On Friday the 27th of October my stepdad michael, my friend ralph and I arrived at Dublin airport's terminal two. After roughly two hours of waiting in the airport we finally boarded our plane heading towards Chicago. The flight took 8 hours and we were all tired after it, but we were excited for the upcoming days. When we arrived it was noon Chicago time so we had the whole day ahead of us. We rented a car and set off towards 'the loop' which is the heart of Chicago. We parked the car and set off. First we walked to the Chicago Architecture Foundation where we saw a scale model of downtown Chicago.
We then walked around the city and saw the Trump Tower and the giant metal jelly bean.
Afterwards we went to the house of Michaels friends Bob and Nancy. We did our introductions and set up our sleeping area. Bob and Nancy had two kids in high school. Thye told us that there was an american football game on in their schhol that night so we went to one of the best buger places in Chicago called 'au cheval' for a quick dinner then on to the football game. The school was huge, I had never seen a school so big. I said to myself "if the school is this big then surely their quality of football would be good." I was mistaken. After the game we went home and had an amazing nights sleep. Around an hour after we woke up we were on the road again. We were headed to Notre Dame in the state of Indiana. We were in the car for two hours before we reached South Bend, and a further 15 minutes before we got to the campus of the University of Notre Dame. I for one was awe struck when I saw the sheer size of the campus. It is 1,265 acres! I was also surprised at the amount of people who showed up for the game between Notre Dame and North Carolina State. There were roughly 79 thousand people in the stadium. The 'fighting irish' won 35-14.
After the game we went to another of michael's friends. Their names were Michael(coma as his nickname) and Teresa. We had pizza and watched some highlights of other college games before we went to bed. The next morning after breakfast we got into the car and followed coma to costco where Ralph and I were blown away by the size of the store. it looked like a huge factory full of items you would find at your house except ten times larger and cheaper. Ralph and I bought a package of 35 bottles of gatorade for $14.95!!!!!! Ralph bought a huge pack of m&m's, a huge tub of jelly beans and a offical american football which totaled $40.
That night we ate in South Dining hall whcih gave a huge varitey of all you can eat food. There were burgers, chips, pizza, fruit, veg, personalized noodles, deserts and much much more. After we had stuffed our faces we went to the morris inn which is a hotel on campus. We watched some NFL highlights, drank gatorade and then went to sleep.
The next morning my stepdad took Ralph and I to the ROTC building. ROTC stands for Reserve Officer Training Corps. This program allows students in the college to become a leader and how to work with other highly trained soldiers. When you commit to the ROTC program, you commit to joining the US army for four years after college. However yours years in college are paid for by the program. So basically you get four years of paid college education and in return you serve four years in the army as a second lieutenant.