A Night Out in Chicago!

Friday night was the annual Pritzker Prom. Each year the Pritzker administration and the Pritzker chapter of AMSA (American Medical Student Association) join together to host the Prom. It's unique in that it's probably the only event that is well attended by members of all four classes at Pritzker, though obviously more well attended by first and second years than third or fourth years. It was fun to hang out with my classmates, and to see a lot of the second years who have been somewhat incommunicado since starting the new quarter. It was also a cool opportunity to see and hang out with some of our school professors in a non-school environment. This year my class invited Dr. Ross (our head anatomy professor), Dr. Jim O'Reilly (also an anatomy prof), and Dr. Meredith (biochemistry professor). It was great to see them all dressed up and spiffy!

This year's Prom was held on the Odyssey II, a boat docked at Navy Pier on Lake Michigan. This was actually the second time that Rahul and I have been on a boat on Lake Michigan, since the first year semi-formal orientation event was also held on a boat. Luckily, though, the Prom was held on a yacht so that the freezing weather didn't put a damper on the fun. My classmates think I'm nuts, but rather than freeze to death on the walk to the boat, I decided to wear my new Ugg boots to the boat. Of course I changed once we got on the boat, but they still thought it was pretty funny. I just really dislike being cold!

At any rate, a fun time was had by all and Rahul and I had a cute picture taken by the photographer on the boat. Enjoy!

Our trip to the Imagination of Star Wars

We went to to the Chicago Museum of Science and Technology today, during the final weekend of both the Lights of Christmas exhibit and the Star Wars exhibit.

I remember the star wars exhibit from Boston - I had wanted to go but for some reason just never got around to it. We had tried to go many times, but during the first attempt, Tessa was sick, and then the second, the timing didn't work out. so, we finally made it just a day before it closed and left the area.

On the lights of Christmas- it was just a little exhibit where they had all these different trees, supposedly each decorated with things that were representative of their respective cultures and countries. it was neat - but as it was after Christmas, i couldn't care less. maybe next year.

Entering the Star Wars exhibit was a thrill. The music, the lights, the atmosphere. It was so cool to see almost 5 generations of people, walking through history, marveling at the fact that something that started out as a summer popcorn movie, before such movies existed, could become so much more.

Of course, the exhibit started with the main characters from episode IV: Luke, Han, R2-D2 and C3PO. I even got to take a picture with them. fun.

The first interactive part dealt with the idea of transportation in the star wars worlds - highlighted the land cruisers, pod racers and even the city transportation system. They had this Lego thingy where you play with them and build a little car, using magnetics to not only propel you, but to also suspend you above the ground. It was quite challenging, having to build these little cars that now only went straight, but also could go over hills, and up and down V-inclines. Naturally, we succeeded.

And by we, I don't just mean Tessa and myself. Joining us were our friends Lynne and Todd, another could recently transported from Boston to Chicago. While in Boston, Lynne worked with me in Connecticut and Todd was in Business School. They are just great, and we have fun doing the touristy things as well as just hanging out.

As we got into the worlds of star wars, the exhibit went on to talk about the different necessities of the characters, from Hoth to the volcano planet of the third film, they talked how the technology had been adapted to fit the environment. They showed inspiration of the native clothing of tatooine and the antarctic snowsuits for the rebels fighting in the cold of Hoth. And, for good measure, there were Wookies.

Next, there was a pretty neat demonstration that really showed how ingenious some of the robots were in star wars. It talked about multiple function abilities, their dexterity and ability to walk over multi-terrain floors and their crazy cool ability to apply critical thinking and problem solving abilities - especially where it comes to the rescue of our triumphant trio. And yes, i know there were multiple iterative of such - don't you just love Lucas' symmetry.

And what star wars exhibit would be compete without the highlighting of the weapons, villains and vessels of the dark side. They had actual props from the movies here, but did fail to mention why we can't have light sabers in our world. I'm holding out for one. A weapon for a more civilized time.

Lastly, we saw what was easily the centerpiece, the Infamous Darth Vader Suit. Just wow.

Yeah...it was a great day to go to a museum.

All our photos can be found at: http://picasaweb.google.com/rahulsarathy/StarWarsExhibit010508

we suck a blogging

So- we have come to the conclusion that we suck at writing stuff for our blog. So, happy new year and we will try harder next year to write more.

A Chicago Recap!

I know we're totally stealing Sofia and Aaron's idea, but since it's a good one I hope they won't mind. Since we're now pretty far from both sets of parents we thought it might be fun to let you see what we're up to here in the Midwest, and what I'll be up to in school in a few weeks.

So since I can't go back in time and create appropriate blog entries for previous days I'm just going to have to give you an update in one long post. Luckily, I've got some pictures to keep you interested! Unfortunately I don't have our pictures from Niagara Falls or the zoo yet, so those will have to come in a different post. I promise that future posts will not be this long!

We arrived to Chicago on Thursday the 30th at about 1 pm. We had planned to be here around 2 pm, only we forgot about the time difference. Oops. Luckily the leasing agent who we had an appointment with at 4 pm was able to squeeze us in between other clients and we were able to get our keys a little early. That night we explored our area a little bit and I was glad to find that I would have plenty of takeout and delivery options =) That's me, always thinking about food!

Friday we went to Target and bought all the cleaning supplies and ready to eat foods that we'd need while waiting for our furniture to arrive. The Target was really big, two levels with an escalator in the middle. Obviously carts don't do too well on an escalator so they actually have a separate escalator for just the carts. It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen - I'm looking forward to going back to the store just to go up and down that escalator again!

Saturday we explored downtown Chicago which was great! From our apartment to the Magnificent Mile is about 15 minutes by bus (and the bus stops literally in front of our door) which is going to be perfect for going out on weekends. I did a little shopping, saw the American Girl store (too bad I'm too old for that now!), and went to a Rock Bottom Brewery (yes, there's one in Boston, too). Chicago's such a big city, though, that we're going to have a lot more to explore.

Sunday we explored Hyde Park by doing a nice walking tour of the area. Took us most of the day, but we got to see the area a lot better and were both surprised by how nice it is! There are parks everywhere (even downtown), cute little houses, and nice streets. We concluded our walking tour by walking home from the Museum of Science and Industry along the lakefront. The lakefront trail extends a total of 31 miles and it's all gorgeous! There are picnic areas complete with barbeque pits, swimming areas, plenty of benches, trees, and great views. Best part is that one of the bridges over Lake Shore Drive is directly in front of our apartment building so we have incredibly easy access to the lakefront. I've got some pictures of our walk which Rahul will have to post later.

Monday we decided we'd head out to Wrigley Field to see if by any chance we could snag some tickets to the game. We had planned on buying tickets off the street, but decided we'd check at the box office first to see if they had any left. Sure enough, 15 minutes before game time we were holding two tickets for $20 each. Craziness. The park itself is nice - seems even smaller than Fenway! The hot dogs aren't as good, but you can buy beer in the stands which is a plus! The coolest/strangest thing is that all of the neighboring buildings have seating on their rooftops, so you have tiny patches of seats all around the park. Not sure how one gets one of those seats, but it's pretty funny.

Here are a couple of pictures from our Wrigley adventure:













Now that it's worktime again, Rahul's headed down for his first day at his new job and I'm counting the hours till our furniture arrives tomorrow!

We'll update more later!