The Calm Before the Storm

The last day of the last weekend of this trip was today, and it was very relaxed. I had lunch with some relatives who live here in Chicago, and then I just spent the rest of the day studying and fulfilling my interests.

My grandfather on my dad’s side has a sister who lives here, who married and had three kids. Today, I met up with my grandfather’s sister, Margaret, and one of her sons, Jim. Aunt Margaret always remembers my birthday, and gives me a call and sends some money whenever it comes around. When I last came to Chicago three years ago, she showed my family and I around and showered us with food and gifts for the duration of our stay. She’s a very important person to me; my grandfather was never very talkative, and she’s the one from his generation that tried the most to get to know me. Anyway, we went to a noodle place for lunch, and we talked about my life on campus, college applications, how my summer’s been, and my family, who are currently in Singapore. 

No pizza today. (Just kidding, had it for dinner instead)

Margaret and Jim.

Margaret and Jim dropped me back off at campus after lunch, and pretty much everyone was out. I practiced my trombone like usual, then went to dinner. Afterwards, in my dorm, I noticed that the sky was really intensely colored for a time that was so long before sunset (it was around 7:00 PM). I took a couple photos of the skyline through my window, then went to go play soccer at the field. It had been raining so the turf was pretty slick, which I like because the ball is a lot more responsive across wet turf. I had to take a survey for one of the other groups in my class at 8:00 PM, so I went back to the dorms to do that. They were studying the prevalence of biases and connotations in students using IAT testing, and I forget my exact results, but I’m pretty sure I had moderate biases towards men in science and women in liberal arts. After I took the survey, I collected some data for my own research project, then did some class reading.

View from the soccer field, captured by my phone. (Sorry, Don)

The sky was beautiful this evening.

The big block of productivity after I got back was pretty tiring, so I relaxed by organizing all of the photos on my computer and moving the unnecessary copies to my hard drive to save space. I got kind of distracted by videos on YouTube of Linkin Park’s last concert before their lead singer hung himself last Thursday, but I forced myself to read some more of the assigned studies so I wouldn’t have to stay up too late.

Today was pretty much the most relaxed this trip has been. I woke up at around noon, had lunch with family, got some exercise, and just generally chilled. I also managed to take some pretty photos along the way. Tomorrow is the beginning of the end, and I’m going to have to grind to produce a research paper with my group that’s up to our standards, so to have a day of rest before that is welcome.