The Adventures of Whitney, Brach, Hannah, Carolyn, and Tyler!

I was waiting to get pictures from Brach before posting this, but we've both been really busy lately so I haven't been able to get them from him....so I guess I'll just have to do with Carolyn's pictures...

After Easter, me, Brach and Hannah, and Carolyn and Tyler went up to the U.P. (Upper Peninsula of Michigan) to our friend Sarah's wedding. I had a few times of feeling like a fifth wheel and there were also a couple of times that I didn't feel well, but other than that we had a lot of fun. It was so nice to be out in nature and it was nice to see Sarah again and to meet and get to know Travis, the man who is now her husband. Here are some pictures from the wedding. While driving back we had fun stopping in front of some of the giant "statues" (or whatever you want to call them) that were on our way home. Apparently, people in the U.P. like to make giant statues of random things and put them around their land as tourist attractions or something.

Going up there was definitely a culture shock...not only do they speak funny (kind of like the people in Fargo, if you've seen that movie) but they also have their own culture (there's a lot of hunting, drinking beer, playing snow-centered sports when there's snow, eating mostly plain tasting food, and a lot of people are still stuck in the 90s hair-style wise...haha). It was fun =)

Some time after our U.P. adventure, the five of us set out for "Little Italy" one nice Sunday afternoon.
About a year ago, my friend Brach promised me that, before I went back to Europe, he would bring me down to Little Italy. So, when the weather finally got better, I had him finally take me and we brought Hannah, Carolyn, and Tyler along with us.
Unfortunately, we discovered, Chicago doesn't really have a Little Italy! haha
There's a street with an "Italian Lemonade" place, a few Italian restaurants (with different Asian restaurants in between), a pub called "Irlandese" which means "Irish" in Italian, which I thought was funny, a little Italian grocery store (which actually did have some real Italian stuff in it which was exciting!), a statue of Joseph Di Maggio (an Italian baseball player for the New York Yankees), and a statue of Chistopher Columbus. And that was it. haha
We did have a lot of had fun though. It was nice to be out =)

Here would go the funny pictures we took in "Little Italy", but I guess I'll just have to show them to you some other time!