Greektown, West Loop, and an Announcement!

First off, some personal news: I have been accepted to Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and will start this fall! I'm going to get a Masters of Divinity, with the hope that I'll eventually be ordained within the Presbyterian Church. It seems like hubris to think that far ahead, since I have three years of grad school and plenty of exams to pass before ordination is even an option. However, I'm overjoyed to be certain about heading to seminary in the fall. This year has really helped me cement a sense of my own calling, and seminary will help prepare me for my future work within the church. Also, it'll be nice to be back in school; working without spring or summer breaks and being relatively free during the evenings has been somewhat confusing.

Now here's something from my backlog of neighborhoods I visited during seminary application time: Greektown. As I'm sure you can tell from the name, Greektown is a neighborhood filled with Greek restaurants, shops, and residents. The neighborhood is absolutely tiny, and marked off by pillars on either side of the stretch of restaurants that make up its main street. It's the best place to go for baklava or gyros, and has plenty of late-night diners and cafes to hang out in. The headquarters for ~H20+, a company that sells bath gel, is in Greektown. Their offices are concrete, rectangular, and soulless, except for the tiny mosaics of people in togas that dot the building -- apparently not even corporations are exempt from reflecting Greektown's shared heritage.

Greektown is a tiny dot in the middle of West Loop, a neighborhood with a much more boring name but equally fun things to do. Last time I was there was the weekend after Chicago's huge blizzard -- there were drifts to my shins on sidewalks, and I clambered around an absolutely beautiful park with a dog run and playground and mostly more snow drifts. There were sculptures in the park which looked like they were supposed to be fountains to play in, so I'll be sure to go back in a month or so and take pictures. The neighborhood is full of college students and the recently graduated; lots of tiny apartments and 24-hour taco stands and shiny new condos. It looks like a nice place to live, if a little new architecturally new to have much personality.