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After the Sewanee experience I was in the mood for something a little more, shall we say, mainstream. So I flew up to Chicago for a three day solo sojourn. For those looking to travel to Chicago the
Chicago Getaway Hostel is probably the largest, cleanest and most pimped out hostel i've ever stayed in and i would recommended it for large groups. However if you're traveling solo it is boring as all hell, I'm beginning to think that the bigger a hostel is the less inclined people are to talk to strangers and the cleaner it is the less likely people are to get buck-wild....
Apart from the fact that Chicago and cold and windy as shit and it rained most of the time I was there, it is a beautiful city. Lincoln park is beautiful, the art gallery downtown is really nice with a great mix of styles and eras. People there are also super nice, the first night i went to dinner on my own and when it started raining and i couldn't leave i just started drinking with the bar staff and ended up with free food, free beer and well, the rest of that story is not
really suited for a blog but feel free to ask me...
After a few days of just chilling and recovering and smashing deep dish pizza which is super super awesome, I caught the train (Chicago and Illinois in general have an amazing train system, super easy to navigate) out to the outer suburbs and April Rosier picked me up!!!!!! Easter Weekend with the Rosiers was sooooo much fun. Sharon tried to feed me enough to give me a coronary and Gary is super chilled. April's sister is nice but, well, she's a little insane. I'm pretty sure she'll never read this so I think i'll be fine saying that shit out loud. I had an awesome weekend and when we left for Macomb on monday morning I truly had no idea of the sheer female lunacy which would greet me at the end of a quick three hour drive.
For those reading this who don't know, April is in a sorority. April loves Sigma Sigma Sigma more than she loves anything else in her life. I sincerely believe that and anybody watching these girls from the outside would probably agree with me. She lives in a cool little
town house just off campus with three of her sisters who are fairly awesome, well Katie and Jeanna are, nobody is really sure about the other one, she tends to just drift in and out. Special note should be made of the sorority itself: the house is a freaking purpose built castle where you can't drink beer?!?!?! The culture is also riddled with all sorts of secret weird shit, all a little strange for an outsider but the girls were crazy nice to me.
I was allowed to attend some of the girl's wills. This is a particularly special ceremony for the girls who are about to graduate, They bequeath everything they own which has their sorority letters on it to the younger girls who have earned their love. For this people who are looking in from the outside the following point must be stressed, any tri-sig worth her salt with have sorority letters on at least (and i stress the term at least) 80% of their clothes. They are also very attached to their bags and while the ceremony was very cute and heartfelt watching April break down into tears when she gave someone her bag was a
little creepy. No offense darling, you know that I love all of you guys.
Saturday during the day saw the occurrence of Wheeler Block Party: a street party on the street parallel to the one we were staying on. For reason's foreign to me but probably illuminated to others the police didn't really want this thing to go down but didn't really know how to stop it straight off the bat. Imagine a street packed with people drinking in front of house, not really doing much else except drinking, easily a few thousand kids. Then imagine 5 police standing together every 30 feet along the street and ticketing anybody who stepped out on to the street with an open drink. It was really weird and when i left at 4pm-ish people were just standing on the edge of the curb staring at the cops waiting for them to react. Well, after a while the cops did react and
it got sort of bad . There was a sound cannon, tear gas and tasers. It was a little crazy and i'm pretty damn lucky i missed it.
So once that shit was out of the way we all got super dressed up and made
our way to the event me and April had spent a good portion of the week planning.......Sigma Sigma Sigma FORMAL!!!!! Arabian nights was the theme and a room full of drunk people was the aim. Had an awesome time and i'd like to the thank all the girls who were so friendly to me and loved to dance to Ke$ha because that's basically what's up....
So to put the Western Illinois University experience into a single sentence: Sure, hanging out with just crazy sorority girls for two weeks sounds like a great idea, but it can get stressful......
Love y'all and for those who i will be seeing at my next stop......
Shit gonna get straight Grizzly
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