have hollowed out the trunks and put things inside like bars or bathrooms. They don’t get particularly tall (about 100 ft.) but the trunks can obviously be very big around (35 ft in diameter). They also don’t really overtake other things because they tend to grow where nothing else will, often way out in the desert. They have a special tap root that digs down really deep to get to water that other plants can’t reach. Because of this they can survive long periods of drought, which are frequent in their native lands of Africa and Australia.

They are pretty distinctive and easy to pick out of any landscape. Most of the year they don’t have leaves and their branches are short and stubby and look like they should be part of the root system. In fact there are several African folktales that reference this. One says that God gave a specific tree to every animal and whichever animal got the Baobab was so disappointed with it that he tore it out of the ground and planted it upside down. And that is how it grows to this day.

Baobabs are actually pretty useful trees as well. They can be tapped for water in dry years with little harm done to the tree. (There are actually baobabs that have survived half their trunks being cut away by elephants digging at them. It makes them look funny but they just keep growing. ) Their bark can be made into string and woven into fabric. They offer a good degree of shelter. And their seeds are encased in pith that is high in nutrients like vitamins B and C. They actually encourage kids to eat it by coating it in red sugar and making it into a candy. (It’s not very good, but that may be because when I ate it nobody told me you are supposed to spit the seed out and just eat the pith : )

When I learned that Baobabs are real I put them in my journal on my “List of Possibilities.” It’s a list I keep of things I want to do or see or experience sometime. (Not to be confused with a bucket list, which to me is a little too much like a checklist. I don’t expect that I will see or do or experience everything on my List of Possibilities before I die, but that isn’t the point. It’s about dreaming and hope and even if I never see phosphorescence on the ocean at night or a green flash sunset, at least the possibility will have existed for me.) Anyway, it was really exciting when I came across my List while in Africa and was able to make a note that I did see baobabs! Lots of them. And they are as weird and gnarly as I imagined.

So the Little Prince and I differ on our opinions of Baobabs. He went about plucking them up like they were weeds. Me? I brought some seeds home and am going to plant one. I don’t know if it will work but “climb a Baobab” is now on my List of Possibilities and maybe, with a little luck, I will get to.

No Pictures!

I have been back from Africa for a few weeks now and was getting all ready to post some awesome pictures from my safari... but I can't seem to find them. I'm almost certain that I didn't leave them in Tanzania but no matter where I look that I might have put them I come up empty handed. Sooooo... no pictures for now. Sorry : ( On the bright side I did make it back home safe and sound and pretty healthy. I actually didn't get sick until my last week and even then it wasn't too bad. And I have passed the incubation period for Malaria so I am not likely going to get that either (knock on wood).

I will give you more details on my adventure soon, and (hopefully) pictures. For now I will just say Africa was a great experience I'm glad I got to have and I hope it won't be my last.

In Africa

The internet is really slow, especially when it comes to uploading pictures and videos. As a result you won’t get to see any of my pictures until I get back. Which is not a huge loss because I am not a great photographer anyway.

The women really do wear traditional skirts and carry baskets on their heads.

The humidity is intense. Like sweating when you walk out the door humidity. But it also creates a very lush and tropical environment. We live next to a field of coffee beans and banana trees.

The roads really are unpaved and rutted and you bounce along them any time you are in a vehicle. Which isn’t often because people walk everywhere.

Time is not as strict or important as it is in America. Today we were looking at planning something for the last week in July, which is not all that far away really, and the person we were talking to said, “ah, we can plan that later, we are not even to July yet.”

People are not as task oriented as they are in America. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. We recently demolished an old structure and we were determined to finish it in one day. The natives we were working with were satisfied with the work that had been accomplished by quitting time but we were unable to see any value in what we had done until the job was finished. So we finished it and were proud of ourselves and the natives impressed. But I think in the future I will try to be satisfied with the work I do each day, even if I don’t complete it all according to my timetable.

Boys and girls have very similar haircuts and so are sometimes difficult to tell apart. In the schools the girls wear skirts so that helps.

The clouds are fairly constant so its hard to see the stars. I have seen them once, but since it is the southern hemisphere they are strangely unfamiliar.

There are no McDonalds, Wendys, Pizza Hut, or chain stores. There is a “Wall Mart” but it is most definitely not the one based out of Arkansas : ) I’m not a critic of capitalism but it is nice to see a part of the world untouched by those aspects of globalization.

Soap doesn't lather the same way. My skin seems to be developing some kind of waxy protective coating in response. Hopefully that will wash off when I am home : )

People are incredibly friendly and helpful. It is rare to pass someone on the street without hearing “Jambo” (Hello) or “Karibu” (Welcome) or some other greeting. People will go out of their way to help you for just about anything and expect nothing in return.

People are not as poverty stricken as I expected. This is probably because I am in a touristy area that provides a steady income for many people. Most people are able to provide for themselves and their children and many people take in those who can’t. It is not a life of luxury for most people but neither is it one of complete destitution.

You have to look carefully for wildlife. I didn’t think there was much until somebody pointed out the monkeys in the trees above the fruit stand and a little boy brought a chameleon into the yard on a stick. Hopefully I won’t be so oblivious to it when I am on Safari this weekend.

I am learning and experiencing a lot of new things. Hopefully I will be able to share more of them with you later.

Shoes

I've been thinking about shoes lately because I've been trying to find the perfect pair for Africa- cheap because they are going to get trashed, but sturdy enough to see me through two months and lots of mud, and comfortable enough to not want to wear flip flops because apparently that makes it easy for parasites to get into your feet. I'd like to avoid that if possible.

So I think these shoes won't work.

(On a side note- it is really difficult to take pictures of your own feet. Also, I would apologize for my ugly feet but I think pretty much all feet are ugly so what can I say.)

These are the "new shoes" that I was going to write about a while ago (like, last fall...) but I forgot. Then all this thinking about shoes put me in memory of them so I thought I would tell you about them.

Awhile ago I read a book called "Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen." The author's whole premise is that mankind has evolved to be a creature that runs. Not just in short bursts like Cheetahs, but for long periods of time, like Energizer Bunnies. It's an interesting theory and I liked the book pretty well because it also told the story of the Tarahumara Indians of northern Mexico who demonstrate this idea pretty well and run marathons in shoes made of old tires. And they apparently don't really get tired and don't get injured, which according to the author is because they essentially run barefoot or in these cheap homemade tire shoes.

Partly due to the book's huge success a large following of "barefoot runners" has emerged and they are convinced that the best way to run (or walk or jog) is with as little padding on your feet as possible. The idea is that if your feet can feel the ground they can make compensations for differences in terrain and you won't have as many injuries because you are learning to run in a way that prevents injury. They of course have claims about how amazing this style of running is and what a difference it makes and what not so I was intrigued and decided to try out some "invisible sandals" (as seen above- so much for that claim).

You can actually buy a kit to make your own here. But being the cheapskate that I am I was not willing to shell out 12 bucks plus shipping for some tire treads and strings. So I made my own to test them out first. That way, if going barefoot really was amazing I would know the 12 bucks was worth it before I coughed up the money.

So I made my pair out of thick craft foam ($1 per sheet) and some shoelaces I had lying around. And added a leaf button for decor. Then I went for a run (of like 30 seconds because mankind may have evolved to be a running creature but I most certainly did not!)

And my verdict? Well, I'm glad I saved myself 12 dollars (also the embarrassment of buying this type of barefoot shoe, which operates on the same premise but is significantly more hideous.)

They weren't terrible as far as shoes go, and if I ever find myself barefoot on a deserted island I might want to fashion something similar, but needless to say I am not a barefoot convert. The front part of the shoe kept rolling under my foot and tripping me and even though I didn't get any burrs or rocks coming through the sole, I still felt them when I stepped on them. And I didn't notice much difference one way or the other as far as how my feet and legs felt afterward. (Technically, the barefoot runners say you are supposed to stick it out for awhile and that your body takes time to adjust but we all know I am too impatient for that.)

So I will stick to my evil flip flops and cheap cross trainers. Except in Africa- I think I found some loafers that will work for me over there. Three weeks to go...

To Africa!

Tanzania to be specific. Home of the Serengeti, Mount Kilimanjaro, and me for six weeks this summer. I'm going on a humanitarian trip with a group called Help International which focuses on fighting poverty through Entrepreneurship, Education, and lucky for me, Health.

I have always wanted to travel internationally and have been fascinated by Africa for years, but I always lacked either time or money. Since I am employed at a type of school (which oddly is the last place I ever wanted to work, but I find I actually don't mind it) I get 6 weeks off in the summer. Money still doesn't grow on trees (last I checked) but I do have more of it these days than I have before so I figure I had better get on the ball and take advantage of the opportunity.

I still don't have all the details worked out as far as the projects I will be working on but they will be health related and I will most likely be helping in a clinic that treats rural Masai villagers. I may also be working on some public health campaigns like teaching first aid or sanitation. I'm really excited to get to work in both the clinical health and public health areas because I have been trying to decide which one I want to devote the rest of my life (or at least the next few years of school) to and I am hoping this experience will help me decide.

I'm also glad to get the opportunity to help others. I feel like I have been living the last few years for myself and focusing solely on what I need and what I want to do. I'm hoping this experience will help me get a better balance and focus a little less on myself. (I also realize that this is a somewhat selfish desire in itself- I want to do x because thinking about others will be good for me. But that's pretty much how I went in to my mission (thinking about what it could do for me) and that turned out ok in the end. I may have gone for selfish reasons but I stayed for the right reasons.) Anyway, hopefully this experience will turn out similarly.

Now you may be asking yourself, "Self, how can I help Linds in her humanitarian expedition? She has kept me entertained on countless occasions, surely there is something I can do for her." You weren't thinking that? Too bad, I'm going to tell you anyway : )

There are three ways that you can help me help others. The first is by donating to Help International under my name. The instructions for doing so can be found here (Be aware that if you donate through pay-pal they charge a 2-3% transaction fee, which will be deducted from the total donation). The money that you donate will be used to fund projects and supplies that will directly benefit the local people (I don't earn any money for my time and I have to pay my own way).

The second, and more fun way, is to come with me! Seriously! I get a discount on my program fee for every person I recruit, whether they come to Tanzania with me or go to another country like India, Thailand, Peru, Nicaragua, Fiji, Belize, etc. There are over 10 countries that Help International operates in. Just be sure to mention my name when you sign up : )

The third and final way you can help me in this endeavor is to hook me up with your airline miles. I still have to purchase plain tickets and travel to Tanzania ain't cheap. So if you have a bunch of frequent flier miles built up that you aren't using, or know someone who does, feel free to send them my way. I will definitely put them to good use.

Ok, I will stop the shameless soliciting now and move on to the personal thanks. I have to give a special shout out to Lacey who served as a personal reference for me and must have done a good job singing my praises because Help decided to let me go to Africa with them : ) Thanks, Lace!

If you decide to donate I will write you a personal shout out as well on this widely read and highly acclaimed blog : )

If you have questions about donating or the program in general feel free to contact me {lindsey lou s AT gmail dot com).

Now I have to get back to singing "Africa" by Toto (The words to which I did not realize are "I BLESS the rains down in Africa" not I MISS the rains down in Africa. I find myself slightly disappointed by this. )

Not As Fat As I Thought (Or, I Am My Own Worst Critic)

I randomly stumbled across an interesting website that I am now going to link to and encourage you to visit.

http://www.mybodygallery.com/

It is a gallery of photos of women of all different heights and weights and you can search for pictures of people with your same stats. It sounds weird and I thought I was going to be very depressed but I actually found the opposite. It made me feel a little better about my current body size.

See, I never worried about my weight or looks growing up. Beauty was always an odd concept to me and even now when somebody compliments my looks (which fortunately for me doesn't happen too often) I am not quite sure how to respond. Ex: "You have nice eyes." "Thanks...I grew them myself?" It's like complimenting someone on their height. They didn't really choose it or have much to do with it so how do you take credit for it? And weight wise I was maybe a little bigger than my friends but not enough to be made fun of or take much notice, so I never worried about it. Which was good because I had a kind of angst-y adolescence as it was so at least I didn't have to add self-esteem problems to the mix.

However, after going on a mission and eating copious amounts of Mexican food every day and packing on the pounds as a result and then graduating from college and getting depressed about not finding a job for 18 months and drowning my problems in too much food and not exercising or even sweating out a few calories by hiking up to campus everyday and then worrying about how I'm still single and probably will be forever because nobody finds fat, self-pittying "elderly" women attractive, I find that all of a sudden I have some self-esteem issues. Now, this is not to say that I am overcome by depression and self-loathing, and I am definitely NOT crying out for attention or begging you to tell me that I am gorgeous (I wouldn't believe you anyway. Cute I might believe. Gorgeous no.) Rather, it is just to say that I was really lucky for a long time not to have to worry about my image because overall I felt pretty good about myself. And I still do, I just find that lately I have been a little harder on myself than I have in the past.

And I have wondered what I would think of myself if I was somebody else and saw me. Would I think I was fat and grotesque or would I even notice that? So when I stumbled across this website and started looking at photos of girls who look like me I was pleasantly surprised. I think most of them look pretty good. So that must mean that I look ok too. And that made me feel better. I know it is cliche to say that they don't show girls who look like me in magazines and on tv but as I was looking at these other women I found myself thinking, "Hey, these girls look normal. They are what I see in real life every day." So then I didn't feel quite so bad about not looking like (insert waifish movie star name here).

So. There is my rant on my self-esteem issues. I'm sure you all wanted to be my internet psychologists and listen to me be self absorbed, right : ) But I figured that if I found the website to be so helpful then I ought to at least share it with the rest of you. You can consider my opinions of myself as an extra bonus :) Now if you'll excuse me I have to get my squishy, jiggly self to bed. I need my beauty rest you know ;)

*Update* So after posting this yesterday I read it again today and started to get paranoid that I was sharing too much info or weirding people out or something, which was definitely not the point. Mostly I think I just wanted to say I found the site that I linked to highly interesting and enlightening. I think in my head I am always comparing myself to people skinnier than me so of course I feel bad that I don't meet those standards. So when I looked at that sight and compared myself to people who looked like me I was judging myself in a less harsh light and was surprised by the results. Maybe you don't have this problem so none of it is relevant and you are thinking "Linds, you are just weird and I don't know what to make of this post." That's ok. I guess just consider it the price of reading my blog...sometimes you have to wade through the weird areas of my head to get to the good stuff (if there is good stuff...probably its all weird. But that's ok, there is a big underground of weirdness out there so maybe its relevant to somebody.)

Anyway, I also wanted to link to another site that I found fascinating. It shows pictures of people and tells whether they are underweight, normal, overweight, obese or morbidly obese according to their BMI. I won't go in to details about my problems with the BMI or my rant about the obesity "epidemic" right now because that would take forever and you don't want to get me started. But do check out this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/77367764@N00/sets/72157602199008819/

And feel free to tell me what you think, whether it is that I am off my rocker or should just quit worrying about beauty rest and try to just get enough rest to keep my frantic mind from going off on bizarre themes : )

Clarification

Since my last post outed me ask a dork (yeah, like that was a big secret) I got to thinking about the difference between Nerds, Geeks, and Dorks. I always considered myself a dork because I don't think I am smart enough or hygienecally challenged enough to qualify as a nerd (think the boys in Weird Science), and not tech savvy enough to be considered a geek (think Steve Jobs or the IT guy at your work) . In my head, a dork equates to someone who is somewhat socially inept and also really enthusiastic about things that normal people don't really care about much, but not to the point of being an expert in them.

For example, when I was about 14 I watched a documentary about a specific aquatic plant that is an invasive species and has migrated from tropical waters to just about all the oceans on the planet. It turns out the plant was originally harvested and hybridized to serve as decoration in home aquariums. It was really popular because it was easy to maintain and cheap so people all over the world with aquariums bought it. Then when their fish died they dumped it into local waterways and oceans where it took up root and started choking out native species.

Now, as I was writing that last paragraph I had to contain myself and keep it down to one paragraph because I was getting really excited about sharing it, even though I am aware that most people do not share my enthusiasm for the subject of invasive species. I also use it as an example to illustrate that while I probably know more than most people about this particular plant (whose name I can't remember), that isn't really saying much and I am definitely not an expert on it. That is pretty much the essence of a dork in my mind: interested in obscure things and willing to talk about them even if it is not socially acceptable or "the norm."

So when I saw this diagram explaining the differences between Nerds, Dorks, and Geeks, I was surprised to learn that I am actually a Dweeb!

Apparently my intelligence and social ineptitude put me in the Dweeb category. In order to be a Dork I would have to dumb down a little and be more obsessive about things. Unless maybe I am actually obsessive and just don't realize it? You, my faithful readers, will have to tell me what you think. And what you are! (If you fall into one of these categories. I wouldn't want to offend you by assuming that you do.)

In the end though I have decided that whatever category I fall into I will continue to claim myself as a dork. Because I am used to it and because I still don't quite see myself as being any of the others. Anyway, I'm off to learn about giant ground sloths. They used to live in Utah you know. -Dork out.

International Museum of Surgical Science: Because I'm a Dork : )

When I was planning my trip to Chicago this last summer there were three things on my list that I wanted to do: Eat a real Chicago deep dish pizza (because how can you go to Chicago and not do that?), Ride the El (because of my love of the movies "The Fugitive" and "While You Were Sleeping"), and visit the International Museum of Surgical Science (because I am a geek and fascinated by all things medical).

I am happy to report that I managed to cross all three things off my list while I was there, along with a few others. In case you were wondering Chicago Deep Dish is DELICIOUS and you should definitely get it from Lou Malnattis. The two most famous pizza places in Chicago are Ginos and Lou Malnattis and while I only tried Malnattis I can unequivocally say it was the best : ) They will actually ship it frozen to anywhere in the US and I have definitely considered that option since being home. But part of me thinks it would be an affront to pizzadom to freeze such a heavenly dish. (That and I can't quite convince myself to pay $100 to have a pizza shipped. Mostly its the money.)

The El was also pretty cool, as far as transportation goes. I mean, given the option of the El or a bus I would go with the El. And looking from the platform I can see that it would be possible to fall onto the tracks and then be saved from certain doom by having somebody roll you to the side. (The falling in love with your fake fiance's brother and adopting yourself into his family in less than a week and a half..well, that's a stretch. But it still makes for a cute movie so I won't question it.)

And the IMSS? Well, it was pretty cool too. If you are dorky like me and enjoy exhibits of old medical devices and history. I will say that for an International museum it was decidedly small (four stories of a historical house near the shores of Lake Michigan). It's price tag was definitely in keeping with what you would expect of an international museum : )

As a side note, money doesn't work quite the same way in Chicago as it does in other places. You know how Philadelphia is the "city of brotherly love?" I like to think of Chicago as the "city of extortion." You pretty much have to pay for everything. And large amounts. Except when you don't. For example, the zoo is inexplicably free all the time. And while most of the beaches charge an entrance fee, they cut it in half when high amounts of bacteria are found in the water (usually after rainstorms from all the yucky runoff) so you get twice the bacteria at half the price! Also there are some random free beaches and most of the museums in Chicago also have a monthly or weekly free day where you don't have to pay at all. Which, being the cheapskate that I am makes me wonder why you would go on any other day? We certainly didn't so the IMSS was free for us.

I saw a lot of cool things while I was there, like bleeders from the 17th century used for bloodletting, old patent medicine bottles with active ingredient lists containing things like Cocaine and Opium, statues and paintings of medical pioneers like Galen and Hippocrates, an actual iron lung from the not too far gone era when polio was still a serious threat in the US, and a few plastinated bodies from Gunther Van Hagen's Bodies exhibit (which I saw in Salt Lake when it came through a few years ago and would recommend to anyone who is not easily nauseous.)

Since this trip took place in July and I am just now getting around to writing about it there are a lot of things I have forgotten, but I do know that I really enjoyed the IMSS and would recommend stopping by if you are ever in the Chicago area. (Here is the link.) I would also recommend getting one of these from the gift shop they have there:

Plush disease causing organisms!!

Because who wouldn't want to snuggle up to a little Anthrax and Rhinovirus?