9 posts tagged “chicago”

Made it back to North Chicago alright - the drive was easy, but long. I'm tired, naturally not so much as to make me sleep. I'm ready to have some new things to think about, in any sense.

I brought back a few things from my parents' house - my Casablanca movie poster, the big Dutch oven that goes with my pots and pans, and a colander. My Aunt Ruth sent me back with this really great punch bowl that I can't wait to use at my next little soirée - it's a colored glass bowl in a brass holder, with a brass ladle. It comes with little matching glasses that hang on the side of the holder.

I got back tonight to find that the maintenance staff had pretty solidly destroyed the kitchen. Nadine sent in a request to have them look at our leaky dishwasher. The people who were here before us used cheap wooden chopsticks, and stupidly washed them in the dishwasher, which caused them to jam up in the sealing gasket. So we got this "Look, dumbasses" note from the maintenance staff like it was our fault - I have real chopsticks that I eat my Asian food with, not the crappy restaurant chopsticks. Don't look at me.

So that's really all I know... not really a lot to write home about.

A new term starts for me on Monday - I'm finishing up biochemistry, starting Neuroscience and Genetics, and taking online courses in Ethics and Epidemiology. I'm excited to be in some new classes, for the challenge and the thrill of new material.

I'm also excited, even ready, to go back to Chicago this weekend. It's still not home, but it is where most of my life is now, which is simultaneously great and also terrifying. It's got the highest density of "my people," in terms of people who get me and understand better than most (with Lacey being the obvious exception) what my life is like. It's only just been in the past couple of months (weeks?) that I've felt like there was anything keeping me there besides school.

It hasn't been that long since I've been that happy in a place - I love Columbia, and there are days when I miss it so much that I ache for my places there, sitting under "my" tree, sipping coffee at Lakota, watching Thursday night TV in Lacey's living room. But it's not home now - most of my people aren't there anymore and when I go back, I'm going back for visits, to see the few people who are left and to be in my places.

The new year has been a strange mix of happiness and panic, stress and frustration. But I can't think, except for an afternoon here, an hour or so there, where I've been genuinely unhappy. And there have been a lot of situations where I've caught myself working without a net, and doing things I never thought I'd do. And there are some times when I catch myself thinking, "What's happened to me?" It's happened a lot since I've been home, when I think about Chicago and the things that I miss there. And the people that I miss there. I've never really been one for missing people, so that's a really, really scary phenomenon for me. I can't really iterate how terrifying it is to feel like that.

Anyway. I'm ready to go back to Chicago to await the spring and see everyone and learn new things. It's a big new term for me, but I'm going to try my hardest to stay uncomplicated and happy, to be the friend that I should be, and work hard and go to sleep tired every night.

...but everything that happened yesterday was too really gross to write about for public consumption. In a nutshell, we began pelvic dissection yesterday, which includes the sigmoid colon.

So awful.

I have most assuredly ruled out anything having to do with the GI tract. This is not a new thing - think Medical Microbiology with Dr. Thai. If you think you'd like to gain a better grasp of why I will not be working intimately with the inner workings of the GI tract, and you have a strong stomach, I would encourage you to Google "ascaris." What we had to deal with wasn't *quite* that bad.

I did get to do a really good dissection of the uterus and ovaries. Gynecological surgery, I'm starting to think, would be really cool. So that can go into the pile of specialties I'm considering.

In other news, I'm meeting someone for coffee tomorrow in Evanston. An exciting prospect, if for no other reason than I'm leaving North Chicago during the week. I'm pretty anxious about the whole thing, actually. I sort of wanted to go to Simchat Torah services in Winnetka beforehand, but I know that would only give me a chance to crap out and cancel. So I'm not going to services. Instead, I'm going to take a chance and go get coffee in Evanston.

1. Finished my last midterm
2. Walked around Winnetka before services because I got there early and it was so nice out, and I wanted to be in the world for a little bit.
3. Went to services, which are rapidly becoming what I look forward to during the week.
4. Drank. Not a lot, but enough.
5. Ate fast food for the first time since I moved to Chicago.
6. Stayed up til 4AM talking with an old friend.
7. Walked barefoot in the grass outside my apartment building while I was on the phone.

Still to come: Cleaning my apartment, shopping, Chicago Botanical Gardens, grocery shopping, sukkah dining at the rabbi's.

Weekends like these remind me that I am indeed still a human being.  

There are days when I really love it here. There are more of them lately, since I've joined my synagogue and I'm starting to learn my way around. It's nice to feel like I'm starting to build a support network that includes people who aren't in medical school. I'm blessed to have been welcomed into two great communities, one that supports my learning, and another that helps me to retreat a little bit from that life, even if only for a few hours a week. The days when I can take time to learn a place make me feel like I'm in control of my crazy life, and I love the days when I have a few hours to walk around in the city or on the North Shore, just to get a feel for where I am.

And there are moments where I hate it. They're mostly just moments, fleeting, frustrating spaces in time, usually when I'm lost in an unfamiliar place or when I have a great story to tell, but I can't just wander over to Lacey's, or when all of my Columbia friends are going out to dinner. I can almost forget sometimes how much I miss Columbia and the life I had there, or how far away I am from my parents and my Aunt Ruth. I hate those moments when I feel so far away from everyone I really care about, and I curl up and cry for a few minutes on my bed.

Wednesday will make it six weeks since I've been home in St. Louis. I won't make it back until the first weekend of next month. It will be the longest time I've ever been away from home. When I was in high school, I had these grandiose dreams of leaving St. Louis to go east for college and the rest of my life. Now, it's the place I want to be more than anything. I know that I have to get over this - this was supposed to happen. I'm supposed to grow up,  move on, and build a life of my own. But Chicago isn't home yet, and I'm not sure if/when it will be.

A few days ago marked my first full month in Chicago, or more accurately, the north Chicago suburbs. To be frank, I'm not wild about it. I guess it's not as bad when I'm actually in the city and there is stuff to do, but my study schedule makes those happy times few and far between. There is not a whole lot to do where I live, few good restaurants, and the nearest movie theater a fair drive away.

I hate driving here. I get in my car maybe twice a week because I hate driving so much. I schedule my weeks so that I can get all of my driving done. Chicago seems to have its own special set of traffic rules, where it's okay to enter an intersection from a left-turn lane even though you have no hope of making it through, and four or five cars almost always run red lights. It seems to take me an hour to drive anywhere except the grocery store. I'm also unaccustomed to having to drive absolutely everywhere, unless you take the train, and even then, you still have to drive to the train station.

I like my school, and I have some really great friends here already. It's not a totally unfortunate place. I think the larger problem is that I just miss Columbia and St. Louis a lot. I've never really been one to be homesick before, and I don't know if this really qualifies as homesickness; it's just such a difference from anywhere else I've lived before.

This weekend was good, though. My sister came up and we did some crazy shopping and good fooding. Perhaps more about that later - for now, anatomy!

So, I live in Chicago now. Or rather, Chicagoland.

I think I'm going to venture into the city tomorrow, try to figure out the public transportation system, maybe window shop for a little bit. I'm dying to go to Lollapalooza - a bunch of my favorite artists are playing - but $80 is really steep, even for five bands and a long afternoon of incredible music.

Orientation starts on Wednesday. I've met the roommate, and she seems nice and normal. Says she'll spend lots of weekends in Lakeview with her boyfriend, which translates to lots of quiet weekends for me! She did tell me to give her a call if I went into the city this weekend, and maybe we'd get together for lunch or coffee or something.

Nothing really to report. I just went for a run at the student fitness center. I did my first 5K in about three years!