We Leave in a Week?!

This Saturday had been forecast to rain, and I wasn’t excited about that. Although the day started off cloudier than lately, it actually cleared up and there wasn’t any rain today, yay! When I woke up this morning, it felt like a weekend but I knew we still had class today. Most of our class met up in the dining hall for breakfast and then walked over to the Learning Lab at 9:15. Today we’d be testing a lot of participants, and we spent the next two and a half hours running experiments on a broad range of kids. It was a busy day for data collection. Our group has created an elaborate rating system for measuring the reassurance level of participants, and our results are a little strange. Still, our experiment is working well, if not exactly as we’d expected it to, and writing up our results and discussion shouldn’t be too challenging.

After class, I ate lunch at the dining hall. I’d been contemplating going to the Farmer’s Market on 61^st today, but since I’d managed to obtain berries earlier in the week and was planning to go to the museum this afternoon, I decided it would not be worth the extra time. After lunch, I met up with Jae-An and Jaiden and headed towards the Museum of Science and Industry, which is conveniently walking distance from campus. On the way there, we stopped at Powell’s bookstore. All the bookstores around campus are a lot of fun, and though I haven’t done much but look around in each of them, I could probably spend a whole day in any one of them.

U-505

Maze of Mirrors

Fairy Castle...a preview to the Thorne Rooms

The Museum of Science and Industry was incredible. I’d seen it from the outside and remarked how huge it was, but I didn’t realize that all that space was used for exhibits inside; I’d thought a large part of it might be research or something else. It was a little overwhelming at first trying to figure out which exhibits we should go to, but we started with the U-505 submarine and then worked our way from there. Every exhibit was very thoughtfully constructed to be interactive, interesting, and informative. I had a swell time exploring, but was also exhausted by the time we decided to head back, three and a half hours later. To finish off the day, I took a quick swim at the gym, played a bit with my soccer ball, ate dinner, and headed to my room to relax. Tomorrow is our last weekend day and I’m very excited that we’ll be visiting the Art Institute! The Art Institute is possibly at the top of my list of things I wanted to see/do in Chicago, and I’m anticipating the visit greatly. Plus, we are free admission with UChicago ID, so that is an added bonus. Expect lots of pictures tomorrow....