Midwest by Southwest

I finally arrived in Chicago.. for good, in time for my classes starting next week. Last week I was in Chicago for the orientation, details of which haven’t been posted due to an absolute lack of time. I went back to California and had hardly 5 days to pack up, settle all unfinished business and catch a flight back to Chicago. As I hailed a cab from the Midway airport, I had mixed feelings of coming back into the city. Chicago – with its humid continental climate with temperatures going in the negative (fahrenheit) in the winters – is really not my idea of spending the next cherishable years of my life, but maybe it is. I have lived in chicago before (in the burbs, however) and every time I curse the place when I live through its chilly winters, there is always a phase in the summers when I go through withdrawal symptoms reminiscing the previous winter.

Relocating from a city with pristine charm (that city goes by the moniker of San Francisco) to this urban maelstrom called Chicago, I was in a cab within minutes of picking my bags from the Southwest airlines baggage claim. After exchanging pleasantries with the driver a few minutes into the ride, I glanced across the dusty chicago skyline through the cab window. Belching smokestacks as seen from the expressway did not add to the amusement of my 8 pm drive . San Francisco, with its eclectic mix of Victorian and modern architecture, its Painted Ladies, the sight of the historic cable cars negotiating the uphill crooked terrains of the financial district and its near 70 degree temperatures throughout the year, will surely be missed in the days to come as I now ensconce myself in this concrete jungle. Sure, chicago does have a charm of its own. It will only take time for it to run deep inside of me.

The cab took me via lake shore drive. The gentle breezes of Lake Michigan made an attempt to get a pleasant closure to the day.

Getting organized, hitting the books and letting Chicago ‘happen’ are in order.