that one time I run on a marathon: 2018

Earlier this year, a friend asked me a question.

I remember every word, and the look she gave me after I gave her an answer. “What do you want to do in your life?”. The question was somehow gave birth to a few thoughts that—in a way or another—could describe the general feeling I had throughout the year.

I shrugged, and said “I don’t know, yet”. At that time, I felt like that kind of question—the kind where you ask someone about their goals, their passion, their dreams—is not the one you could throw on a coffee table sipping a hot caramel machiato in a regular day. Sometimes I would just blurt a generic answer, the one that will stop the other person from asking follow-up questions.  

Just like a hundreds of millions of babies that were born in 1995, I turned 23 this year. Not yet a quarter, but the crisis has definitely hitting on me—prematurely. But hey, maybe a quarter life crisis is meant to be there even before you hit the number. It is a life-shift from an adolescence period to adulthood, and most of the time it feels like unfolding a never ending layers or trapped inside a long tunnel. Maybe because the conversations during hang-outs were changing, promptly, from gossips, assignments, or movies; to engagement pictures, wedding organizers, babies, or financial plans. Late night phone calls’ topics were shifting from silly crushes, or outpour cries due to heartbreaks, to graduate school scholarships, an old friend got engaged, or moving away plans. It gets overwhelming, I had to switch off my Instagram for a month. The fear was inevitable, I began to let myself drowned in it. I haven’t gotten anything in my pocket figured out, yet, and I was panicked.

One of the books I read this year is The Bell Jar. In fact, I carried it along with me on every journey I took throughout the year. There is this one part of the book where Esther Greenwood—the main character—could see her life as a big fig tree branching out before her, with each fat purple fig symbolizes every life options she has upon her. The fig tree part hits me so hard, that I stayed up all night thinking about it. What if I had these handful of figs in my arms but I couldn’t carry them all with me? What if I’m too busy picking up the figs that fell from my arms, they started to rot even before I get a bite?

2018 is a 27 miles marathon, and I definitely wasn’t the winner.

This is the year I cried as much as I was a toddler. I took many flights and cab rides. I tried to hang my fate on a giant, sparkly, Christmas tree people built on the capital city, it fell—it couldn’t hang on for too long. I tried many times to the point I got nothing on my hands but a series of failure. I fell, I scraped my knees. I tried to whisper to the ground, nobody answers me back. I tried to flee, on a full speed—pack my bags and planning on never going to look back—but my feet were on chains. Nothing worked out, not even a single thing. And for the first time in my life, I googled the least painful way to kill myself. I reached the point of the marathon where I began to suffocate and had to stop.

“But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenceless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.” — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Then I realized that it was all me. I let myself drowned in a social construction the society made, I let it made me feel there is no way I could catch up. I let myself to live inside somebody else’s timeline. I was constantly at war with myself. The only thing I need is to tell myself that it’s okay—it’s okay to fail, you can always try again next time. I focused on my failures only, but I never really appreciate the trips, storms, wrong-turns, bad decisions, rocky paths, and heartbreaks that had led me here. I never took a time to reflect on what has gotten me here, how much I’ve changed. Therefore, I would try to make a peace with myself while I have to unfold more layers ahead. Maybe I don’t have anything figured out at this moment, and it’s okay. The figs will grow again, and it will be just in time.

2018 is a 27 miles marathon, and I wasn’t the winner. But I finished it. I decided to feel alright again. 

My Kind of Town, Chicago is

If you were kind enough (I couldn’t find any better word other than this) to take a look at my previous posts, it is quite typical for me to begin a new post with one or few words apologizing for my slacking in my commitment of updating my life through this platform (geez, commitment is such a heavy word!). In fact, I have several unfinished writings, which ended up in my laptop stored in a folder named “blog” and I never even bother to check (let alone finish them) again. I’ve been thinking a lot ever since graduation that I want to somehow spicing up this blog into something, you know, more informative? but to decide the right topic or content was as hard as moving my ass to actually begin to write something. I need to be honest that I don’t know many blogs to read (or is it just me too lazy to find?) and I feel like I should start looking for one. If you happen to know any good blog, literally any blog be it about travel, foods, fashion.. please enlighten me.

Alright folks, let’s jump into the real thing I actually wanted to share. As the title implies, it’s going to be my 4 days and 3 nights “adventure” in the wind city: Chicago, IL. Seriously, though, if you think this is going to be very inaccurate (because the trip happened two years ago!) just so you know that I’m trying my best here. Looking at the pictures taken during the trip is enough for me to reminisce those days (because it is A LOT of them) and, well, my intention here is not to give away any tips and tricks. Nonetheless, I’ll be glad if you’re willing to walk down this memory lane with me.

It started with four exchange students in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, wanted to travel somewhere less-snowy for the spring break. A few options came up, started from the East (such as how about New York? How about Boston?) to far West (don’t you guys want to go to LA? Disney Land? How about San Francisco?). For about two weeks, we roughly made plans with our limited knowledge about other cities in the US. I don’t quite remember how Chicago became our final decision. After some planning, and calculating, and sometimes arguing, we made (actually, a quite good) travel plan.

Here is the thing, Sioux Falls is not that big of a city (even the airport is smaller than the airport in my hometown) so the domestic flight from there to any other cities costs a lot. For that reason, we decided to take a bus to go to Chicago. Based on our little research, we could either take Greyhound, or Megabus. Megabus is cheaper than Greyhound, but Greyhound is the only bus available in Sioux Falls. The plan is we were going to use Greyhound from Sioux Falls to Minneapolis, then go on with Megabus to Chicago. Before you wonder why would we do that, why don’t we take Greyhound straight to Chicago, I’ll give you an insight of how far the price difference is. I bought a round trip ticket, for both Greyhound and Megabus. A round trip ticket from Sioux Falls to Minneapolis was in total $112 with Greyhound. A round trip ticket from Minneapolis to Chicago was only $41! Sioux Falls – Minneapolis was like four hours and Minneapolis – Chicago was almost six hours (and passing a few states). I tried to compare the two but I didn’t find any significant differences. One was as comfortable as the other, the only difference is Megabus is a double decker bus. However, it’s important to note that it was my own experience, I think other people could have different opinion.

The trip began on January 28, 2016 at 10.00AM to Minneapolis. We arrived at Greyhound station in Minneapolis around 5PM and we got a few hours before our next bus to Chicago.  We decided to stroll around the city. We were hungry and randomly picked a bar with a pizza sign in front of it. I forgot the name of the bar and I feel bad about it. They had a quite decent pizza and they served very good chicken wings! They deserve a recommendation. If you could find the place just from the pictures I took there, please go and give it a try.

The bar which I don't remember the name

Just a glimpse of Minneapolis

We were intentionally picked a night trip to Chicago, so we could sleep on it. According to the plan, we will arrive around 5AM and we could go straight to our room in the hotel we had booked a few days prior. Everything went according to plan up until we arrived at Holiday Jones, the hotel we booked for three nights. We took a taxi from the Megabus stop to the hotel, and we arrived around 5.30AM. The hotel looked dark from the outside, and the taxi driver told us to negotiate with the receptionist so we could get in before the check-in hours. I guess he did that because he saw our tired faces (I did look super messed up, my sweater, my coat, and my scarf were in mismatching colors).  Turned out we couldn’t do that because the guests before us hadn’t checked out yet, and the only thing the receptionist could do is to allow us to leave our bags at the hotel. Thank God for 24 hours Starbucks right next to the hotel, we waited until 7AM there with a cup of hot chocolate. It wasn’t long after I put my butt down on a wooden chair in Starbucks that I noticed something was wrong with my phone. The screen was shattered, there were a lot of shards of glass in my coat pocket. I dropped my phone from my lap as I got off from the taxi. Too much for a first few hours in Chicago, eh?

Let me tell you about Holiday Jones. It is a two-star boutique hotel located in 1659 W Division Street. My friend, Tinker, found this hotel while randomly searching for a cheap stay in Chicago (before you ask why we didn’t use Airbnb, to be honest with you we didn’t know about it when we were on this trip). I forgot how much exactly the room costs for three nights, but I remember we had to pay around $34 each. The room we got has two bunk beds, and shared bathroom. The breakfast was also pretty decent and got a lot of variations each day (I remember having bagels with cream cheese every morning during my stay, and it felt so… American). The interiors were pretty and unique, and the view from my room wasn’t bad at all. However, you need to lower your voice during your stay, because even if you speak in the considerable tone (well, at least, that’s what you thought) you can be heard to three rooms away. It is a great location too because you got Wendy’s, Starbucks, CVS, Burger King, even a gym nearby. Most importantly, the nearest subway station is only 5 minutes away by walk. (Head over to their website to see the rooms, I didn't take many pictures there).

We planned to use a CityPASS for this trip. I don’t remember how much the price was, but I look it up and it says it is $106 for adult so I guess it was just around this amount. A CityPASS gives you tickets to Chicago’s most visited tourist destination, and in some cases, you’ll get a special admission and you don’t have to wait in line with other tourists. There five tickets including Shedd Aquarium, Skydeck Chicago, The Field Museum, and the other two you have to pick one between Museum of Science and Industry or 360 Chicago, and between Adler Planetarium or Art Institute of Chicago. You can purchase it online prior to your trip on its website. My friends and I decided to pick 360 Chicago and Adler Planetarium (after having some little bit arguments lol). We tried our best to go to places other than the ones included in CityPASS. We went to Chinatown on our first night in Chicago (because we decided to take a rest in the day, I mean, it was almost 10 hours of a road trip all the way from Sioux Falls, in January).

The reason why we decided to use CityPASS is because after we calculated the price of admission tickets from each place we wanted to visit, the price CityPASS offered is cheaper. But I know that it makes this trip very tourist-y (with aquarium, museum, and all), so you don’t have to purchase one if maybe you wanted to plan the trip on your own. It was our first trip together in the US, we weren’t brave enough to go to less tourist-y places in the middle of winter. Chicago might be less snow-y than Sioux Falls, but the wind was crazy.

We hop on and off to places mostly with the subway (well, it’s not exactly a subway.. more like a train called CTA). I got a 3-day pass (72 hours) for $20, and it was super easy to get one. In the train station there will be a thing called Ventra Vending Machine and you will get a Ventra Card. You can also use the card for bus. Chicago train route is not as complicated as the New York subway route, after a few rides I could get used to it. It didn’t save me from embarrassment though. One day I got a little confused on which line should I take to go to Cottage Grove station and decided to ask the information lady (is this correct?). Instead of saying “grove” I said “groove”. Please note that it was my first month in the US, so can we let this one go?

Before I went to this trip, my roommate, Katie, told me to try Chicago deep dish pizza because it is a must. I almost forgot about it during the trip and decided to randomly picked a place to have the pizza in the last night we were in Chicago. We just came back from Skydeck Chicago and just searched “deep dish pizza near me” on Google. We went to Giordano’s Pizza at 223 W. Jackson Blvd., the one that just a block away from Skydeck. Turned out, it was one of the best place to have deep dish pizza. Lucky us! I didn’t try the pizza from other places, though. I can’t really make a comparison, but I definitely recommend you Giordano’s. If I ever get a chance to go to Chicago again, I’ll come back to Giordano’s. They serve a great deal of variety of deep dish pizza, but we obviously opted for the cheesiest one. My friends also ordered the bacon BBQ chicken deep dish. And I picked their BBQ chicken wings for starter (what’s with me and my chicken wings obsession?!).

I think there are a lot more to discover in the city, which four days are not going to be enough. I actually looked up some interesting events through Facebook events (you know that one feature Facebook has that shows you events in a certain location, right?) during my trip, but never made it to any single one, and kind of regretting that. Maybe I should come back in the summer, or spring (and make sure I didn’t drop my phone again because traveling with cracked screen was irritating). The trip was supposed to be a spring break, but a blizzard in Minneapolis welcomed us when we wanted to go back to Sioux Falls (we had to postpone our trip back to Sioux Falls for two nights because of the blizzard).

Despite the crazy, freezing wind, Chicago was great. I’m glad we decided to go there for the break above all the options. The people were nice (especially the receptionist at Holiday Jones, she was really kind!), and I made plenty of unforgettable memories with my friends. I still listen to Frank Sinatra – My Kind of Town until today, and it reminds me of the excitement, feeling nervous in Megabus, having arguments with travel mates, everything.

My kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of people too
People who smile at you

My kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of razzmatazz
And it has all that jazz!