Alan (Amy’s nephew) and Dawn got married in Chicago, in the beautiful large backyard of the ground floor apartment they rent in a gentrifying area. Amy and I stayed in the charming and expensive Blake hotel, and spent Saturday morning strolling the Loop, looking at architecture and the wonderful new mirrored, walk-under bean in the park, which gives multiple reflections of the crowd around in a topologically very interesting way. Chicago is still a smoker’s town, and the young people at the wedding were charmingly raunchy. Amy had gone early to help out, and was familied out by the time we left. I went back to Tucson, she on to the next wedding in California.

Have had some wonderful conversations with Nell. She has made friends from Ireland, Nigeria, Columbia and Germany. Mostly speaks English, except when she goes with the Germans to an Irish pub (!?). Likes her new teachers, for French and Methods. The latter is a class where they learn, I think, the university equivalent of the underlining in colors they had to do in Bures. Has developed new phone skills as a result of having to deal with things like transferring the gas bill (where, after an hour of strange vocabulary words and giving every number she owned, the lady revealed she had spent two years in New Jersey and spoke fluent English). She’s worried that she’s using up all the good teachers now, in the Stage, and will have horrible ones when the year starts.

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