I have never been so cold as I was in Michigan…

It’s not all Michigan’s fault… I’m sure Chicago would have felt just as cold if not colder if we hadn’t left when we did…

The morning that we boarded our Amtrak train from Chicago, the weather had dropped to 19 degrees F… By the time we got to Ann Arbor, the forecast for the night was 7 degrees. Yikes! And the high was like 16 for the next day. Eesh.

It was my first time on a train in this country. I’ve been on a bus from Seattle to Spokane, subways in various cities, and a commuter train from New York to Connecticut, but never on an actual book before hand reservation kind of train. So that was exciting.

Our train was a little cold because every time the opened the door at a stop, the wind rushed in… I didn’t mind too much, because the snow was exciting… Did I mention it started snowing during our train ride? Ya, it did. And I LOVE the snow. I guess it’s because I’m from Houston and we never get much of it down in these parts… but even when I lived in Russia, I rarely felt sick of it. I remember walking to class and stopping to stare out the windows at the fresh white fluffy powder floating down from the sky. I felt the same way on the train. The snow was mesmerizing.

Sometimes, the wind would rush so quickly past the train that the snow would puff up into a crazy cloud around the windows and for a while, all you could see was white. Kind of like when your airplane goes through a thick cloud.

We went through several cute Michigan towns. The only unfortunate things were the accents. (No offense Michigan folk). It’s just so different from the south. I wish I could play a clip for you, but it just felt so foreign to me. I wanted to laugh every time someone spoke.

Soon, after a pleasant 4 hour train ride, we arrived in Ann Arbor.

My friend from college, Dizi, met us at the train station. 🙂 She recently moved from Texas to Ann Arbor for work, so I’d been wanting to pay her a visit!

She took us to lunch at a fun delicious market, and afterwards, we started walking towards the old downtown area.

It started snowing and we got really excited. Or at least I did. Excitement usually means ridiculous pictures…

Unfortunately, my shoes were not made to stand this cold of weather, and even though I had on 2 pairs of socks, my toes were going legitimately numb. So, we got in the car and drove around instead…

Next, Dizi drove us around the University of Michigan’s north and south campus. If you didn’t know, Ann Arbor is a college town, and apparently if you go to Michigan, it’s the place to be. (Except for maybe when it’s this cold outside).

One thing I thought was cool was how much stuff the university has for the public. Since it was too cold to do anything else, we went into the university’s free natural science museum. They were having some big dinosaur day for kids. I learned a lot about Michigan wildlife. They have a lot of birds and fish. And also learned that the “wolverine” doesn’t even live there. They’ve only spotted one this far south like once … ever.

We also learned about rocks… Di already knew most of it as she got her masters in some sort of geology – related science and deals with frakking and all that sort of stuff that deals with rocks.

I’d say the craziest thing we found out was that asbestos is actually from fibers of a rock! None of us could wrap our head around that…

So anyway, I know you probably don’t actually care about what was in the museum…

Afterwards, we found our way to a Taiwanese bubble tea shop. Yum 🙂 My favorite. Later, Dizi took us to a delicious Mediterranean restaurant. Mediterranean/Middle Eastern food is probably my favorite food ethnicity. And we met a guy from Palestine. So that was a first. Pretty cool, pretty cool.

We headed back to Dizi’s apartment to call it an early night. We were already exhausted and the cold can certainly wipe you out.

Dizi made delicious Chinese tea, and we all watched Ferris Bueller’s Day off because neither Dizi nor Di had seen it. So that was fun. 🙂

Next up, Detroit… craziest city I’ve ever been to…