At 8:45am, my roommate for the trip Kate was watching a celebrity gymnastics show from ITV on her iPod thingy while in the room and by 9:35am, I was having a frozen lemonade in Starbucks, Kate was having a bagel and saying I was worryingly thin, and then we set off again. She went into an Apple shop to pick something up – after a quick chat about Crisis At Christmas; and by 10:15 we were in Macy’s – where I saw a gallery of the art of Dr. Seuss, an enormous statue made entirely of Lego, multiple people saying elevator, a shop called Teavana with posters saying ‘chai season is here’ on the windows, a game called Peek A Doodle Doo (which I was told was the find and hide game of chicks and roosters in models), The Brain Store and some very interestingly constructed strappy bras in Victoria’s Secret. We went into Gap to look at some jeans while waiting for it to stop raining, a woman in there asked me if it was raining outside – and when I said yes, she said she was wondering if the rain spots all over my T shirt and were a new look.

By 1:00 PM we were in Starbucks having lunch and everyone was discussing a Blues club they went to last night (and Emily said that instead of a proper Blues band playing, it was just some specky white guy); by 1:30 we were passing a correctional centre with lots of people in orange jumpsuits in it, and we arrived at Willis Tower 15 minutes later. There was a group photo, which involved a lot of arm throwing around people, Sam told me he was afraid of heights, Dave was looking at a picture of a white marshmallow-y whale on a TV screen, and then the elevator we got on was travelling at 104 feet per second. We got to floor 103 at 1:50pm, and Sam was calling the view ‘a bit spech’ – so I said ‘not so special that you can’t use the full word, obviously’, which cause some giggling, and an American bloke asked me to take a picture of him and his wife on his phone. We all had a photo on the sky deck, Sam said he felt sick and was hyperventilating a bit, I told him to do some deep breathing, a random bloke started doing a handstand on the glass floor, and Sam said he’d try and do it – so he jumped up and down on the glass, I got a photo of him in mid air and he was attempting to do a handstand on the glass on the 103rd floor (and the other blokes were holding his legs).

When we got downstairs, there were T shirts with ‘putting ketchup on your hot dog within the city limits of Chicago is harmful to your taste buds and considered bad manners’ on them, various pizza cook books, Dave bought something for $4, gave the girl $5 and got $6 change (it said change due $0.64 on the receipt); downstairs, Sam was told to ‘work those biceps’ while getting a pressed coin from a coin machine (and some of these coins had alien heads on); and while a couple of blokes were getting pizza there at 3:00 PM, Mark was with me, Emily and Sam, and we were comparing how British and Australian people say yoghurt and we were all saying yoghurt repeatedly. David ate some of his pizza and then started wondering what his name was because the pizza was that good; by 3:50pm we were in a square, Sam was having an Oreo cookie ice cream (it was enormous – 2 cookies sandwiched together with lots of ice cream in the middle) and I was having some lemonade; and by 4:10 PM we were sat down under a tree by the harbor an attempting to cool down. 10 minutes later and Sam was trying to get a fly that had flown straight up his nose out of his nose while still under this tree, Dave was stretching his hamstrings, Mark was very amused by my cheat sheet of names, Jason was trying to make out that I had written on my name cheat sheet that he was tall, dark and handsome, and by 5:19 PM we were in Starbucks. I was attempting to stop sweating and everyone else in Starbucks was staring fixatedly at their laptops; everyone started using their phones as sat navs to get to the pizza place – and when we arrived, Mark said food was one of the main joys of his life. Emily and I shared a pizza, everyone got incredibly excited about stuffed crust pizza, Mark said he was an HGV driver, Emily was telling me a bit more about her law degree (she graduated in July), Mark and Sam and I chatted about 3D printing and atom smashing (Mark said CERN printed a pizza)- and Mark, while discussing the world’s oldest people, said he thought the key to being the world’s oldest person was eating lots of fish. Jay said he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world right now while eating his pizza, Mark said (and quote) ‘America has defeated me’ while on his third slice out of 6, Jay said he’d never been so defeated in his life while halfway through the pizza, Mark kept saying how full he was, then Emily took over my notes so I could eat. Mark said ‘The pizza won. All my life I’ve been good at eating and now I’m nothing’; a waiter suggested we buy Garretts popcorn before we leave Chicago; and Emily said she was enjoying watching the men broken in their self identity, Mark asked Kate if there is any medical damage that could be done by overeating – and was staring at his pizza and saying ‘I can’t do it’ and then said ‘I’m so full’ and was getting us all to lift this pizza to prove how heavy it was, and I was told I had big biceps while lifting it – so I mentioned my anti arm sagging exercises, and J gave up with two slices to go, and after saying that I didn’t understand the J-dog nickname for our guide – that I just had to embrace it, and we all bought T shirts with a red cup and ‘friend’ on it, Jason bought a mini football and everyone was very amused by my name sheet. At 9:21 PM, Lauren and Yasmin and I were debating about the meaning of life, Mark and I discussed education systems, and I was asking how everything worked in Australia; and then we all went to bed.