Thursday, March 23

So, our Emerging Leaders conference did start on Thursday...but not until the evening! I didn't know that, so I had the day off work and used it to get some things done around the apartment and catch up on sleep.
Plato's closet is about 45 minutes away, but I had a HUGE bag of good clothes that were good enough to get money for, so I went there in hopes of walking out of the store with my wallet filled with hard-earned cold cash. I got my hopes way up, unfortunately, because my clothes were "too dressy" for Plato's. They gave me the names and locations of some other consignment stores that might take the clothes...another afternoon wasted. I'll have to try to find these other consignment stores on another day.

Thursday night we made our way over to McCormick Place, the same building that held the Car Show. The Congress for Urban Ministries conference was close to ending and our tie-in conference, the Emerging Leaders conference, was just starting. Both were organized by SCUPE, where my Practicum Group leader works and also another CS student.

When we went to the Ballroom in the Hyatt motel connected with McCormick place we caught some of the last speakers from the Congress on Thursday night. Let me give you a background of what kind of people were there and the spiritual feeling in the ballroom that night:

Pastors, ministors, spiritual leaders, church-planters, people from all over the US and Canada come to this annual Congress for Urban Ministries conference. It's a conference with special speakers and workshops designed to inspire and excite people to spread the word of Christ in their jobs and on the streets in their urban sites. The feeling in the ballroom for the first speaker we went to (Thursday night) was a feeling of spiritual revival and excitement and standing ovations and high emotions, Amens and Halleluias.

We, as Chicago semester students just joining the event, felt out of place amidst all the pastors and strong leaders of urban missions and different denominations. Many of the students on our program showed up that night, took it to be what the rest of the weekend was going to be about, and never came back to anything else for the conference. A number of students did join in the rest of the weekend, but I'm SURE that no one participated in everything they said they would.

Our weekend was put together so that we would still be able to catch some of the workshops from the Congress, and then build on that as students on Saturday and Sunday. The events over the weekend include neighborhood visits, church visits, a few speakers, meals hosted by Chicago Semester staff and Wheaton College. It took a lot of planning by SCUPE to get all of this together, and it went very smoothly.

I was thinking one day...

I've always wondered which stall in the bathroom is the cleanest? I had to do some in depth searching, but I finally found someone with bathroom knowledge. I'll share some of that wisdom with you...worthless information, I know, but I'm full of it!

Use the last stall, It's usually the cleanest one. It seems many messy people are also quite lazy. The last stall is waaaay too far for them to walk.

"In the SOUTH the first stall is the cleanest, whereas in the NORTH the last stall is the cleanest (a shift in trends over the past ten years)."

While the last stall is often the cleanest, and the second stall is usually the filthiest, since most people adhere to the protocol of skipping the first stall (believing it to be the most popular and therefore dirtiest), and go to the second stall, causing the second stall to be the actual most popular one.

In Singapore, you can get fined for not flushing in a public restroom - so you wonder how they know - so you wonder if they're watching - so suddenly you can't go - problem solved
Bathroom Statistics

In 1991, Scott Paper Company did a survey to find out about people's bathroom habits. Here are a few of the findings:

• 54% of Americans fold their toilet paper neatly, while 35% wad it into a ball before using it.
• 7% of Americans steal rolls of toilet paper.
• More than 60% prefer that their toilet paper roll over the top, 29% from the bottom. The rest don't care.
  
• You can gauge a person's education by whether they read in the bathroom . More than 2/3 of people with master's degrees and doctorates read on the toilet. Only one in two high school graduates read while in the bathroom, and 56% of those with college degrees do.

Tuesday, March 21

Another day gone by so fast! I was able to get off work early on Tuesday so that I could make it to this week's art event on time. I had to leave right after a meeting at 4:15 (I LOVE MEETINGS) and head over to the Contemporary Museum of Art up on Chicago Street. I stopped for a Dunkin Donut on the way :) and was a bit early for our check in time of 5pm.
That museum is so industrial-looking. It reminded me of the Contemporary Museum we went to in Ottawa this christmas...very open, almost empty, artsy, up-to-you interpretation. The main exhibit was the Andy Warhol prints exhibit.
A few projects caught my attention, the first was the huge baby. It looked so real, except for the hair! but it was about 3 feet tall. I read that parts of it were enhanced/enlarged for emotional effect. It was made of mixed media materials (fake hair that looks "real," etc.) I couldn't figure out if the baby was made of porcelain or clay or what, but it was cool.

There was also another human-like statue thing upstairs that was the body and head of a boy, but the face was Hitler. The exhibit was called "HIM" and that's all it was. We walked through three rooms of emptiness before coming into a room with this one boy kneeling befrore a wall. You walk in and see the back of the boy, expecting to see a cute little boy kneeling, but you walk around and see the face of Hitler. Kinda creepy.

My favorite exhibit was the simplicity pictures on the main floor just before going upstairs. They were so simple at first, yet if you looked at them longer you could see more and more detail. That's the kind of photography I'd love to do if I did still shots. I like taking pictures of people, but that kind of scenery appeals to me too.
Other things at the CMA that stood out to me: Light room (Pink and Gold lights set up in random bars across the walls), different mobiles, video with just the mouth and teeth of someone talking, cool steps, the naked man statue, the rug-looking painting of different weights of paint dots in the pattern of a spiral, the original prints with which Andy Warhol did his art, different ways words can symbolize art, the vast whiteness and simplicity of the inside. the mixed media room exhibit with strings across the room and tiny town in the corner, and right as you walk into the museum you see cool white shiny box-like squares on the wall. (Sorry-I can't describe them better than that...I could draw them though)

I was amazed at how people could describe their art. One of the canvas paintings was a black border with a red line border just inside of that. Nothing but white inside of the borders. Then they went on to describe how the black line keeps going and what that represents and other bs about the white space representing something else. I could do that! I could paint that exact painting with no training whatsoever.

I wonder what it takes for such simple art like that to get into this prestigious museum. I could just put a black dot on a page and explain it as something significant and it would probably sell for hundreds of dollars if the explanation was crazy enough. Amazing.
We stayed at the museum until around 7. The bookstore was funny and had sweet books like "50 boyfriends worse than yours," "50 things to do with a wife", CD of noises for a nosy neighbor (ie, screeming baby, party of over 200 people, full-fledged fight, banging pots and pans, etc.) Humorous stuff but also artsy books and texts as well.

Again, I went to bed early and didn't go on the computer. Hence, the lack of blogs and emails in the last few days.

Monday, March 20

I can't believe how fast work goes sometimes, especially when I have a project to work on. My objective for Monday was to find boxes and feathers as part of my media kit project. The feathers were tough to find because I didn't want to order them online..I wanted to see them and see what size they were and they had to be cheap enough. The boxes, I just left up to Kristen which ones we would order because I didn't know the price range..but I did the research. We picked some glossy red boxes. They'll be great! I just hoped they would get here by Wednesday so that we could get the kits out! (meh, I found out today that they won't be here until Friday! *smacking forehead*)
Monday was Dave's birthday! We celebrated with cake on Sunday night as a group, but Monday we went out to a spanish restaurant for supper. I ate a small plate of hamburger helper before I left so that I wouldn't have to spend more than a few bucks on something small at the restaurant. I wasn't hungry going in, which was a good sign. I was hoping to just get away with ordering a coffee and socializing with everyone....
sigh.
Well, when you go out as a group (there were 8 of us) and don't get individual bills, I have to remember that I will end up paying at least ten dollars, no matter what I order or even IF I order. I need to remember that. Someone ordered a 13 dollar pitcher of sangria...I didn't even want any. Then we all split the cost of Dave's meals, and I ordered a small dessert for $3.50 to put my total up to $10 plus tax and tip for our party of eight. I was shocked that I had to pay that much, and it put a damper on my evening.
I've decided that if I go out as a group again, I want a SEPARATE check. I don't care if it's a minor inconvenience to the server, that's their job. I'm too dutch to pay ten bucks for socializing.
So, because of my cold, I was in bed by 10:30 that night...now, that meant I had to cut something significant out of my evening....so I cut out my computer use. Not too bad, but I did forget that I was going to do some filing for work for about an hour. Oops.
I'm realizing that taking work home if you have no social life at night can be good because you can get ahead and impress people at work the next day. I'd rather do on-line filing than do homework for class anyway. Plus, sometimes I do homework research online during slow times at work anyway. It balances out.
Anyway, like I was saying, I was in bed early because I didn't go on my computer (so I forgot to do some work on the computer). Yah, that's the whole story. Sorry for the tangents. I slept really well that night!

Le weekend--backwards

Sunday

This weekend was a flutter of excitement. Kate was away for the weekend, it was St. Patrick's Day on Friday, work went very very well, and Saturday and Sunday were days to nurse my newly established cold. I think it was from walking in the cold yesterday. But it was sunny, so the weather deceived me. I assumed it would be warmer! I slept in this morning because of an unrestful sleep last night. Don't you hate it that you can only breathe out of one nostril when you're sick? I hope my canadian medicines can help that tonight. So far my cold is just in my sinuses, mom, not a chest cold yet. I hope it doesn't get that way either. Pam's had a cold for a long time now, and she's looking forward to going home the weekend of April 1st to go see a doctor and get it taken care of. I'm going to go with her! The first time I leave Chicago since I've been here. I can't say I'm looking forward to it to the point of jumping for excitement, but I would like a Tim Hortons Canadian Maple donut, and also replenish my supply of coffee. Pam and I would also like to try our luck at finding some time to go to Toronto together and maybe meet up with some Redeemer people too. That should be fun. I tried to find feathers for a project at work. No luck with that, so I might have to go again tomorrow to find some. I have some leads to a Joanne's fabrics store that I'll have to call. The project is a Media Kit for various publications to let them know about our new campaign. It will be a very cool thing to add to my portfolio, as well! We don't have class this week wednesday because we have a conference on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I'll let you know more about that tomorrow. Have a great week ahead, everyone!

Friday

Friday night I was able to borrow an ID and go out to Janelle vdh's party at Funk. She won a party, which means that people who know her get in and don't have to pay the cover charge. It was alright...we stayed there for about an hour and the left. Janelle's guests, Jesse Walhof and Joe Tiersma had made jello shots, which I've never had before, so I tried. They can be tough to swallow...so I took a spoon and enjoyed the jello. Josh deGroot and Justine Vandergrift were also here to visit for the weekend. It was nice to see some other Dordt people for once. And Josh said he already loved the city--after only being here one day.

After that some people went all the way out to Wrigleyville. I didn't want to go that far and risk not getting in anywhere so I stayed behind and played beer pong (but I still don't drink beer) so my objective was just to get the ping pong ball into the cups across the table.

I ended up getting locked out of my room--forgot to bring my keys with me--so I spent the night on a couch. That wasn't so fun, but I didn't want to wake up my roommates who went to bed early.