Ellie took me for a ride along the lake shore again, this time north toward the city. I’ve noticed that each time I ride, I feel stronger. That is a feeling I have not had in a long time, and I’m glad it’s back. I actually passed people today, rather than have them all pass me, which is what it was like last weekend.

It was rather busy on the waterfront, and it was clear that an event was getting underway. I found out from a traffic officer that Guns and Roses is playing tonight at Soldiers’ field, which is about 4 miles from here (U.S. Cellular Field, where the White Sox play is even closer, only a little over a mile away). The concert is sold out, but there is a second one Sunday which still has plenty of tickets left. Will I go? We’ll see – I will be revising a paper this weekend, and it depends how that goes, and whether I can find cheap tickets.

One of the things about staying at an AirBNB (I have a private room in an apartment)  is that sometimes other people stay here, too. Last week we had six people staying in the room next to mine, although it is no bigger than mine. Although they were in their late teens, they were pretty quiet for the two nights they stayed. It made going to the bathroom kind of tricky.

This weekend we have Pierre and Valentine who are two university students who are in the US doing internships in chemistry (!) at the University of Akron. They are taking advantage of the long weekend to see Chicago.

We shared a Chicago deep dish pizza from Giordano’s. It came in what would be a tiny pizza box in Connecticut. It looked only a little larger than a personal pizza would be. I’ll tell you, though, that two pieces is plenty. It is quite tasty. I like all pizza, and like people, I am loathe to compare one to another – they’re just pizzas. That are what they are, and that what makes pizza so fascinating – each one has its own personality.

In the classroom, the girls are really showing signs of bonding – they conspired together yesterday to make a giant card for Courtney, my TA, whose birthday is this weekend. Yesterday, sixteen of them all sat together for lunch. The other four seem to prefer to eat alone – they interact in the classroom, but sit separately at lunch.

I have been encouraging the class since Tuesday to come up with a class cheer, something we can use to show our appreciation for each other and for guest speakers. At first, I put it on the students to come in with ideas. It was clear that they liked the idea of a class cheer, but nothing seemed to stick, and they were reluctant to share ideas, if they had any. Yesterday, we had a breakthrough.  I looked up classroom cheers on Google, which led me to some elementary teachers’ pages on Pinterest. That’s where we hit some gold. I demonstrated some cheers from that page in the most ridiculous way possible, and they liked the fireworks cheer. We have been working on perfecting it, and the girls are getting really good at it! We had some timing issues yesterday, but today I asked for a volunteer who had a loud voice to help count us. Meriem, an effervescent young woman who seems to be enjoying the heck out of GWC, stepped forward. Now she counts us down. In a couple of days, I’ll post a video of them performing it. It’s fun, funny and super cute. We used it for our guest speaker yesterday, Sheri Rubin the founder and CEO of Design Direct Deliver. She LOVED the Jazz Hands part. It’s awesome. Just sayin.

Sheri gave a great presentation on how she got to where she is on a sometimes meandering pathway. She also had some cool activities showing the girls how to create variations on just about any game. By the end of that activity, we had five or ten different and interesting variations on Rock, Paper, Scissors. She also gave great advice on how to find your path when a choice is not clear, as well as how to work in a male dominated field (she is still active in the field of computer games). She remembers cheering the first time there was a line at the women’s room at a gaming conference because there were finally enough women there. Yay! A line!