Windy City Wanderings and Ponderings

Time for a Stateside blog. Time for any blog, for that matter. It’s been forever since we’ve updated. See what happens when a baby comes along? Blogging is the first thing to go when things get busy, apparently.

Well, it’s late July and that means Steven is doing time at Wheaton College outside of Chicago. Ok, “doing time” isn’t exactly a fair description of what Steven has been experiencing. He’s about ¾ of the way finished with a Master’s degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (mercifully shortened to TESOL by most people). He’s taking classes through a program generously offered by our teaching organization, which is paying his tuition. It’s designed for teachers, thus classes are offered in intensive blocks in July and January. And by "intensive" they mean "really, really difficult." Fitting six credits worth of graduate studies into a 4 week period is a challenge for everyone involved--professors and students alike. It translates into long days in the classroom and longer nights spent reading, writing papers, developing curriculum, designing phonological diagnostic tools, etc. Coffee consumption climbs to record levels. Dreams at night consist largely of phonetic symbols dancing on desks, or various educational theorists chasing you across a landscape composed of PowerPoint slides. But enough complaining.

It's actually been a really fun summer session. The classes have been useful (if a bit demanding) and a number of our friends from Team Vietnam have been studying in the program as well, giving a sense of camaraderie to the whole endeavor. Even better, we found some cheap last-minute tickets so that Joelle and Micah were able to fly out from Washington for several days to visit. There's nothing that brings a little sanity to situation quite so much as a beautiful wife and a 10-and-a-half month old with a huge, dimply smile who waddles around making dinosaur noises and throwing things. That's just plain good for the soul.

Steven worked a little extra in the days leading up to Joelle and Micah's visit, so we were able to have some downtime together without 20-page research papers looming in the shadows. On Saturday we stuck Micah in his REI backpack and headed down the block to catch the commuter train into Chicago. It was Joelle's first time in Chicago and Steven's second, so we didn't really know quite what to expect. Turns out the excitement started before we even got off the train, as every car was full of Cubs fans on their way to Wrigley Field. Apparently an important part of getting ready for America's Favorite Sport involves drinking a lot of America's Favorite Beverage: really cheap beer. It seemed that everyone on the train (minus us) was holding a can, cup or brown-paper-sack-wrapped bottle of something. The three guys sitting across the aisle from us had nothing at all to hide, with a 12-pack open on the floor between them. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps we'd accidentally found our way onto a chartered train headed for a Lake Michigan Booze Cruise.

Whatever the case, we arrived safely in the city and realized promptly that we looked really out of place. The picture below says it all: earth tones, Chacos, coffee in hand and child in backpack. We look like we're ready for a hike in bear-haunted wilderness (or at least a mildly rustic Bellingham park) rather than a stroll through the business and cultural capital of America's heartland. Proving, of course, that you can take a family out of the Northwest but you can't take the Northwest out of a family.

Despite our utter failure to blend in with the locals, Micah made friends wherever he went. He waved at and played peek-a-boo with everyone on the L-train, and got waves and laughter in return (Safety note: waving at and playing peek-a-boo with people on the L-train is highly inadvisable unless you happen to be a really cute 10 month old).

Eventually, via the L-train and good old fashioned hoofing it, we found our way a bit north of downtown to Lincoln Park, location of a fairly sweet free zoo. Since free is a good price any day of the week, we walked in and introduced Micah to his first giraffes, rhinos, lions and, yes, garbage-can-dwelling-aardvarks.

He had a blast. Since he's learning different animal sounds, it was fun to see him smack his lips at the fish, make dinosaur roars at the rhinos and say mboooooooo mboooooo to just about everything else that had four legs ("mbooooo" is his approximation of "moo" which--strangely enough--is the first animal sound he learned). After we had made noises at every animal in the zoo, we headed back to Wheaton for some dinner with our soon-to-be Quy Nhon teammates Will and Kristin (and their 2 month old little guy, Ezra).

Joelle and Micah headed back to Washington on Tuesday morning, so Steven is left by himself to weather the last few days of class. He heads home on the 30th and is looking forward to some time with family and away from textbooks.

Hard to believe it, but a month from now we'll be back in Vietnam for a week of training with the whole country team. After that, it's back to Quy Nhon and life in a place we're growing to love. We're really looking forward to this coming year and thank you for keeping up with us. We'll be sure to fill you in on all the latest...whenever we find a free minute or two. :)