School, fun things, and a crappy situation- Kayla

I'm very excited to announce that I received all my culinary school things (aside from two text books, which they were out of at the time).  It was a surreal feeling, walking into that school, knowing that I was actually going to do what I moved to this city to do.  I can't believe that I'm lucky enough to be able to do this, and that I have a fiance who 100% supports me.  I suppose it really hit me when I sat down in the chair to get a picture taken for my student ID and the man behind the camera said, "say future chef".  That was it.  That was the moment that I realized that the title "Chef Davis" is not that far away, and "Chef Quijas" will follow closely behind.  Like I said, it was a little surreal.  Orientation was boring, as expected. I suppose that no matter what school one goes to, orientation is always boring and full of things to which I find myself saying "well, duh".  One such thing being "come to class".  Although, this nugget of advice was probably lost on the guy sleeping in the second row.  Orientation was but a bump in the road to the true goal of the day: receiving equipment.  Along with three new uniforms I received, I was also given a nice shiny tool kit in a very snazzy carrying bag.  It was a lot of stuff, but certainly no 80 lbs worth, even if I would have gotten my two text books.  Here are the first in a very long line of pictures that will be available on this blog:

 I felt it was necessary to take a picture of the giant whisk sitting in one of the offices :)

 Uniform!

In other news, we are so far having a great weekend.  Although I didn't get that job, we decided to out out to celebrate the selling of the car by going out to Pizano's with the money we have received from dog sitting.  We got some fantastic pasta primavera and then a supreme, deep dish pizza that was out of this world.  I've never had supreme pizza before, and I honestly didn't think I liked it, but this was fan-freaking-tastik.  I am thoroughly convinced that no pizza in the world can compete with Chicago style pizza (even though I do love St. Louis provel cheese).

Today we decided to ride our bikes down to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which is only about a 5 mile ride away from us.  All bike rides seem considerably shorter in Illinois since the roads are flat.  So, we got there, had a great time, and then started seeing ominous clouds in the sky.  Nick, who had checked the weather earlier that day and declared that it would be 85 and sunny, then looked at me and said, "oh no".  It turns out that he had typed our old zip code, 65201, into Weather.com instead of our new one, 60625. So, we rode our bikes to the zoo today based on the weather predictions for Columbia, Missouri.  Of course, we did get rained on.  We managed to stay out of it pretty well by exhibit hopping, but towards the end of the day, when our feet were sore and we were starting to get hungry, we knew that we could no longer dodge the rain.  We splurged for ponchos ($4 total) and geared up for the ride home.  All in all, the ride home was fairly enjoyable.  Our lower legs, however, were extremely dirty by the time we got home.  With this being the third time we've gotten rained on, I've decided that it would be prudent to invest in some ponchos that are not disposable.

 This is the only animal picture with which I will bore you.  You never get to see snow leopards this close and I thought it was an excellent shot.

Our snazzy rain ponchos.  Oh, Nick...  I have since asked him many times to repeat our new zip code

I would also like to announce to the world that this city is exhausting me.  Last night is a perfect example.  I probably fell asleep around 11 with my head on Nick's lap while he played a video game.  I eventually awoke an hour later, extraordinarily cranky about the fact that I was not in bed and that I had to walk ten paces to get to that destination.  I did make it there, but apparently zonked out without getting under the covers; Nick was amused to find me laying on top of the comforter, fast asleep.  About an hour after that (maybe a little later), Nick came over and said that he was going to get me under the covers.  To avoid moving as much as possible, I rolled over to his side of the bed (with my eyes still closed), let him flip up the covers on my side, rolled back over to my side and let him cover me up, and then proceeded to fall right back asleep.  I don't know that I've ever been so tired in my life.  Even at 8 this morning, after 9 hours of sleep, I still felt like I needed about 4 more.  Needless to say, there was a lot of laughing this morning about my horrible state last night.  City life is exhausting.  

The last part of this epic post will describe an event, about which I have often wondered "when will this happen to me?"  It can be summed up in five words: a bird pooped on me.