Clouds Clouds Clouds

So much has happened in the past 24 hours, I don't know where to start. Or wait, I do. I showed up 15 minutes after the call time and, of course, Don was disappointed. I was disappointed at myself too as this was not a good start to this trip.

Chicago's bouncy clouds

When we got there, Don took group pictures of the cohort, passed out Red Vines, and gave us details about our itinerary.  I tried hard to listen to what he was saying but the excitement and nervousness was clouding my mind. We soon huddled over our baggage and talked about AP scores, heard Raqeeb shriek as he saw deer run past, and witness him sprint home and back to school in 15 minutes because he forgot to pack his contacts.

Our shuttle somehow arrived a whole hour late, but we managed to make it onto our flight, where we ended up sitting nearby a lot of parents with babies. These babies would wave at us or smile sometimes when they saw us, which released a constant string of "AWWWW"s from our end.

The real fun, however, happened the moment we set foot on the ground. Lindsay told us how her mom always complained about the bad quality of clouds in California, which we realized were true. The clouds in Chicago look very fluffy and story-like, the exact ones I had seen Elmo bouncing on in Sesame Street.

The border-lit mirror

Anyways...when we got to Omni, there were surprises after surprises. My brain spent a good 30 minutes frozen, trying to comprehend how I could be in somewhere so nice and how this was even real. We left all our luggage outside because workers would bring them straight to our rooms. The rooms were even more impressive. The door opened to a sitting room with a sofa and tables, where there was another room with two beds, and a bathroom on the side. The bathroom was heaven for make-up lovers. The mirror has white light surrounding it: the same type commonly seen in vanities and in make up tutorials.

After disassembling our suitcases, screaming for help, and running around the room, Lindsay, Cecilia,

Centennial Wheel

and I concluded our 30 minute stressful session of picking an outfit for Navy Pier. Once we were there, we each ate huge slices of pizza--- that were actually HUGE.

After taking a whole round trip around the pier, we came back to the Centennial Wheel, and grabbed tickets for it. I saw that the interactive climbing walls were nearby so I ran to see them. It was one of the biggest disappointments I've faced as it is actually for little kids, not teens, but they hadn't mentioned that anywhere on the official website. I was fine, though, because soon Ms. Sciacca, aka Waka Sciacca Flame, aka Mom, bought us tickets for the wheel. All of us were almost afraid that we had been ripped off by Navy Pier, until we felt the wheel pull us up a second and third time.

Center of the fountains!!

After getting off the wheel, we decided to walk to the 360 Observatory since it wasn't too far away. Along the way we saw a water fountain, so Lindsay and I jumped in to get our feet wet. I managed to get to the center and back out without getting any clothes wet.

At 360, we took pictures and even did the Tilt. As we stood near the glass pane and it tipped downward, I felt exhilarated the first couple of seconds. After a little while though, my shoulders got tired of holding my weight and that distracted me a little from fully enjoying the view and feeling exhilarated.

By the time we headed back to Omni, it was already getting pretty late so we set straight to working on our blogs, which happened to take longer than expected since our day was so eventful. Now, time to make sure we get up on time tomorrow to be at the lobby punctually...