From Virginia Tech, I drove for about 9 hours to Lafayette, IN to see Little Miss Zhang. She was our teacher when I went to Tsinghua University, Beijing 4 years ago. She is now working with her PhD in Purdue. We went to Chicago and stayed in one of her students from Tsinghua, Fang Zhen's place.
Other than the weather, Chicago is really an awesome city. It has everything that a big city should have - subway, buses, nightlife, art, shops, technology, famous College, outstanding architecture... Stylish would be the term I use to describe it. The weather is very fluctuating because of the neighboring Lake Michigan.
Left: Fang Zhen, Little Miss Zhang and me waiting for bus near his place. Lil' Miss Zhang really looks very "little", isn't she? She really looks younger than me! And little Fang Zhen looks like the oldest among us! He's actually the youngest. (Don't be mad of me, Dude. I'm just kidding!)
Right: Waiting for Subway in the "warming zone" of an outdoor subway station. There is a button in the warming zone. Warm light will be turned on when the button is pressed to help people fighting the wind-chilling Chicago weather November thru March. Pretty neat.
Left: Ok, this is just a moderate day in Chicago and it's 0° C in downtown. And it's always windy.
Right: This is not the sea. It's part of Lake Michigan next to Chicago. This is why Chicago's weather is so bad.
Left: Night view of Wrigley Building, the headquarter of Wrigley Gum (the green, yellow and white arrows).
Right: I went up to the Sears Tower, the world's 3rd tallest building for now. And this is the night view of Chicago from the 103rd floor of Sears Tower. That was beautiful! And it's so flat that we could see the entire city!
Left: Art Institute of Chicago has a lot of ancient art works from all around the world. These are the glassware made in 1st Century B.C. in the Mediterranean Sea area.
Right: Guess what it is............... I know it's a little bit difficult........that's why I am asking you to guess.............It is an ancient Chinese PILLOW!!! Can you believe it?! Our ancestors must have very hard neck in order to use this pillow.
Left: Fang Zhen and I went skiing in a small town in Wisconsin near Chicago. We skied for 4 hours straight and I couldn't drove back to Virginia the next day. I have to rest for the whole day before I can drive back.
Right: The day I went skiing was actually St. Valentine's Day. So this picture captures the couple in front of me as a record. Aren't they sweet?