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Loving Life as a Foreign Service Family – Current Parallel 41° 23' N – Barcelona, Spain

Chicago-That Makes 15 Years of Marriage and What is WWDTM?

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In June Ben and I headed to Chicago for our 15th anniversary. Yes 15 years. Add the 3 years we dated previous and that is an equal number of years we were together and growing up enough to be together. Pretty amazing and not to get all lovey dovey but I think our relationship is pretty amazing too. Not may people can meet at 17 and live 300 miles away and make it work for 18 years. But they are not as amazing as Ben and I are I guess.

We flew in on some cheap flights I found. Thanks to a amazing brother in law who works in hotel management we got a screaming deal staying at a lovely Residence Inn. We used our Associated Science Technology Center Passport (more to follow in another post) to attend a few amazing museums. We went to a taping of Ben’s favorite NPR show Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (WWDTM) which is a quiz radio show. Entertaining, educationally but most of all funny. And we followed the trip up with huge quantities of food.

First Museum hit: International Museum of Surgical Science, Yeah this was my idea! It was small but amazing!

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These are archaic midwifery and gynecology instruments. Not much has changed.

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Ben and Andre the giant
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My awesome pin!img_1814

These are all kidney stones! Gross!

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They had amazing murals this one covered a whole wall showing the first cesarean.

This was the Museum of Science and Industry. Ben’s main pick. He has a slight obsessions with submarines so he was so excited to get to do the U-505 tour of the first German Submarine captured by the US.

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They has tons of other fun exhibits as well including this fun mirror maze.

The other museum we hit was The Field Museum of Natural History. It was hands down the most amazing museum I have ever visited. It had a great Egyptian exhibit, fine gems and gold, Sue the most complete T-Rex skeleton, a moving history of slavery in the US, a huge world plant exhibit and an AMAZING early man exhibit including a copy of Lucy’s skeleton. So awesome!

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We were let in by a guard to a special pay only exhibit. It was called Women of Vision. It was a collaboration of female National Geographic photographers. I can’t really explain it but these photos were so moving to me. It was a life changing experience and I left the exhibit in tears.

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The wall between Mexico and the US

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Child brides in Pakistan

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A woman who got leprosy and lost her fingers then became a midwife

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Top the human brain after being ravaged by Alztimers

Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me was such a fun show. Ben was so happy it made me thrilled we made the effort to come. It was one block from our hotel.

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Lastly FOOD, FOOD , FOOD and some biking on these awesome rental bikes to get around and pictures of fire escapes simply because I love them.

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Chicago Style Deep Dish, the cheese in under the sauce- Good

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Garrett Cheddar and Caramel Popcorn, it sounds horrible but it amazing. Somehow we missed this food staple and the Uber driver who was taking us to the airport insisted on a stop to get some for a in flight snack. He was right!

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New York style pizza but so good and huge, this for $4

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Lemon Ice and cricket game

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Dippin Dots and Pig Candy- bacon smoked slowly with brown sugar applied over and over YUM!

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Chicago style hot dogs, I thought I would hate it but I actually loved it(no onions though)

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Philly Cheese Steak was great, get it dipped

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A longjohn doughnut with vanilla gelatto in the middle was my favorite treat

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We had such an amazing time. I would recommend a Chicago visit to anyone.

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