The Bean Is the Must-Have Photo Background

Today concludes the last of the universities we will be visiting. I am not particularly fond of eating American style breakfast every morning, but that's the most convenient type of food. Mr.Chan-Law chose to eat an American style breakfast at Water Tower Place. Food was distributed to the ILCers around 9:30AM and everyone started chomping down their food. Breakfast was finished at about 10:30AM and then we headed off to see "The Bean", formally known as Cloud Gate. It's a public sculpture located inside Millenium Park. The weather was suitable for walking after eating the large breakfast. Once we got to The Bean, numerous selfies were taken. Whether you're an ILCer coming from Calfornia or a tourist from France, everyone went inside the archway of The Bean and instantly became photogenic.

The mini-sightseeing ended around 11:25AM to make time for us to take the metro towards Evanston, Illinois. This metro trip consists of transferring at Howard after a forty minute ride from Millenium Park to another ten minute ride before arriving at Evanston. The college town at Evanston was gorgeous. The shops ranged from an Asian style cafe to a Mediterranean style dinner. It was nice to walk through the college town to reach Northwestern University. By the time we reached NU, it was already 12:20AM and it was then decided to eat on campus. Because the info session starts at 1:15PM, my lunch was a quick ten minute breadstick eating. As mentioned, a ten minute lunch isn't going to have time for pictures to be taken so sorry if you were looking forward to seeing NU breadsticks.

The typical information session introduced NU's six schools: College of Arts and Sciences, School of Journalism, School of Engineering and Applied Science, School of Communication, School of Music, and School of Education and Social Policy. I am, in particular, interested in McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science school. I was elated to NU offering Materials Engineering as a degree. While we walked, our tour guide Carrie told us numerous stories about her five years at NU since she'll be graduating tomorrow. Carrie told us about a legend of The Rock while we got to the oldest building built for NU. I was astonished about the 24/7 camera capturing every move near The Rock and her parents told her one time that she saw Carrie walking to class this one day. Now that is creepy if the surveillance camera is open for everyone to see.

The 6ins+ thick painted rock aka. The Northwestern Rock

The tour concluded around 3:30PM and I wished Carrie the best of luck for her graduation tomorrow. We headed for the metro station and walked for about five minutes before the rain decided to pour like cats and dogs on us. My umbrella's surface area was so minimal that the wallet I had in my backpack got soaked and how I have rain smell money. 

The Cornell cohort reached The Drake Hotel around 5:20PM and Mr.Chan-Law instructed for us to be down by the lobby by 6:20PM. Sue, Natalie, and I rushed to our rooms to find our clothing for the night with NU Admissions Offer and current NU students. Tonight we dined in with Admissions Officer Shannon and students Katie, Liam, and Iheoma. Shannon was actually not an undergraduate alum of NU but she did complete her masters from NU. It was a great pleasure to be sitting to the left of her. Katie is a rising senior and I got the honor to sit to the right of her as well. Being in the middle of two most important people perspectives gave me a new look towards NU.  

Ordering from The Capital Grille was a more simple straightforward layout with limited choices. My appetizer consisted of Caesar salad. The dressing was balsamic vinegar with a hint of lime. The entree I ordered was Seared Citrus Glazed Salmon. It was the only seafood I've ordered from the last three days, so I was pretty excited about the salmon. Because the conversation with Katie and Shannon was so intruiging, I forgot to eat my salmon until the waiter asked if there were anything wrong with it. In addition to eating the scrumptious salmon late, I was so into the conversation that I'd forgot to take a picture of it. I hope Evil Don doesn't shoot me an e-mail at 3AM saying that my food pictures are less than university pictures. But, I definitely remembered to take a picture of the dessert; cheesecake with seasonal fruits.

 What ended well was the amazingly fun group photo we had after the dinner.

From left to right: Katie, Liam, Katelyn, Carla, Iheoma, me, Shannon, Sue, Kevin, and Natalie

I thought by ending promptly at 10PM, we would be getting to our hotel room by 10:15PM and having enough time to blog and take a shower before exhaustion takes over. But the silly Chicago cab didn't come to pick us up for over thirty minutes of waiting after the farewells. Mr.Chan-Law couldn't take the stupidity of the automated cab-calling anymore, so we decided to just walk back to the hotel in company of the rain. Coming back to our hotel at 11PM and blogging completely drained all my energy stored within me. I still have to pack so we can make it out in time for checkout, so I'll conclude with this tragic cab incident that played a minor role of draining my stamina.