I had a friend, Zach, that graduated from Central and went to live in Madison with his brother about a year and some ago, so it would work perfectly because he said I could stay over for the weekend!
Later in September or October, a friend of mine, Madelynn got the same scholarship and I was thrilled I was going to have a travel partner! Before, I was planning on doing all the travelling, etc. by myself which would be a little rough. After a couple of weeks, both of us got an email saying we had a huge discount for a pre-conference workshop on Thursday Nov. 15th., so we decided to leave Mt. Pleasant on Wednesday, stay overnight in Chicago and continue our trip to Madison in the morning. I thought it would be too much on Zach to have my friend and I over for 4 days, so I looked into couchsurfing with another Madison local on Thursday night instead! It is a pretty cool thing I learned a couple of months ago through a friend: http://www.couchsurfing.org/
We first looked into hotels/couchsurfing in Chicago but we decided to go for a Hostel. It was the best decision we could have made. So, we left Mt. Pleasant we would stay:
1. Wednesday- Hostel in Chicago
2. Thursday - Couchsurfing
3. Friday and Saturday - Zach's
I booked the ISHP Chicago Hostel, not knowing a thing about it just because it was so darn cheap! Literally $49 for a room that would accommodate the 3 of us! When we got there, Madelynn told us it was in Wicker Park, her favorite neighborhood in Chicago. I have been to the city before, but never to that part of town. It is more of a hipster area with lost of alternative clothing stores, records stores, natural restaurants and thrifty places!
ISHP has 2 buildings. I made my check in the main one and we headed to the second one, where we were staying. We had free parking over there too, which was amazing! The room was pretty good, there was a huge and very clean communal kitchen and good and clean shared bathroom. After getting situated, we left the building and headed towards the restaurants to have dinner.
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| ISHP Chicago Room |
We ended up at this place called Native Foods Cafe- http://nativefoods.com/ - It is an amazing vegan restaurant! I had a marinated fake chicken with a quinoa vegetable salad!
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| Native Foods Cafe |
After that we went to a record store and to the Myoptic book store - http://www.myopicbookstore.com/ - and we spent some time there. It was so nice to be in a city environment after being "stuck" in Mt. Pleasant for a quite a while (no offense but Mt. P. is definetely my favorite place in the whole world).
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Madelynn at the Bookstore
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My workshop was about the 9 Biodynamic preparations as proposed by Rudolf Steiner, it was very interesting as my introduction to Biodynamic farming.
After the workshop we went to see Zach and hang out with him for a bit! It was super fun, I think I hadnt seen him for a year before that! Then, Madelynn and I headed downtown to give a ride to Brian's friend, Benjamin, who was coming from Minneapolis for a guitar audition at University of Wisconsin.
That night we hung out with Brian, Benjamin and some of their friends. It was lots of fun!
Next day, Madelynn and I were back to the conference. During the afternoon we went for a walk in Downtown Madison. It was awesome! So many cools stores and coffee shops to see at State Street and all around the capitol! We even found a pharmacy co-op that was AMAZING and we could have at least 10 hours there! hahaha
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| Monona Lake |
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| Downtown Madison |
 That night we had pizza at the Roman Candle, where Zach works. The pizza was great and we got a great discount because of Zach! Then, the 3 of us headed to The Cardinal to meet Brian and Benjamin and see Toni Diakite and his band band that plays great african ethnic music!  .JPG)
Farmers Market
Farmers Market
Later on Saturday, Brian and I went to the community gardens and the nature reserve at UW. It was quite beautiful! Madelynn and I had dinner at this great Indian restaurant and at night we hung out with Zach and girlfriend, his brother and mom! It was great!!  On Sunday morning, Madelynn and I met this UW dietetics professor that has a great sustainable homestead at his backyard! He has a big garden space, 2 hoop houses and a chicken coop. Unfortunately, I did not take picture of those things but it was very amazing! We shared some ideas of sustainability and he got me very inspired of, one day, doing the same thing myself! Then, Madelynn and I hit the road and came back to Mount Pleasant! This trip was one of the best I had so far this year! I can't wait to return to Madison and I am considering UW for grad school as well. Who knows ;) Emilie |
