Restaurants

Hello all,

So over the course of my stay here I have been going to a lot of restaurants that I would recommend to anyone who comes visit.
Restaurant #1: Mellow Yellow
       - This place has a lot of comfort food and a student discount (10%) on week days.

 
 

Restaurant #2: Ja's Grill
      - This is a Jamaican restaurant with a lounge in the basement. The food is great here!!

 

Restaurant #3: Joy Yee's Noodles
        - Asian food with the best smoothies ever!!

           

Hope you can get a chance to explore Chicago's amazing restaurants when you are here!!

Author: Tsiry

Busy Busy Busy!

Hello again! It has been such a busy couple of weeks! The trimester students from Knox College moved in this week, so we had a fun night Monday night after our internships. Then we had an internship workshop Wednesday night, so it made for two very long days! But I am finally caught up on sleep and ready to share some experiences!

           For my seminar class a few weeks ago, Darrell Cannon, a survivor of the John Burge tortures, came and spoke to us. If you are not familiar with the John Burge torture case, it involves police commander, John Burge, torturing murder suspects until they confess to the crime, even though they did not do it. He tortured them until they would have done anything to make it stop. As a result of them signing the confessions, they were put in prison for decades for a crime they did not commit. Darrell told us his life story, about his time in prison, and what he is doing today. I was very touched and inspired by his optimism about everything. It was something I did not expect from someone that has been so wronged for so many years. He is now currently working for Cease Fire, a local organization that is fighting to stop the violence in Chicago.
            This week in our seminar, we went to Northwestern Law to hear about youth giving false confessions and being put in jail because of it. Chicago is the capital of false confessions in the United States. Many youth are being wrongfully accussed of crimes and then questioned for hours and hours about it. After so much time sitting and being lied to about the police, many youth are led to believe that if they just sign a paper, they will be able to go home. However, that is not the case because essentially, the police just tricked them. We learned about the case of Daniel Taylor, who has been in prison for two decades for a crime he did not commit but gave a false confession to. The crazy part about is story is that he was actually in police custody when the murders he was found guility of occurred. There is no way he could have been at the scene of the crime. However, he is still in prison today. I never wold have thought things like this still happen today in the United States. Hearing all about this made me so angry! I hope to definitely get involved somehow in fixing this situation and other similar ones. It was definitely an eye opening experience.
            
             I finally figured out my independent study project topic, so that has taken a huge relief off my shoulders. I plan to research the correlation between mental health and running, specially how it might affect your self esteem and why people run. I plan to join a few running clubs and interview members about why they run. I also will do some research on the side about the correlation and hopefully be able to fit everything into a conclusion by the end of the semester. I am very excited to start running with the clubs and see for myself how they affect my well being :)

            On a social note, St. Patricks's Day in the city is CRAZY. I was on a train into the city from one of the suburbs on Saturday morning and it was completely jam packed with people dressed in green. When I got into the city, I could not believe how many people were downtown. It was just completely wild. Even though it was extremely windy and FREEZING! I cant even imagine what it was like last year when the weather was actually warm. But here is a picture of the green river :)

Author: Maria W.

Louder Than a Bomb Finals!

This past Saturday, the entire program went to the Louder Than a Bomb finals! Louder Than a Bomb (LTAB) is a poetry slam competition for the Chicago high schools. It is the largest youth poetry slam competition in the country. It was awesome! There were so many talented students up there speaking about some really deep issues. The crowd went CRAZY for all the speakers. There were chants for the judges if the score was too low and different chants for the different high schools. Such a unique atmosphere! I especially loved how everyone supported each other, regardless of where they went to school. Because its all about the poems not the points :)

                    Here is the view from where we were sitting on the balcony :) I had an awesome video of Lamar Jorden, but it wouldn't upload for some reason...so just use your imagination! :)




-Maria W.

Fun, fun, fun!

Fun, fun, fun! So on Friday our core course went to visit a lady from Little Village who was doing so much for her community. It was a really inspiring talk. At the end of the tour we went to an amazing ice cream place (home made ice cream) and it was delicious. This friday I decided to go hang out with the other girls from Logan Square apartments and we decided make some Churros, which turned out to be delicious as well.

Author: Tsiry R.

Internship

Hello everyone,

Another interesting week here at the ACM Chicago Program, I know I have been posting a lot about my classes and the field trips the past several weeks. So this post will be about my internship. I am currently the General Development Intern at Teen Living Programs (TLP). TLP is a non-profit organizations that provides a home and a support system for homeless youths in the Chicago area. As a GDI, my job is to help with social media, communication, event planning and fundraising materials. These past couple of weeks I have been helping with their Spring Gala, which is their major fundraising event, and I have been enjoying it a lot. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the gala as their was another show the program had as go to. But nevertheless, I really enjoyed being part of the planning process for the gala and lending a hand to the development team.

Here is a link to their website if you would like to read more about the work they are doing:
http://www.teenliving.org/3.0/home.html

Teen Living Programs Logo

Internship!

Greetings! I meant to fill you in on last week sometime this past weekend, but I got really sick! So I am now finally caught up on sleep and homework :) But I really want to share a little bit about my internship!

I intern at Girls in the Game, which is an afterschool program for girls that teach them all about health, wellness, leadership, and self esteem. I work there every Monday and Wednesday for roughly around 15 hours a week. It is going really well so far! I have started a research project where I look up all the different organizations in the target communities they hope to expand the program to. It is really interesting to find out everything going on in all the different neighborhoods! I also was able to go to some programming and interact with the girls. I get to go to another program tomorrow :) I am very happy with my internship!

Here is a picture of everyone in the program with alderman, Joe Moore! We met with him two Fridays ago :)


Author: Maria

Chicago Innovation Awards (02/28/13)

Guest speakers at Chicago Innovation Award

In my ISP class we actually went to the Chicago Innovation Award, which was a mind-blowing experience. This event was an opportunity for us in the ISP entrepreneurship to network with entrepreneurs and actually give out our business cards and get some in return. Most of us were nervous at first since we haven't done something like this before but the more people we talked to the better we got at it so I think it was a very enriching experience. At this event we got the opportunity to hear from the following guest speakers: Kristi LaFleur (Executive Director, Illinois Tollway), Kate Shubert (Regional Business Manager, Disney Institute), Justin Massa (Founder & CEO, Food Genius) and Rhon Daguro (Founder & CEO, Nervana). It was such a great experience to actually see innovation in action and be able to interact with these leaders.

Gold Scholarship winner - George Sobolevskiy

Author: Tsiry R.

Technori pitching event

Technori stage

Hello everyone,

This week was another amazing week with a lot of field trips and events to attend. This week, both in my seminar and ISP class, we got the chance to network with entrepreneurs in various fields during the events that we attended. For the entrepreneurship seminar, we attended the Technori event which is an event where startups are able to pitch about their new business to the audience. Majority of the audience were actually young entrepreneurs which made us all feel all grown-up and professional.

Author: Tsiry R.

Outside of class :)

 

Hello, this is Maria again! I just wanted to write a little about life here outside of the classes and internship! First, if you love to run outside with a great view such as this....

then this program is for you ;) It was around 50 degrees here on Monday, so I got to go on a nice jog outside, right along the lake. The sun was out when I first started my run, so it was absolutely beautiful :) You don't even remember you're running! (okay...maybe after a little while you do) I cannot wait for it to get warmer and stay warm, so I can do this much more often :)

This weekend, I was able to do many awesome things with the other students in the program. Right after Core couse ended on Friday, we went and got deep dish pizza! We went to the original Uno's downtown, and it was absolutely delicious. We are now thinking of making it our Friday tradition. Sounds great to me!

On Saturday night, we all went over to one of the Logan Square apartments. We all brought a type of snack and just chilled and ate for awhile. Then we headed down to this place called Cafe Mustache, where they had live music. It was a super chill, hispter place. I loved it, and the music was awesome. I honestly could have sat there for hours! Logan Square is many of those little, cute cafes. It is a much more vibrant community than Hyde Park because there are many young people that are starting to move back into the neighborhood.

 

Lastly, this morning, my roommate and I went to the church called St. Sabina, where the well-known Father Pfleger preaches. All I can say is wow. It was not the normal church experience I have had in the past. It was an almost three hour service, full of music, praising, and lots of preaching. It was incredible. Father Pfleger is well known throughout Chicago for many things, but probably the most recent is his action against gang violence. He recently started a basketball league, where gang members participated in friendly competition. I could write pages about things Father Pfleger has done because he has been so involved. I became interested in going to his church after we happened to see him last Friday at City Hall during Core class. I hope to visit other churches throughout the city during my stay here!

                                               

Jail, Yale, and an improv class?

Hey all, this is Maria writing :) This week for Seminar class, we watched Charles Dutton's one man play, From Jail to Yale.  IT WAS AWESOME! In short, it is just Charles Dutton speaking about his life and how he ended up such a successful actor after spending so many years in jail. He also did a few scenes of Shakespeare, where we were able to see his acting skills :) But it was such an interesting story, and he was a such a great storyteller. He had me laughing the entire time! The benefits from the play went to the Chicago Youth Leadership Academy. Dutton has such an inspiration to help the youth in the city and stop the violence that has stricken Chicago. He even did a special performance for the youth of that school. Great night and great experience!

For ISP this week, we had an improv class! Like what?! It ended up being SO much fun. I had friends and siblings involved in improv throughout high school, but I never had a chance to do it. But now that I have experienced it, I want to do more! I may even sign up for some beginner's classes here in the city :) Going into the class, I really was just thinking it would be a fun time. While it was an absolute riot, it also taught us a lot about ourselves. It really got us thinking about how we perceive others and how not to judge ourselves. It also taught us how to just listen to others without always thinking of something to say back, which can often lead to us not hearing what they were saying in the first place. Such a good afternoon.

Thats all for now :)