the first weekend after school started was a long one thanks to the holiday. I took full advantage of the long weekend and did absolutely nothing. it was great.
on sunday, Eric and I went to Arlington Heights (where he is from) for dinner. I grew up in the same town I currently go to school in--a kind of small college town about an hour west of Chicago. pretty much, if you go west of Chicago, through all the west suburbs, then through about a half hour of cornfields, you get to my town. I never realized how sheltered and slightly conservative my town is until I started dating Eric, spending time in the suburbs, and talking about the differences between his town and mine. we were discussing the differences in the classes offered in our high schools and it shocked me a bit just how conservative my education there was...Eric mentioned a World Religions class he'd taken and I was in awe...nothing like that was ever offered or even discussed at my school! it was alllll Christianity, with maybe a couple paragraphs about other main religions in history class. I couldn't tell you anything about Judaism except that they celebrate Hanukkah and they can't eat pork. and this isn't a private religious school--just your basic public high school.
I always felt like our school system just taught us the same material over and over again. year after year, we learned about American History but only from the time Columbus came until about WWI. sometimes we'd make it to WWII if we were lucky. women in history? yeah right! the only women who ever existed in the US were Betsy Ross and Rosa Parks, right? and nobody was ever gay except maybe Abe Lincoln but probably not.
we never had to take a geography class until we really wanted to. perhaps that's why I love taking 100-level electives now in college. a year or so ago I took a world geography class and was amazed--I learned about countries I had literally never heard of before but are major players in the economy, wars, etc. it's sad that I had never heard of Kazakhstan until I was 21 years old. definitely a failing on the school system's part.
anyway, sorry about the big rant about high school. here's some pictures.
___________________________________________________________________________
cool lamp in the thai restaurant we went to.
this weekend was so cold...it took my crappy car forever to heat up. all I have to look at is a boring clump of trees while I wait.
still waiting...
on Monday Eric and I met up with some friends at World of Beer in Naperville for the Hopslam tapping party. it was less of a party and more of just normal beer drinking. Hopslam on tap is tasty!
our friends Mike and Christina.
Ross!
my second beer was a coffee stout by Hinterland. it was absolutely delicious. I love coffee, and I love stouts. it's the ultimate beverage.
out friend Tyson bought us all around of root beer "shots." I can't remember what the brewery is but it's a beer that tastes just like root beer. so delicious!
we saw this on our way home from Arlington Heights, I think. only in my town would somebody be so obsessed with their crappy American-made truck that they scratch this on the side.
some creepy handprints...
No comments:
Post a Comment