St. Patrick's Day!

Yes. They really do dye the river green. It turns into a neon green. Potentially radioactive? Let's hope not!

As you've probably guessed by now, I went downtown for St. Patrick's Day. Rebecca came to visit (to celebrate no more CPE for me!!!). We decided to go downtown on Saturday. When walking to the Metra station, we found a few of my classmates and ended up walking around with them for a while. They dyed the river at 10am.

How do they do it? Well, there's a speed boat (not the boat in the pic) and a guy sits on the back of it with a grass-spreader type thing and dumps red powder into the river. When it hits the water, the water turns bright yellow. And then it turns neon green. Then the boat, and another behind it, drive around in the neon water to spread it out until it's all neon. Very weird. Yet very cool. I think I heard someone say they've been doing this for around 50 years.

Then we walked to the parade, stopping for Subway lunch on the way. The longest parade ever. We stayed for an hour and a half and still didn't see it all. And couldn't see much anyway because of all the people.

One of my CPE friends was also going to the parade and Rebecca wanted to meet him. I texted him before the parade to see where we should meet and he told me he was going to be in the parade! I didn't see him, but he was on a float. After the parade, he sent a text that he was at a friend's house downtown so we walked there and met up with them. The friend lives on the 22nd floor...REALLY nice downtown views! I'm sure that condo costs more than my house. Although I'd rather have the yard :)

Anyway, we chatted with them for a while and they decided to go out, so we went out with them for a few hours and had a great time.

Sunday, Rebecca and I went to a UCC church where we know the pastor (I needed to visit a non-Lutheran church for a worship paper). We then went back downtown and walked around the parks and just had a really good, leisurely day. Monday I had class and then we walked to the lake. Tuesday we went back to the lake before she went home.

All in all, St. Patrick's Day in Chicago was lots of fun!