Welcome to St Louis!

Picture 78286 - dusk shot, originally uploaded by John Foong.

So I made it to St Louis! The 11th state of America that I've visited (actually, I think St Louis is the city, not the state). Here's the view from the "arch" - this huge 200 metre metal thing that represents the edge of the Mississippi River and the US expansion to the west ... or something like that.

i'm here for a Christian conference called Urbana for 6 days - 22,000 of us! Should be good :)

A very merry (but not white!) Christmas

Picture 78177, originally uploaded by John Foong.

(picture: our Christmas dinner setting!)

Well, it's been a great Christmas - even though it's been my first away from home. We had a great party at our place (Tom, the man of the house (apart from me of course ... oh dear) is a fantastic cook, and cooked up a storm - a huge turkey, and a whole lot of chinese type food (Which wasn't necessarily "Christmas" - but suited me fine!) :)

Today - Christmas day - I spent with my mate Dan and his family singing Christmas carols, eating more ham (ah, sweet ham) and ... installing a new DSL connection (Christmas present for his Grandma - a good one, I thought!) ... lunch started at 1:30pm and finished around 10pm!

It was a great Christmas. Although it didn't snow ... it was actually a really nice day! (at least that made the drive back not scary)

One VERY cool thing about the University of Chicago

Picture 78141, originally uploaded by John Foong.

Yes, they have an outdoor ice rink in winter - about 2 minutes' walk from the business school (see photo background - you can see the church adjacent to the b-school).

I wanted to go ice skating, but it felt too cold! (to which Warren rightly asked me, "so, when would you EVER go ice skating then?") ...

Friends in random places: meeting Warren in Chicago

Picture 78140, originally uploaded by John Foong.

My mate Warren from church is currently over in the USA checking out business schools. Rather randomly, we managed to overlap in Chicago ... it was awesome to be able to hang out and catch up. Here's us checking out the University of Chicago's business school ... cold, but nice! (Though, for those of you deciding to do an MBA, it's not as nice as Stanford ...!) :)

We also did shopping (Christmas shopping, not window Shopping!) and ate at different Steakhouses. We worked out that the best meat-per-dollar ratio was found at Outback Steakhouse (see below). And, of course, went to Willow Creek's AMAZING Christmas service, which was a sight to behold! :)

Outback Steakhouse - a cheesy American chain

Picture 78115, originally uploaded by John Foong.

Everything on the menu has some kind of Australian location on it - such as "Ayres Rock Fries" and "Alice Springs Steak" ... ah, the joys of marketing ... :)

Chicago - beautiful city, crappy weather

Tonight Warren (in from Oz!) and I decided to hit Chi-town, to check out what was happening. There were some beautiful sights - such as ice skating in millenium park here, as well as some great views from the 96th floor of Hancock Tower - but it was coooooold and wet.

But hey, this ain't San Francisco! :)

At least the Chicago River was in fine form ...

As were we - from John Hancock Tower ...

Fine, we'll get out of the way then :)

Goodbye California, welcome to Chicago!

Picture 77914, originally uploaded by John Foong.

After a mad flurry post-RV trip of finishing off 2 final papers I should've been doing whilst watching BattleStar Galactica / eating Nachos (that was 60 double spaced pages of rushed fun!!! Oh dear) it was off to Chicago for my next adventure ... doing a mini-internship at megachurch Willow Creek, helping them with some strategy stuff. The executive pastor there, Greg Hawkins, is an ex-McKinsey ex-Stanford MBA (sounds strangely familiar) and they're doing some pretty exciting work ...

... though it's cold! Though Chicago is nice. I'm going into the city tomorrow to check it out! :)

RV Trip - Stop One, Skiing in Utah

Picture 77087, originally uploaded by John Foong.

Here's me on a snowboard - yes, one of the few times I was up! :)

Me and my housemates spent 6 days and more money than we thought we would for a cheap trip (Though it was still great value) roaming round the Wild Wild West in an huge 10 metre RV.

Here's the first stop - Park City, Utah (Where the Sundance film festival is held). Snowboarding - my 3rd day trying it. Ouch! :)

RV Trip - Stop Two, The "Windows"

Picture 77342, originally uploaded by John Foong.

In Southern Utah they have LOTS of rocks. One of the highlights is the place called "the windows" where these huge rocks have formed little holes in the middle. Kind of like this.

Kind of cool huh? Though I prefer the real "Windows" ... :)

(apologies, nerd joke)

RV Trip - Stops 3, 6, 14, 15, 16 and lots: JUNK FOOD

Picture 77620, originally uploaded by John Foong.

An RV trip is an essential part of American culture. So is eating fatty foods. In case I hadn't done enough of that in my 26 years so far, I and the team stopped at most major fast food outlets - pictured here at "Sonic" - an innovative fast food outlet where you don't even have human interaction - you pick up a phone from the eat in area, and food arrives a few minutes later ...!

To balance that out, we stopped for a steak at least once in every state. I mean, you need to have a balanced diet :)

RV Stop Four: The Grand Canyon ...

Picture 77642, originally uploaded by John Foong.

... is big. And goes on forever. And, for you economists, really has diminishing marginal returns (after about the 2nd vantage point) ...

... here's my housemate Micah trying to jump the canyon! :)

RV Stop Five: Another obligatory stop in Vegas ...

Picture 77777 - vegas, originally uploaded by John Foong.

Yes we just HAD to go to Vegas again. Who would've thought Vegas would have an RV park?

To top it all off, we finished at 3am with 24 hour Korean food. Ohhh yeah! :)

RV Stop Six: Los Angeles, Korea Town

Picture 77947 (29) - dave's birthday party, originally uploaded by John Foong.

To finish off the trip, apart from watching almost 20 episodes on a laptop of sci-fi series BattleStar Galactica (I'm not addicted, honest, I can give up any time I want to ... I think) we stopped in LA for a surprise birthday party for Dave, and a final dose of beef (I think we may have had - including burgers - over 10 servings of beef during the trip!) ...

... it was a great way to finish the trip. And he was surprised! :)

What a great trip. Ah, American culture ... it's not healthy, but you've gotta love it ...! :)

Christmas = Christmas parties (and final papers too, but hey)

Picture 76927, originally uploaded by John Foong.

I LOVE Christmas. And whilst I WON'T be back in Australia (sob!) to sing Christmas carols again for this year, I had a great time hosting and popping along to all sorts of cool celebrations around the business school

Here's one where everyone had to dress up in their daggiest (think St Vincent de Paul kind of stuff) Christmas jumper. I actually didn't have one, so I wore this classy "yeah!" shirt I found at a Japanese store in Cairns a few years ago which "snuck" into my luggage ... :)