A few blocks into my walk, I realize that this is a bad idea. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know why it hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hit me before\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwalking alone at night, in a city that I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been to in 10 years, heading towards an unknown destination. The rest of my friends had left about 7 hours ago, and they had already made it back safely. It felt just right when I was booking the ticket, a midnight Megabus ride from Chicago back to Ann Arbor. It would give me a few extra hours in Chicago to catch up with a high school friend, and I could sleep on the bus and spend the next day being relatively productive (which, by the way, did not happen).<\/p>\n
But now, swimming in an endless pool of eerie orange streetlights, I feel like a to-be subject of a crime report. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153MISSING GIRL: Ann Arbor Police seeking 19 year old girl last seen in Chicago. Friends and family are desperate for answers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Accompanying photo: my horrifyingly unflattering, jetlagged MCard picture. Nope, when I make it into the paper, I want good lighting, makeup, and Photoshop\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe whole nine yards.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never realized that being alone could be scary. Then again, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never been this alone. I wanted to leap forward 7 hours in time; I wanted to be back home.<\/p>\n
Wait, home\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 as in my cramped dorm in Bursley, not all the way back in Korea. It was the first time that home<\/em> truly meant Ann Arbor. It was an odd feeling, realizing that \u00e2\u20ac\u02dchome\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 would probably never mean my old childhood room again. During my imagination-induced panic attack, I called my floormates for moral support, not my parents to come pick me up. Huh.<\/p>\n As I settle into my seat on the not-at-all sketchy Megabus (I made it alive!), I think about the last time I was in Chicago. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been with my parents\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwe filled up on Korean groceries, my dad got a haircut and we had sushi at a Japanese restaurant we were regulars at. It was a routine trip; with destinations planned out in advance and a car to drive on roads we had taken for three years by then. The city almost seemed small, because we only went to the places we always went to.<\/p>\n This time, I had made the journey with three members of my new Michigan family; we had no specific destinations, no car, and just Google Maps. At the beginning of the trip, I was confident that I knew the city pretty well\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI was welling in nostalgia, thinking of the ghosts of the old me that I would meet up with in memory-laden parts of the city. And in some places, I did. I saw the 10-year-old me climbing down the steps between the 2nd<\/sup> floor botanical gardens and Children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Museum at Navy Pier. I remember trying to measure the height of the Bean as a school project in 4th grade, and buying a giant Hershey bar at the Water Tower as a souvenir.<\/p>\n But most of the time on this trip, it was a rediscovery of both the city and myself. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never before realized how pretty the Chicago skyline was, but after a month in art school I found myself trying to see and capture the beauty of the buildings. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never seen the sunrise at Navy Pier, with friends giddily drunk on the magic of the early morning hours. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never had Ghiradelli\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Nob Hill Chill (heaven in a cup). I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcEggsperienced\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 the fantastic 24-hour brunch restaurant (called Eggsperience), nor had I walked there across the city at 4 in the morning. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never realized how eerily deserted a large city gets at night, how all the lights are on but no one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s there, making you feel empty yet misleadingly powerful at the same time. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never had to force myself to muster courage to conquer my fears ofsomething unknown. As I left Chicago with new memories and new discoveries, I began to wonder what the next trip will bring.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6You came to take us<\/p>\n All things go, all things go<\/p>\n To recreate us<\/p>\n All things grow, all things grow<\/p>\n We had our mindset<\/p>\n All things know, all things know<\/p>\n You had to find it<\/p>\n All things go, all things go\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n -Sufjan Stevens, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Chicago\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n [youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KFrG6S0GnhU] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few blocks into my walk, I realize that this is a bad idea. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know why it hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hit me before\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwalking alone at night, in a city that I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been to in 10 years, heading towards an unknown destination. The rest of my friends had left about 7 hours ago, and they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":195,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/195"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3690"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3692,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690\/revisions\/3692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}