Chicago Excursion #2

On Today's Menu: VISA. It's everywhere you want to be...but won't always get to be.

I forget how much I love big cities until I visit one. The tall buildings, the unique smells, the variety of people, the outrageous number of Starbucks cafes...I'm captivated by it all. I turn into a different person when I travel. I become abnormally confident and seem to exude self-assuredness that is noticeable to those around me. This is especially true when I go solo and when I travel to a place I am not very familiar with. The more foreign the place, the more confidence I have. Weird, I know. Seems like it should be the other way around. I have decided to place the blame on my fascination with culture. I hate being a tourist. I like to blend in. Not because I fear rejection, have low self-esteem, or any other such psycho babble...but because I love to observe a society as it is. Designate me the fly on the wall, describe me as cultural camouflage, whatever. It's my life's calling.

Recently, I made a much anticipated journey to Chicago in order to reclaim my passport from the Spanish Consulate. Being the swashbuckler that I tend to be, I decided to make this trip all in one day. This meant getting up at 3am to catch a flight out of Nashville, layover in Atlanta, hit Chicago's Midway Airport, take the subway (or El as they call it) to the Consulate, pick up the passport, get back on the El, go back to Midway, go back to Atlanta, touchdown in Nashville around 11pm. Long day. What could I have possibly been thinking, you ask? Indeed it was: Why do I have to go further south in order to go north? I resolved that I shall never know the answer to that question. (Probably not the response you assumed?)

I make it sound as if I had zero time when, in fact, I had loads of time on my hands. I spent a couple hours in Atlanta and about seven hours in Chicago. My main objective for the day was, actually, not to pick up my passport, but it was to not focus on the pointlessness of this trip. Yes, I needed to get my passport back. But the academic endeavor that I had spent so much time preparing for, fell through at the last minute, thus rendering the visa so neatly affixed to my passport useless. It was quite the bummer, I will admit. I was, needless to say, disappointed when they handed me said visa (which would have allowed me to stay in Spain for the entirety of 2010) knowing full well that I wouldn't get to use even one day of it. But, as I previously mentioned, all my efforts were put forth into not fixating on this fact. Instead my focus was remembering that God has a marvelous plan for the future. I just know it. He is full of wonderful surprises, no?!

Anyhow, I decided to spend my seven hours in Chicago experiencing what I could. I went to the park, to the pier, to Starbucks (it was a must), walked up and down the Magnificent Mile, scoped out Chicago University...the confidence thing I mentioned before was kicking into overdrive by this point. So much so that I had numerous people stopping me on the street, as well as people on the El, asking me for directions and at what stop to get off in order to reach this street or that store. What was crazy was that I was able to tell them. What was even more crazy was that I was right. I've been to Chicago exactly three times. Never spent more than forty-eight hours at a time there. Nor had I ever been there by myself. I say this not as bragging...believe you me...but I say it with astonishment. I learned a lot that day. I find learning something new to be enthralling. Possibly even more so when it involves the illumination of one's own character.

And so, for the moment I shall remain in the land of the Bluegrass, plotting my next adventure, believing God has already laid out the groundwork.