Weekend in Chicago

The weekend before last, I traveled to Chicago for my Habitat For Humanity team leader training. I'm so excited to start the journey as a team leader. After participating in builds in Tanzania (2002), India (2005) and Romania (2009), I will be leading my first team to Thailand this summer (watch for an additional post on this trip). The training this weekend outlined the responsibilities and procedures of being a team leader. It was a great training with lots of similarly minded people. Here's a picture taken at the end of training.

One of the perks of attending the Chicago training was that I was able to stay with a good college friend who is a Physician Assistant in Chicago - Jackie. She took took care of me for a couple of days while I was in Chicago and took me into her little (mostly furry) family.

One evening, we took a stroll along the lake. The edges are still crunchy and frozen, but most of the lake has thawed. It was simply beautiful to walk along the half-frozen beach with the Chicago skyline behind us. Such a beautiful city!

Another really exciting pice of this trip was seeing a highschool friend who I had not seen in nearly eleven years!! (Since highschool). It was just thrilling to see this boy-turned-man who was a best friend of mine through much of highschool. We remembered quickly why we'd been such good friends. (Thank you Facebook for reconnecting us!)

All around it was a great weekend!