A Tourist in Chicago

It's been a crazy week and so I've taken a while to get this post out, but I took a trip to Chicago last weekend for the Northwestern football game. Not only did I get to watch a Husker victory, but a group of us took a trip on the 'L' and explored the streets of Chicago late into the night Saturday and all of Sunday morning. We ate the local cuisine and walked through the Field Museum and touched the giant silver bean. We sat along the harbor and looked out on the beautiful lake. My only complaint was that there wasn't enough time to take in everything. But I guess there never will be.

At one point, as my group was walking through the city, I lagged behind to take a photo. And I looked ahead at my group and every one of them was looking up at the buildings, their mouths slightly open, eyes wide. Looking back, I wish I'd gotten a picture of that. The awe in each of their faces as if the city was the most incredible thing they had ever witnessed.

Instead, I ran to catch up and turned to my friend Jessica and laughed. "You can definitely tell we're tourists,"I said.

But she didn't laugh along with me. She looked at me very seriously and asked, "Do you think when you live here long enough these just become buildings?"

I said I assumed so, since you would get used to it and she shook her head. "What a shame," she said.

I must agree. What a shame. It's awful how the things familiar to us so often lose their beauty. Most people that know me know that I did not enjoy the town I grew up in. I remember wanting to move away since the 2nd grade. I often say that the town was "boring." But truthfully, I lived in a pretty little valley with a river running nearby and rolling hills for miles around. No matter what experiences I may have had there, it's important to remember there's beauty in everything. It can be something we will see only once in a lifetime or something we see every day on the way to work. And it's a shame to miss even a bit of it.