I've been meaning to get to it for a while, but this is finally the first of a few sets of shots I took while I was in Chicago a few weeks ago.
The first morning after flying into Chicago to visit some of my Filipino relatives, my cousin Ryann and I decided we wanted to to experience the city first hand and got a ride with some family to Howard Station to catch the Metra into town. While at the ticket machine, we were approached by a large, smiling, lazy-eyed man.
He introduced himself as "I could be Santa" and asked what we were doing. My cousin and I explained to him that we were from out of town and wanted to explore the city. He broke out into a huge smile and told us, "Welcome to America!" He was so excited in thinking that he was giving us our first taste of what he deemed "this great country of freedom" that whatever attempts we'd made at explaining to him that 'out of town' meant the east coast were sad and ineffective. He then told me to take photos of him and Ryann together and then ordered my cousin to take down his address on his iPhone so that I could mail prints of the photos after my return "home." After this ordeal he said goodbye and wished us a happy visit one last time before heading up the stairs to catch a train himself. As far as beginnings go, I'm going to say that first morning of the trip was about as interesting as it gets.
