Chicago

Chicago... I spent there my Christmas and New Year. A third American city (worth that name - i.e. not counting Jackson, MS and similar...) that I've visited - after Atlanta and New Orleans.
A few impressions:

• Great architecture: skyscrapers, Frank Llloyd Wright (Oak Park was pretty), and much more!
• Very walkable, at least in the city proper - yes, Chicago has massive suburbs as well.
•  Hyde Park: University of Chicago has a spooky neo-Gothic campus. The university has been  "devouring" - buying - neighboring properties at amazing speed. Museum of African-American history was interesting, but small - but growing! Obama has his house there, but it is hard to see... The Hyde Park neighborhood is surrounded by a sea of (in their parlance) "ghettos".
• On a related not, some building at the University of Illinois - Chicago campus resembled the buildings from Universiteit Utrecht at Uithof. Sweet seventies!
• So much segregation! Seemingly even somewhat worse than Atlanta - this is confirmed also by some rigorous research. There are white neighborhoods, black neighborhoods, Hispanic neighborhoods, and these all feel like completely different cities... The pretty neighborhoods seem like a drop in the sea of ghettos... - this is very obvious when taking a subway or train.
• Subway riding above the ground, above the cars, rather than under the ground?
• Field Museum: A lot of big dinosaur bones. The story about cultures of American Indians and big Indian cultures (e.g. Aztecs, Mayas, Incas) was also interesting.
• Art Institute: Huge!!! It's not Louvre, but getting close.
• Museum of Science and Industry: Reminds me a similar institution in Munich. This one was smaller and more geared towards children - but there were some interesting exhibits for others, too.
• Visit of a homeless shelter for young adults - many of them don't belong there at all. They got there often through a haphazard event and many of them - if they can get out of that - will certainly face a bright future.
• Deep dish pizza - delicious and a lot of cheese. I have also eaten oysters for the first time in my life(?) - delicious! Overall, I enjoyed a lot of great food - the mother in my host family was a great cook and we also had a lot of parties with a lot of great food. A definite change after a semester of experimenting with cooking dry beans in microwaves and similar monstrosities.
  However, after coming back, a friend told me I had become even thinner! So apparently, my appetite was paralleled by my wanderlust in the streets of Chicago.
  Anyway, I guess I should now soak beans, so that I can cook them in the microwave tomorrow. As a sidenote, I also bought a box of peanuts since they promote longevity and you don't even get fat eating them ;-)
• Overall: Chicago seems like a city driven by the inertia of its historical importance - and size. Some locals are optimist, but the government is corrupt, the state is bankrupt, taxes are high. And the city seems often lost in its history, not looking forward. There seems to be little progress in tackling the segregation and the "sea of ghettos"... But again, that's just an impression, I might be missing something.
• On my way back, flights were being canceled or delayed because of weather - snowstorm!
• New Year's Eve: A lot of tourists at the Navy Pier. Massive fireworks, the biggest that I've ever seen - but they told me Asian cities' fireworks were even bigger.
• The program was ecumenical Christian and the host families in Chicago represented a variety of denominations. My host family was Unitarian Universalist (does it count as Christian?) and so I had an opportunity to attend the local church service twice. Truly an astounding range of different people there! I even met a famous Math professor! Besides, I actually attended an Unitarian Christmas service for the second year in a row, in both cases by coincidence :-)
• My host family was very pleasant, with three sons of cca my age. All of them came for Christmas! The Christmas day was happy, with a plenty of guests.
• One day, I had an opportunity to attend a party with two of the sons and their Chicagoan friends. Among 30 Chicagoans, I truly felt as a minority - but don't worry, no oppression took place, quite the opposite! ;-) :-x
• Oh, and it was cold! My flight was delayed because of snowstorm and on the days surrounding my departure, thousands of flights were canceled because of weather.