Joining the Bugs' Lives!: Blown to the Windy City

The most looked forward city run for this year was definitely Chicago. It felt so good to be back in a big walkable city again! After Minneapolis, Gary and I went straight to Chicago to spend the week off, as my parents arrived the day after to spend 10 days with us! Haven't seen them for 2 years.

Taken at Navy Pier with part of the Chicago skyline in the background

In this city, I am officially an employee, as a Guardian on Tour. Who am I guarding?? The ginger ninja.

This is where Katie spends her free time: in the kid's tent on site

This is Katie Smith.

What does "Guardian" mean? What do I do exactly? Well, when an artist is a minor (under 18), he or she can either have a parent touring with him/her or Cirque will assign a Guardian for the artist.

So I am her legal guardian, and I basically take care of her, take her to work, make sure she has biscuit and milk before bed, sign paper work, make sure she doesn't wet the bed, and at one point Bank of America offered to let me oversee her finances! I however declined them kindly, as I thought this would be a good opportunity for Katie to be on the right path of independence.

She is the flyer(top) of the acrobatic sport group as a Flea. 17 Years old and she traveled all this way on her own!

King of the castle

Fanciest bedroom ever - a boost for the height challenged!

As a Guardian, I am required to live with Katie, so now that all three of us are employees, Gilles had found us a massive apartment, with absolutely breathtaking view of the city and the lake, locating right next to the harbor. Bonus of staying by the harbor was that we could see clearly from our living room of the fireworks that were displayed every Wednesday and Saturday night during the summer. We knew we'd enjoy being in Chicago for the city run! And by the way, Chicagoans are surprisingly quite friendly considering it's a big city... compare to New Yorkers haha!

One of the views from the apartment!

Watching fireworks from the living room

One thing, and the most important thing, my family loves to do: EAT!!

食 "si-gc". Gary learned the sound of this Chinese character during my parents' visit, because that's all he heard when he listened to our conversations in Cantonese.

Here we were in Chinatown. I found on Yelp a restaurant serving dim sum, a meal I have missed for so long. Since then we have been back to this restaurant 4-5 times. The food was very tasty! Much more than ones Toronto and Hong Kong surprisingly, and we cannot believe the price! $35 easily fed 4 of us, and we're talking about a meal of 15 items/dishes, belly bursting full!

We made good use of the kitchen and the dining table during my parents' visit. Below are some photos of our dinners at home (you may see mostly Japanese food as my parents had a stop over in Tokyo on the way to Chicago):

Sashimi

Japanese home cooked food

Lobster night

Japanese beef don (rice)

YOU HAVE JUST WITNESSED GARY'S

2KG WEIGHT GAIN!!

Chicago was definitely a popular city for visitors, thus Michel's parents were also there for the week off. So we did a roast dinner at our apartment and invited some of our closer friends on tour.