A foretaste of the feast to come

Since Wednesday me and my fellow YAGMs have been in Chicago going through orientation to prepare us for the next year. We've learned about the Accompaniment model of ELCA Global Mission work, self-care, health and well-being, YAGM/GM policies, and cross-cultural relations. For the week we're staying in University of Chicago housing, but hosted by the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Chicago, and it's been pretty fabulous.

Sara, Michelle, and I celebrating the approval of our visas!

Yesterday, however, was one of my favorite adventures so far :) After our afternoon session on health and well-being, we were told by Heidi, our director, to drop our stuff off in our rooms and head right back to where we had been. When our country group, Jerusalem/West Bank, had all arrived we were given a 24 hour bus pass, some directions in the form of riddles and sent off to find where we were going to be dining. We had to turn our cell phones off and rely on figuring things out ourselves and asking people if we needed directions.

My friend, Kaylyn, had a similar experience earlier this summer before she went on a missions trip to the Ukraine: when she arrived at the airport, her group had to navigate without using English, doing different tasks before arriving at her destination. After hearing about our task in finding our restaurant, I got a bit excited at having that same experience, too.

Needless to say, I saw a lot of Chicago. It didn't take us very long to get to the restaurant, but it did require a few bus and El Train transfers. At one point we had decided on getting off at a certain stop, but realized at the stop before that we needed to get off there instead. Our team worked well together, and all went smoothly.

This photo doesn't do my Chicken Schawarma
justice: it was so colorful and tasted AMAZING.

Then we found our restaurant, Chickpea, a Palestinian cafe. I cannot explain to you how good the food was, but suffice to say I am extremely excited about the cuisine I'll be experiencing this next year. I can't remember what everyone ordered, but Sara had a delicious (I would know, I tried a bit) dish of Musakhan -chicken, onions and pita- which is the Palestinian national dish. The chicken was amazing, like a meat pie.

I, however, went with my staple: Chicken Schawarma on hummus with pita. It was absolutely amazing, and the presentation was good, too. There was baklava on the menu but I was too full to indulge (I know, many of you know how full I must have been to pass up baklava).

Our group had a lot of fun spending time together and getting a small glimpse at some of what we will encounter this next year. It has certainly whet our appetites and filled us with more excitement :)