Everywhere I went in a single semester
Hi!!
To preface all of this, I got COVID tested on a weekly basis and quarantined between travels
I realized I wasn’t going to be in the Midwest again (or at least, not for awhile), so I might as well take the opportunity to visit other nearby areas!
MICHIGAN
I visited my friend Lucy in Ann Arbor at University of Michigan!
Since its only a state away, I ordered a train ticket, hopped on, and left Champaign, IL for the little hipster town of Ann Arbor. She came to grab me from the train station and we caught up over everything thats happened that semester. We went to youth group together during our high school days and even led a band together.
I was crashing at her place for the week and met her crowd of friends.
There was also a couple others at U-M I wanted to meet. I met up with someone I saw at a conference this semester, O4U, in downtown Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor is a really interesting little town. I depict as a mini city, or the downtown of DC, except there’s JUST the hipster area of town. It’s a ton of bookstores, coffeeshops, and paintings on the brick walls and windows. There’s a super chill vibe, and to add to it, it happened to be raining that day.
I also met up with Joey from the past summer! My STEP Cointern friends and I had a link - go/meet2020 for us to just hop in whenever and work together. There was just about always someone in the call at any given time. We got hamburgers at the student union, and what’s really struck me is that I have an awesome group of friends from the summer. Friends that definitely wouldn’t have been brought together this summer had it not been virtual. Friends that are completely different from the group of people I would’ve met this past summer, over completely different events. We honestly deserved to hang out in person and I’m over/[joeyed/] that we finally met in person.
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SEATTLE
Next stop: Sam in Seattle.
I have a Big from UMD TASA! My friend Sam I had met in high school.
I flew in for the weekend and saw the west coast for the first time. There’s something distinctly different about the atmosphere I experienced, especially as a queer person. There’s more or less a constant heteronormative pressure I experience almost constantly everywhere else I’ve been.
EVERYTHING IS ON A HILL.