A mini adventure to Chicago

This past weekend I headed to Chicago for two reasons. One of my best friends, Josh, was running the Chicago marathon, and because I knew that eventually this semester I needed to visit Benna, my long time/childhood Yiddish friend. The weekend started off with a car ride with Josh's roommates and they dropped me off at Benna's apartment. Benna and I caught up on life and played bananagrams until we crashed. In the morning we had a quick breakfast before heading to the north side of Chicago. We were invited to eat in the sukkah of my friend Leana's parents. After stuffing ourselves with loads of food and the Yiddish language, Benna decided to take me to Andersonville, Chicago. She told me it was a quirky neighborhood that is also known for the large amount of lesbians in the area, but when I got out of the train and onto the street, something else caught my eye. In the distance I saw a water tower with the Swedish flag painted on it Swedish flags were waving everywhere! A smile was slapped onto my face as I began to have flashbacks to this past summer in Scandinavia. Every store window there was something about Sweden; It was either a bakery, delicacies, imports, clothing, restaurants...etc.  We even found a Dala horse statue with Stockholm painted on one side and Chicago painted on the other side. We ended up eating Indian food at a vegetarian Indian place. The next morning I left Benna :( really early in the morning and headed to Chinatown to stake out a great spot to see Josh run. My goal was to watch him at mile 20 and then rush to the finish line and watch him finish, but as I watched all the runners zoom by, I apparently missed him and ended up getting in touch with his sister because I thought he got hurt. Thank got he didn't get hurt but instead he ran right by me and I didn't even see him. Sad story, but I met the whole family and friends at the end, got to congratulate and celebrate with dim sum and then headed back to Ann Arbor.