Chicago: Day 25 - 26

Dear Diary,

Here I am at Citygrounds hiding away from the heat. I have to admit, Summer here has been unbearably hot over the last two days! The temperature today is 88 d.f. (31 d.c.) but it's gonna rise tomorrow to 91d.f (34 d.c.) which is worse than Singapore! 

It's currently my fourth week now in Chicago and so far I've found some activities for myself to do:)

I've been running around this morning doing some grocery shopping. But the food's mainly not for us :) They're for the homeless who gather at St Clement's Church every Friday morning, where they receive a packed lunch. Volunteers are invited to sponsor and prepare the lunches. I figured given my unlimited amount of free time, I might as well spend it doing something meaningful! And volunteered to give it a shot.

According to the volunteer guidelines, each volunteer is suppose to provide 6 sack lunches, each consisting of 2 luncheon meat sandwiches, 2 hard boiled eggs, a pack of chips, a dessert in the form of either a cookie or a candy bar, one juice packet, a soft fruit (e.g. bananas or oranges) and even a napkin! They're pretty strict about it and no variations (such as omelette sandwiches etc) are permitted.

Apart from the cans of spam and the bags of chips, I've managed to get some jumbo sized eggs, Ritz biscuits, Minuit Maid juices and bananas from both Carnival and Lincoln Park Market. I could not resist picking out some nice cuts of beef chuck for ourselves. Guess that's gonna be on our low-fat menu for dinner this week! (It's seriously a challenge not to gain weight here:P)

Andrea was suppose to come visit this week, but she's unable to due to some work issues back home. So I've actually signed myself up for some dance classes! :) I was looking forward to playing the role of a tour guide (since it'll keep me occupied and give me good reason to visit all my favourite haunts again:P) but since the change in plans, I'm actually feeling pretty excited again.

I went down to Steph's dance school, Latin Rhythms, yesterday to get an assessment before deciding which class to take up. I've been going for Salsa lessons in Singapore, but the style here is different so I needed an instructor to assess my level of capability. I danced with a female instructor, Maricza and she recommended that I joined their Beginners 3 Salsa class to work on my cross-body leads and turns. There was one that evening run by Sol. I was absolutely delighted at the opportunity to attend class! Sol was pretty good. She could immediately identify my key area of weaknesses just by having one dance with me (i.e. I needed to travel more during my turns, rather than just spin on the spot, and pull my weight more with my partner or I'll lose my tension with him).  

Steph had his class after mine - Intermediate 2 Bachata. The sweet boy had a Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappucino waiting for me after I ended class, just before he went for his. Apart from salsa, I  also signed up for two additional classes (just to make my vacation worth!) - a Beginners 3 Bachata class, as recommended by Rey after an assessment with him, which runs on Thursdays, and a Body Isolation class (together with Steph) that runs on Wednesdays. I was tempted to sign up for one more - a Lady's Salsa Styling class - but decided to sleep on it. 

Steph's been helping me to rehearse my steps and vice versa. The perk about having a partner who dances is that you can practice with them;) And they can give you constructive feedback about your technique too. 

We might be going dancing tonight at one of his regular spots. Unlike Excalibur, it's more of a restaurant and a dance joint, rather than a club. Let's see how that goes! :)