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Outside of Christmas and our anniversary, the rest of our two week holiday in the U.S. was spent with family and friends, hanging out with our pets, shopping, and generally relaxing. While our cats took a little while to warm up to us, our dog was so excited to see us that she knocked us to the ground. Below is a photo of some of my high school friends after an afternoon of catching up and chatting.
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On New Year's Eve we decided to take it easy, so we went down to the touristy Navy Pier to watch the Chicago fireworks display at midnight.
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While waiting for midnight we had a drink an listened to some blues at one of the restaurants on the pier.
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As midnight approached we headed outside. While a complete corporate plug, I like this sign reminding us that we are over 6,000 miles from Japan.
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Joe with the ferris wheel.
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2009!
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The pier had a very diverse crowd, people of all ages, types, nationalities, styles. These are the people we were surrounded by at midnight, to our right was this group of kids from China. They popped open champagne at midnight and drank from picnic-style wine glasses...
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Behind us was a group of people from Chicago. I liked their Obama hats (we saw alot of Obama memorabilia in the U.S.). They were roudy in the Chicago tough-but-friendly way, and they made alot of cell phone calls.
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Part of the skyline as seen from the pier.
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Fireworks!
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Leaving the pier. It was so cold! I think it was about 18 degrees F.
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After a quiet New Year's Day we headed down to the Field Museum with Joe's family.
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The purpose of our visit was to view the exhibition The Aztec World.
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The exhibition was highly approachable and included alot of information without bogging the visitor down. Some of the objects were simply fantastic, like the large ceramic death diety (below). While I am not very well read on Meso-American societies and history, I found the exhibition especially interesting after reading Charles Mann's 1491 last summer. In the book, Mann questions many of the assumptions that the public has about life in the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans (for an interview with Mann click here).
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We also viewed the Underground Adventure exhibit (about soil), and of course Sue the T-Rex in the main hall (below).
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The Field is on my list of top five favorite museums anywhere, and I could easily wander the classic exhibition halls for days (my favorite are the Native American halls and the Pawnee Earth Lodge). We decided to head out after seeing the shoe display though, which exhibits shoes from various times and cultures.
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Meanwhile, our cats had warmed up to us over the course of the holidays, and I feel that they deserve some photo recognition here...
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In our last weekend we spent an evening cooking dinner with my parents in their American-sized kitchen.
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The dog asking for a helping of salmon, brocoli, or au gratin potatoes.
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We also spent a day of our last weekend skiing! I was able to break in my new skiis before brining them back to Japan.
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On the lift with Joe and Shana.
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Scenic Alpine Valley Wisconsin!
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I grew up skiing at Alpine, and learned to ski there for the first time around age 7 (I think), but I hadn't been back since skiing in Minnesota, Colorado and Oregon. While the hill was pretty small and the lifts slow and rickety, it was still a great time, and a super-fun day trip from Chicago. Plus, I can say that I skied the "black diamond" courses there, even though they were quite easy by comparison.
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Some more skiing shots...
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At the end of the day.
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As our trip came to a close we finished off our shopping for things that are hard to find in Japan (like shoes in Joe's size) and enjoyed some American food like that at the delicious vegetarian restaurant, Blind Faith Cafe.
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On our last night we had dinner with Joe's family at a California Pizza Kitchen in downtown Arlington Heights before packing up and heading back to Japan.
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