Children, Dumplings, and Fitness

Sleep is a funny thing. Sometimes getting enough of it makes me alert and sometimes it makes me tired. Today was one of those days where I was tired even though I got adequate sleep. Going through the morning routine felt kind of funny, because I was realizing how this is really our last week! Even though a week is still a pretty long time, I think most of us are starting to feel like it’s already the end. My roommate and I were talking last night and both agreed that it feels like the climax, both in terms of class projects and in terms of getting in our last memories with new friends and places.

Class today felt long. Part of this was because it was considerably longer than last week’s class days had been; we went to 4:30 today instead of 2:30 or 3. Also, in the morning we were discussing neural development and the more biology based material about the brain, which for me requires more effort to pay attention to than learning about the reasons behind kids’ antics. Overall, energy in class was pretty low today and we were all ready for lunch when Cassie let us out, earlier than normal.

Grace, Kathy and I decided to take advantage of our early lunch to go to the food trucks before the lines got long. As I’d been planning, I went to the pierogi truck, called the Pierogi Wagon. I got cheese and potato pierogi with grilled onions and bacon bits on top, which was both yummy and filling. I'm glad I got to try some form of Polish cuisine while here, since Chicago has a large Polish population. After eating our food, we made a stop at the dining hall and grabbed some fruit to balance out the meal.

Plump Pierogis

All of our afternoon session was in the lab, where we ran our experiments on a parade of children of many ages. This was kind of tiring, but also a lot of fun. During a lag between participants, Grace and I spent a good portion of time just playing with a two-year-old participant for fun. Playing with kids is one of my favorite things to do, so I had a blast sitting on the floor rolling cars around and talking about their colors. Finally, after four hours we had collected data from all our participants and entered it into our tables.

I was really relieved to finally go back to my dorm, the busy day had been taxing and I was super looking forward to Zumba this afternoon. I had a quick turn around to change into my exercise clothes, and then I headed down to the lobby to meet the rest of the group that was going to Zumba. Tiffany and I decided to go swimming afterwards. Zumba and swimming are two of the most invigorating activities I’ve discovered in my adventures at UChicago, and I felt very content afterwards. The rest of the evening was low key, but overall today was a well spent last Monday.