Art Institute of Chicago: Take Two

Apparently, I’m more of an art nerd than I myself have previously realized. I happened to learn this fact when I found myself waking up at 10:25 AM excited to go on my second trip to the Art Institute of Chicago. This time, I went with three RAs – Rachel, David, and Sam – and about nine other kids from the summer program.

Today’s activity was a scavenger hunt at the Art Institute. We left the North lobby at 11:15 AM, walking around 20 minutes to the bus stop. Karla also came on this trip, so we walked and talked together. However, I noticed that I’m actually quite a fast walker because I accidentally left Karla behind many times when we weren’t talking and were just walking silently, and I assumed she was right next to me but she was nearly a block away.

The walk to the bus station

The RAs walked really fast, too. Rachel had to walk at the end of our group for around 10 minutes because somehow, we all walk really slow compared to the RAs, and David and Sam literally glanced back one time at us for the whole 20 minutes to make sure we were following them – though, to be fair, we are all high school students, so we can’t blame them for assuming we won’t get lost while following someone.

We all made it to the bus stop with the whole group intact, so that was good. The bus ride was uneventful, so during that time, I contemplated about life while looking out the window and also realized it was my first time riding a bus in Chicago. Those were completely unrelated things but it shows everyone how my mind wanders a lot when I have nothing better to do.

We went into the Art Institute of Chicago after we grabbed lunch at Shake Shack. We entered  the institute through the Modern Wing, and before we went inside, we split up into our two teams of four (two of the students just wanted to see the museum and not participate in the scavenger hunt). My team consisted of me, Karla, Tushar, and Jacob, and after making sure everyone downloaded the GroupMe app so we could communicate with one another, the scavenger hunt officially began!

A lady and her poodle

I became sort of the tour guide, since I had been at the institute only a week prior and still remembered most of the exhibits. Many items on the scavenger hunt checklist were really witty and clever. For example, one of the items said to “take a picture of a piece of art so useless it could only be used as a paperweight.” I easily figured out they meant take a picture of the paperweight exhibit, having seen the exhibit before, so that was where we started.

The scavenger hunt was really fun and hilarious, and I’m very grateful for the RAs that spent so much time planning this activity for us. They really put a lot of thought into the hunt. We were supposed to take a picture of “a dining hall when Envision kids are around,” but we didn’t figure out what that meant until Karla finally realized it was a metaphor for a dining hall full of blue-collar workers. For everyone else to be able to appreciate the ingenuity of this line: Envision is another summer program at UChicago, and all the kids in Envision wear blue lanyards (and just a lot of blue in general) and also tend to fill up the dining hall during lunchtime.

This is so cute!!!

We also found a sassy samurai, did four different poses with four different statues, found a photograph on display of someone with the same color nail polish as Sam, and saw an unnecessarily gendered firearm. We failed to find the only picture of George Washington in the museum or Bambi’s mom, but I think I can say for everyone we had a great time. Even though I had been at the institute last week, most of the exhibits I walked into today I had never seen before, and I’m fairly sure I still have not seen all of them! It is simply crazy how the institute can be so big.

Aliens have taken over

We left the institute at 4:15 PM, walking back to the bus station. The atmosphere as we waited for the bus was very uplifting because everyone had so much fun and were really happy. On the bus ride, we talked and laughed at the incident yesterday where our summer session students stuffed all the bean bags from one floor into the elevator to take to another floor and ultimately got into trouble for it. It was a fun bus ride.

We also went to the bean again

After we got off the bus, we walked the way back to the campus again. On the way, the sky began darkening and lighting flashed and thunder rolled. Chicago weather is so insane. We felt the first of little sprinkles from the sky and began walking faster. It began to actually pour just as we were about to reach the dorms, so most of us only were slightly wet, and I don’t think anyone got soaked.

It was 5:15 PM by then, and I went up to my room to drop off my things. I spent some time tidying my room before I headed down to dinner, where I was joined by Lindsay after twenty minutes or so. Lindsay got to watch me struggle with cutting up a yellow peach with a dinner knife (because I don’t like eating the fuzzy skin), which took 15 minutes. Sadly to say, I don’t think the peach was worth the effort.

Jahnvi, Kara, and Olivia joined Lindsay and I just as we finished our food, so we stayed and chatted with them about what they did today as they ate. When everyone was done eating, I went back into my dorm room to finish up my homework questions and readings that are due tomorrow.

Today was our last Sunday at Chicago. I cannot believe two weeks have passed by so quickly. In just five days, we will be heading back to California, and that just seems so surreal to me.