My life in State College: Chicago conferencing
Chi-town! Love it!
Last Friday, T & I started our morning journey to Chicago from the University Park airport, which btw can hardly be called an airport. Oh, State College, your smallness so amuses us.
Actually, our original flight had been cancelled the night before - slightly frazzled, we called US Airways and they rebooked us on the 10:30 flight with a new connection to Chi-town from Philly. All was well.
Luckily, our flights were boring and on-time and all that, so our arrival at 3ish was on time. We got to the hotel, checked in, met up with another friend and went to the conference hotel to register. Hooray, we made it!
Saturday was full of fun reunions, figuring out the talks we wanted to attend and the opening session/plenary. Afterwards, the opening reception was full of free-flowing wine and tasty foods. There was a post-reception reception in Dr. C's presidential suite, since he was the conference head organizer for this years meeting. More wine....more food. More fun chats! So glad to see Dr. T again after his sudden move last year from PSU to Groningen, Netherlands. A smaller crew continued over at Timothy O'Toole's, a lovely irish pub near our hotel. After $200 worth of irish car bombs, a Mexican-American we lovingly named Taquito and a chance meeting with some middle-aged Canadian man who did a shot with us, we were feeling fiiiiine. Lovely!
Next morning was rough...but we pushed through and went to a bunch of sessions plus a great plenary and grad student session with more free food (yay)...but an early night it was.
Monday - my presentation! I was a bit nervous but everything went well. Kinda wish more people had shown up, but that's kinda the drawback of these large-scale conferences I guess. It was a good day all in all though, PLUS later on we had deep dish pizza with I & P....YUM. and calorie-tastic I'm sure...
E and I were the last ones in the hotel room on the last night as T had left on Monday cause she taught on Tuesday. Waking up Tuesday morning we looked at each other and went...we're conferenced out - time to see some of Chicago before heading back to the airport. Aren't we awesome. Anyway, first up was the BEAN! I've been wanting to go there since the last time I was in Chi-town but hadn't. Great pics there. Also, more of the mag mile and then a final stop at Garrett's popcorn before going back to pack, check out, and shuttle back to O'Hare. Glorious.
Flight home was also easy-pease and my roommate H picked me up at 10pm. Home to my kitty :)
Overall a great 5 days...back to the grind now!
Last Friday, T & I started our morning journey to Chicago from the University Park airport, which btw can hardly be called an airport. Oh, State College, your smallness so amuses us.
Actually, our original flight had been cancelled the night before - slightly frazzled, we called US Airways and they rebooked us on the 10:30 flight with a new connection to Chi-town from Philly. All was well.
Luckily, our flights were boring and on-time and all that, so our arrival at 3ish was on time. We got to the hotel, checked in, met up with another friend and went to the conference hotel to register. Hooray, we made it!
Saturday was full of fun reunions, figuring out the talks we wanted to attend and the opening session/plenary. Afterwards, the opening reception was full of free-flowing wine and tasty foods. There was a post-reception reception in Dr. C's presidential suite, since he was the conference head organizer for this years meeting. More wine....more food. More fun chats! So glad to see Dr. T again after his sudden move last year from PSU to Groningen, Netherlands. A smaller crew continued over at Timothy O'Toole's, a lovely irish pub near our hotel. After $200 worth of irish car bombs, a Mexican-American we lovingly named Taquito and a chance meeting with some middle-aged Canadian man who did a shot with us, we were feeling fiiiiine. Lovely!
Next morning was rough...but we pushed through and went to a bunch of sessions plus a great plenary and grad student session with more free food (yay)...but an early night it was.
Monday - my presentation! I was a bit nervous but everything went well. Kinda wish more people had shown up, but that's kinda the drawback of these large-scale conferences I guess. It was a good day all in all though, PLUS later on we had deep dish pizza with I & P....YUM. and calorie-tastic I'm sure...
E and I were the last ones in the hotel room on the last night as T had left on Monday cause she taught on Tuesday. Waking up Tuesday morning we looked at each other and went...we're conferenced out - time to see some of Chicago before heading back to the airport. Aren't we awesome. Anyway, first up was the BEAN! I've been wanting to go there since the last time I was in Chi-town but hadn't. Great pics there. Also, more of the mag mile and then a final stop at Garrett's popcorn before going back to pack, check out, and shuttle back to O'Hare. Glorious.
Flight home was also easy-pease and my roommate H picked me up at 10pm. Home to my kitty :)
Overall a great 5 days...back to the grind now!
posted by Janice | 9:13 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home