Cafe Iberico

Last night, while Goose was working late (boo night shifts), I got to hang out with some Albion folks! Niko was in town from Detroit for an interview and Mark Ams (now Dr. Mark--he just defended his dissertation), who lives in Pittsburg, was presenting his chemistry research at a conference. Louise, who lives a bit north of us, brought her boyfriend. So here we are: Louise, Mike, Niko, Mark, me, Andy, and Lewis...

Andy dared to try the blood sausage...

It was a fun night. I just can't seem to get enough goat cheese!

Today is Eric's last day as a server--starting Monday, he will be a manager!

What a week!

This past week has been very full! On Monday, Sarah stopped in Chicago on her way back to Oregon from El Salvador and North Carolina (it was quite a trip!) and we were so happy to be able to make it out to O'Hare for a short visit. Here Sarah is enjoying the smallest ice cream cone ever (this is what it looked like after two licks). I guess airport vendors think they can do whatever they want. The good news is, she only paid $3.22.

Here we are hanging out with the guy in the red vest:

It was also my last week at Instituto del Progreso Latino.... The leaving process was difficult at times, but I am very thankful for the opportunities to connect with people before saying goodbye. A week ago Friday, we had a volunteer appreciation dinner at Cafe Catedral (the same castle-like place where we had our Christmas party), and we invited two of our Citizenship students who have recently passed their interviews with Immigration to help us pass our certificates. It was so fun to hang out with everyone! Here are Maria Guadalupe, who just passed her interview two weeks ago; Jose Luis, a volunteer; Rene, a brand new US citizen; me; Sonia, the citizenship program director; and Candice, a former citizenship instructor:

Coincidentally, in the room next door to us at the Catedral, there was a big press event for some Lucha Libre stars. Lucha Libre is basically Mexican professional wrestling where all the wrestlers were masks. It was wild.

This past Wednesday, my co-workers had an amazing goodbye lunch for me, with so much food we all gave ourselves happy stomach aches. Francisca made cheese empanadas and Edel brough samosas, which we determined are basically Indian empanadas with different stuff as stuffing. We also had an amazing salad with homemade dressing, vegetarian sopes, and a huge fruit-topped chocolate cake from BomBon Cafe, an incredible bakery in Pilsen. Here is Jesus setting up for the meal (you can see some empanadas in the foreground). Unfortuntely, I left my camera in the other room during the meal so I didn't get any pictures of all the food and of the 10 of us squeezed in around the table. It was such a nice time together!

Thursday was my last day at the office and I spent Friday sleeping and cleaning the apartment--it was fabulous!

On another work-related note, Eric has been promoted from server at the Blind Faith Cafe to a management position. He is receiving some training tonight but will continue serving through this coming week. This will mean more regular hours and a stable income--both of which are good things. Plus he won't have to wear the vest every day! Hopefully he will share more about this change sometime soon!

Later Friday, Eric and I volunteered, along with a few other folks from Holy Covenant UMC, with The Night Ministry, a organization that provides services for "people on the nighttime streets of Chicago." The Night Ministry folks take small groups out two nights a week to a specific location in Lakeview (our church's neighborhood--which also happens to be the neighborhood with one of highest number of homeless youth in the country), where they park the van and serve a meal and visit with the folks who come by. It was a very meaningful evening.

My mom had a class in Lombard (a Chicago suburb) on Saturday, so she spent Friday night with us. In the morning, we all went to the Heartland Cafe to meet Brooke and Libby, who were in town from Arkansas and Texas.

Of course, we had to visit the giant jelly bean in Millenium Park:


And then we walked around and explored and enjoyed Isabel, the daughter of a friend of Libby's who was off for a bit, while the city got swallowed up by fog. For a while there, we thought we were in Oregon again! But eventually the buildings reappeared!

We had such a nice time together!

Even though I like the fog, today's weather was a huge improvement! It was 78 degrees and sunny! There was quite a bit of wind, but it was fabulous to be outside without a coat--and in short sleeves!

Could this be the real spring???

Spring came and went

We hope that spring will come again!

After weather that was cold cold cold for so long, the temperature suddenly went up to 70! The sun came out and the birds came out and the people came out....but then the cold returned. Thankfully, the sun is still here, but it can't quite be felt at the moment. Well, the few nice days were a reminder that spring is possible, and hopefully, it won't be long until winter retreats--again! Speaking of retreats...we had a lovely 2-day retreat at church last weekend--and it was actually warm enough to go outside for the picture at the end!


It was such a great time of rest and reflection and relationship-building.

I also took a field trip recently with my co-workers and some Citizenship teachers and students to City Hall for a public hearing regarding Immigration's proposal to significantly raise the fees to apply for U.S. Citizenship (along with other immigration-related application fees). The current fee to apply is $400 and the proposal would raise that to $675--an enormous amount for folks working minimum-wage jobs. Several members of the Chicago City Council are committed to passing a resolution against these fee raise. One of our students gave a powerful testimony about how the fee raise would negatively affect his eligible family members and others in his community who are already finding it difficult to collect the money to apply (at the current cost). According to testimonies of other city officials and community workers, USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) has not been able to provide a specific dollar amount that it actually costs to process an application, yet is insisting that applicants pay more for already mediocre service (over 100,000 applications are lost or misplaced each year by USCIS and some folks have to wait up to four years for applications to be processed). They have also refused to request any federal money to support these services. Perhaps if the federal minimum wage increased at the same rate as application fees this new proposal could be justified. The passing of the proposal would mean erecting another wall (this one invisible) between immigrants and their dreams to become US Citizens.

Here is the lovely group of folks from Instituto that turned out!


This upcoming Thursday will be my last day at Instituto del Progreso Latino. I don't yet have another position, but have a much clearer sense of where I'm headed than I have had for a while. I'll keep you updated!

A little R & R

Mira here. This weekend, my sister, Rose, and her husband, Robert, came from Lansing to visit! We had such a nice time hanging out. Lucy and Mom, lil' Justin's two grandmas, shared him over the three days, so Rose and Robert, who started their spring break at Michigan State on Friday, got to leave all real responsibility at the state line.

Friday night was extremely cold and windy, but we got warm (after waiting for the bus for 40 minutes!) by doing a little salsa dancing at a little place on North Clark (not too far from where we live). On Saturday, we slept in forever, then had a late lunch at El Borinquen down in Humboldt Park, a place Rose knew from visits to a friend who used to live nearby. It's a neigborhood Puerto Rican restaurant whose specialty is the jibarito, a sandwich made with fried plantains instead of bread. Actually, the jibarito was invented at El Borinquen. Pretty cool. Rose and Robert actually went to Puerto Rico for their honeymoon in August and looked all over for her favorite sammy while they were there, but it was not to be found!

We did some more waiting outside in the cold that afternoon (in front of this lovely poster) on our way to Michigan Avenue to walk around:

Just steps away from (and literally below) the fancy stores on the Magnificent Mile, lies the famed Billy Goat Tavern. You may recognize the name from the legendary Curse of the Billy Goat placed on the Chicago Cubs in 1945 or from the Saturday Night Live skit. Anyway, it's a dark little place with cheap food and probably all the original signs and menu boards.

From the Billy Goat, we made our way to the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts to see ComedySportz, a hilarious improv show Goose and I first experienced in Spokane when our friend Mike Moore was doing sound for them. I am so terrible at explaining or repeating anything funny that I've seen or heard, but let's just say that we laughed a whole lot. I am so impressed by the kind of creativity that improv folks possess!


This morning we had a really nice service at church for the second Sunday in Lent. It was so great to share that part of our lives with Rose and Robert and introduce them to lots of great folks.


They headed home after that and Goose and I had a long fabulous talk over coffee with Kristin and Michelle, two of the greatest, craziest church folks we've met since we've been back in Chicago.

Such a nice nice weekend.