Delayed...

Woops, sorry faithful readers! Took longer than I thought to get back to the good ol' blog. It's amazing how easily distracted I am. Or perhaps I can blame it on the difficulties of reacquainting myself with being in the States.

What to discuss today? For a quick overview, I got back to the States last Saturday and hung out in Chicago until Monday afternoon. I spent Sunday with a good friend from collage who was in Chi-town for a medical conference. We took an architectural river-boat tour of Chicago, which I highly recommend. I learned all sorts of cool stuff about the city. For example, at one point Chicago had the largest post office in the country. The building is so big that is engulfs part of a highway (the highway passes through the center of the building. But the whole place is abandoned now, completely empty, and while someone recently bought it no one (or at least the tour guide) knows what will be done with it. Also, we learned that there is this cool looking building just off the Chicago river that cools massive amounts of water and sends it to the building too old to have air conditioning as a more environmentally friendly way to cool the skyscrapers. We were instructed in how to tell the difference between art deco, modern, and post-modern buildings and the reasons behind these difference, which was pretty interesting. It's incredible who much city zoning ordinances can change architectural aesthetics. Recessed towers, for example, became the norm after the city planners decided to require them so the new buildings would not entirely block the sun from the downtown streets. Another example is the new river walk that the current mayor is intending to run along both banks of the Chicago river. Up until about thirty years ago the river was considered unattractive and was extremely polluted...there was nothing living in the water and it smelled terrible. It was so polluted that they reversed the flow of the river because the neighboring towns were complaining that it was polluting Lake Michigan. But after the beginnings of a clean-up project inspired/required by the clean water act in the 70's the river became a more desirable area of the city and the ugly industrial warehouses lining the banks were replaced or remodeled for living areas. Many of the apartment buildings lining the river were once warehouses. One in particular is pretty interesting...it was the ice storage house for the city in the 1920s and 1930s. They would cut ice from Lake Michigan in the winter and store it in this warehouse; the walls are three feet thick to keep the ice frozen during the summer. The tour guide said it took months to defrost the building before the could cut through the walls to make windows for the apartments!

I stayed in Chicago until Monday so I could turn in my application for a Brazilian tourist visa. Just in case any of you Americans who are reading this blog want to go to Brazil, they require US citizens to apply (and pay) for a tourist visa. They call it a reciprocal fee, since the US requires Brazilians to get a tourist visa to come to the States. Good for them, I say. Although the $130 for the visa will be missed. I spent the rest of the week unpacking, pining for Guatemala, and coding newspaper articles. I really miss being there, but it's good that I have a ton of work to get done before heading off to Brazil. I really do think that life is more interesting when you're continually distracted. Well, maybe not distracted, but at least busy. Which is what I am at the moment. I'm heading down to Nashville this week to see Jenn, and then one more week or so until I leave for Brazil. So stay tuned, dear readers. This blog will not end just because the first leg of my field research is done! Plus I have more to say about Guatemala and have a return trip planned for October (if all goes well). And in between then and now there's all sorts of exciting things in store. So, until later....