Day 332 (Shedd Aquarium)

So, my mother and I may actually be aquariumed out. And, museumed out. We're finding that a lot of tourist attractions seem to come in very similar packaging. We went to the Shedd Aquarium today, but it might have been a little too soon after the Underwater Adventure at the Mall of America. To be fair, the Shed Aquarium is much, much, much better than Underwater Adventure, but Mall of America has the whole glass tunnel going through the huge tank going for it. Too much of the Shedd Aquarium felt like I was at a tropical fish store, with just rows and rows and rows of smallish aquariums with less than spectacular life forms in them. The Rising Amazon exhibit was done really well though, showing the different stages of the Amazon at different times of year, and we even got to see a huge anaconda shedding it's skin. The Wild Reef exhibit was similarly as engaging, but I think many parts of the aquarium need to be redesigned. Of course, I hail from California, land of the aquarium, so I may be a little bit elitist about these things. Still, it was an enjoyable experience, and I would recommend it for anyone in the area, unless they have been to an aquarium within the last year or so. Otherwise, it's kind of redundant.

For dinner, my mom and I cooked pancit for three of our new TAMFS friends that live in Chicago and had a little reunion on the shore of Lake Michigan. Chicago's been almost as oppressively hot as Minneapolis, but the breeze off the lake is nice. Unfortunately, once you'reabout a block into the city, you loose that benefit. Good times, good people, good food. One more day in Chicago, and I'm still not sure how we're gonna use it. Hopefully it'll be cheaper than today was! So far, I've spent $35.00 on parking in this city! No bueno!

PICTURE OF THE DAY: These eels were really funny.

Day 328 (Cheese)

Today was the last day of the General Assembly, and we had a tearful worship service to say good-bye to all of our new friends. I'm not really sure who these people are in this picture, though, I just took it because Heather was posing with them as I walked into the convention hall.

Before we left Minnesota, my mom and I went back to the Mall of America to watch Eclipse and go to the aquarium. I didn't think Eclipse was very good, again the book was much better than the movie, but the aquarium was fun.

In case you doubt how important cheese is to Wisconsin, this is where my mom and I had dinner.

PICTURE OF THE DAY: The sign that drew us to the restaurant.

Day 327 (Mall of America)

My mom and I went to the Mall of America today when we had some down time. We couldn't stay as long as we wanted because we got called back to clean up the church we've been using as our home base this week. But, I did get some interesting pictures. This place is nuts!!! There is an entire amusement park in the middle of the mall, a miniature golf course and more stores than I can even think of!

There was this one place called MagicQuest, where you go in and walk around and battle things with your magic wand. I had never heard of a place like this, but I thought the concept was cool. It didn't seem interesting enough for me to want to spend money on it, but it was fun to look at the people doing it. When I asked if I could just go in a look around, I was told, "In order to let you inside, we would have to take some of your gold and we can't let you in without a wand for protection."

PICTURE OF THE DAY: Here is an assortment of magic wands to choose from before entering the "forest," kind of like Ollivander's in Harry Potter. The whole time I kept thinking about how my school looks like Hogwarts and how we should have something like this so we can choose our wands before class.