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So today is the 27th of July and I have officially been living in Chicago for one month. It's a milestone for sure. It makes me feel like I can do this for several more months and like everything ended up the way I wanted them to. Being here is everything I expected and not at all what I expected. Because that makes sense right... ;)

 

Yesterday I tried meeting several people at the Wicker Park Fest. But one person cancelled and the rest of us arrived at different times and didn't know the street names very well. So it took me a good two hours of standing at the side walk and waiting until we finally found one another. I first met up with Mattias, who's also from Sweden, and two of his au pair friends. After they went home I met up with Lilli and Delila. The festival wasn't as special as we had expected.  It looked like any festival in Sweden would. So we decided to just walk around in the city instead. The weather was perfect so we actually walked all the way back to where I Iive. But before saying good bye we had the yummiest dinner ever. Ice cream!!! And my goodness, they aren't kidding around with the size of those ice cream bombs...

 

One of this week's highlights was driving around in the city! My host parents got me two hours with a driving instructor since I want to get the hang of the traffic flow and also see if I need to practice on anything special. At first I didn't like the instructor. He was old and kind of slow, didn't speak good English even though he had lived here his entire life so sometimes when I asked a question he simply said "just go"... uhhm okay, screw the rules and just go? And he kept driving the car FOR me. Instead of saying "up ahead there will be a crossroad and this is what you will do then" he just stopped the car with the break pedal on his side or leaned over to steer the car when I was making a turn. So annoying when people do that. Unless I'm on my way to crash into a tree there is no need for it. But after a while he seemed to realize that he could trust me. I got to practice parallell parking a lot since that's pretty much the only way they park cars here in Chicago. And I haven't done that since I got my driver's license five years ago!

 

All of a sudden he said that he was going to have me drive downtown and on the magnificent mile... in other words - Michigan Avenue. HUH!?? Haha! I won't be driving downtown during my time here since it's easier to take the train. But it was so much fun to do it at least once. Michigan Avenue was very crowded with cars and people but I made it!!! :D And the best part was on the way into downtown when the instructor said "I don't think you need more lessons. When you drive I almost fall asleep!" lol... so I'm going to practice with Heidi and Andy's car during the upcoming weeks just to get used to it and learning the way to different places.