Neighborhoods: Hyde Park

Lots of things have been happening recently (most notably beginning Domestic Violence Advocacy Training so that I can staff our 24-hour Crisis Line), but giving any amount of sufficient attention to these things is difficult when you get home later than usual. So instead of sharing my days with you guys, I'm going to talk about neighborhoods again! Two quick updates, first:
1. We have a cat! Krista and Jim have kindly gifted us with their cat, MJ, in order to scare away mice. It's both awesome and disconcerting to have a nice furry animal around the house.
2. Here's a picture of my office at Sarah's Inn. It's silly of me to be proud of an office, but since it is my very first private grown-up office and also full of sunlight and windows, I think that's okay. Since the building was originally residential, my office is a re-purposed sun room which looks identical to most of the sun rooms in college student apartments, but with more desk and less bed. I also get to house other people's plants when they need some sun therapy.

Okay, now on to Hyde Park. Hyde Park is on the south side of Chicago, and definitely the neighborhood I am the most familiar with. It is probably also my favorite neighborhood, simply because it holds both the majority of my favorite Chicago residents and my favorite Chicago coffee houses. Hyde Park houses both the University of Chicago, where I went to undergrad, and a plethora of seminaries. I'm including a picture of McCormick Seminary, which is the PC(USA) seminary right across the street from my old campus. It's also currently my top pick of places I'd like to go to school next year, but that list is pretty large. It's definitely cheating to only post a picture of one building, instead of the Point (a huge park by the lakeside), or various parts of the UChicago campus, or even just something I've spent more time near. However, the most memorable pictures I've taken in Hyde Park are all of other people, who will probably not be in the same pose if you were to visit. The seminary tends to stay put.
Hyde Park is defined in many ways by the University and surrounding seminaries, which makes the neighborhood demographics fairly diverse. It also has many of the sorts of amenities students want: coffee shops, restaurants, and some absolutely fantastic bookstores. The Chicago Reader referred to the University as an 800-pound gargoyle, in that it does pretty much whatever it wants in the area. While this is not quite true, the university's influence was enough to keep train lines off campus for a more quiet school experience. The nearest train station is in Garfield, which means that anybody who wants to leave Hyde Park via public transit has to want it enough to take an extra bus and then probably a train or two. As a student, I only left the neighborhood a few times a month. That's fairly sad in terms of taking advantage of everything Chicago has to offer, but also completely feasible without getting bored (if you have classwork to do). There are lots of fun places to go, including the Museum of Science and Industry and the tiny but friendly Smart Museum of Art. Or, if you go to school in the area, you can just hole up inside the nearest library.