Chicago: Day 28 - 29

Dear Diary,

Here I am at a Starbucks outlet in Plaza Del Prado Shopping Centre, Glenville. I've been here for the past hour or so - and it's only 8.12 a.m. here. I woke up early today cause Steph suggested following him to work this morning. It's Friday today which means that he gets to knock off work by lunch time. We wanted to go either to the Sushi Station or H Mart area (to eat zha jiang mian) for lunch which is located in the suburb, near Steph's workplace. 

Unfortunately, this means I have to keep myself occupied for a good 5 - 6 hours. 

Things have been alright so far. I had dance classes yesterday and on Wednesday. Body isolations class with Zeke is really fun. He made us do all kinds of exercises to increase our flexibility and isolate areas such as our hips, butt, shoulders, chest and ribcage. I thoroughly enjoyed it! The tough part for me was synchronizing my ribcage isolations with my salsa footwork - I sure felt like a duck doing it!

Rey's class was a little more intimidating. I've never had any formal bachata basic training before so I really didn't know what to expect. Plus, from what I've gathered, Rey tends to stretch his students more so his routines are more challenging. Fortunately for me, I could pick up the steps relatively quickly enough, and I had a lot of fun doing it! I enjoyed dancing with Rey best cause he would lead the female students into a few spontaneous moves (to teach us to follow), beyond the routine. Now, that was fun!:)

I was pretty tired yesterday though, as I had been up since 6 a.m. in the morning. After Steph went to work, I started preparing the sack lunches. I had to make 12 hardboiled eggs and 24 luncheon meat sandwiches. By the time I was done preparing all the sack lunches and packing them into 6 grocery bags, it was only 7.40 a.m.! There was still time for me to drop off the lunches at the Church and attend mass, so I had a really good arm workout that morning :)

The evening before, Steph and I had headed down to Whole Foods Market. He wanted to show me the biggest (and one of the more expensive) organic supermarkets in town. It reminded me of Three Sixty Degree Market at ION. We spent about US$65 on snacks alone! We got some cheeses (which were marked out to show which types of wine they complemented), a riesling, some hummus, pita snacks, dark mint chocolate, mint tea (and even mint shower gel!), some organic grapes and tofu. It was impossible to comb all the aisles but I would have probably spent half a day there if I was in Singapore! :)

Prior to class on Wed, Steph got some Thai food home from Miss Asia - his favourite pad chai with Crab Rangoon appetizers. We ate half and saved the other half for the next day. It was better to dance on a less heavy stomach, especially since it involved body isolations. We then drove to class together.

On Thursday though, I had to go to class on my own as it started early. I enjoyed the chance to take the CTA bus on my own. The journey was a lot shorter than expected. I even had time to stop by a cafe just round the corner, called the Jupiter Outpost for a drink, before class itself.

Steph gave me a lift home after class. We had dinner together and then had some cheese and wine while watching "The Notebook". He felt sleepy thereafter, so he went into the room to sleep while I had my bath. When I was done, there was suddenly a blackout in the apartment! I suspected it had something to do with Steph's a/c. I waited until Cheng returned, then we went down to the basement, past the laundry room to find the powerbox to the apartment. We saw the switch that had tripped and flipped it to and fro, until the electricity came on. We decided that as a safety measure, we'll probably use one less lamp or refrain from watching TV while the a/c is on :P Thankfully, the weather was lovely and cooler yesterday (due to some rain in the afternoon) so we didn't need to switch the a/c on again ;)