Our late-night adventure

We walked out of the meeting room as close to 11pm as we could, because we knew we had to get started on our adventure if we were going to get any sleep at all. As a few of us filed out of the room into the hallway with the elevators, we had to pass by a bunch of members who were all lined up against a wall. “Do you need an escort?” a large, hulking guy asked us. It was supposed to be reassuring, offering us a bodyguard as we walked the dark streets of Chicago’s Loop. But it was startling--not reassuring. We told him we were fine and got on the elevator.

It turned out that Sarah and I had very similar ideas for our adventures that night. She had planned to stop people on the street and ask them to write down their definition of happiness on a pad of paper (the different handwriting would be proof that she had done it and not just written down her own definitions at home). I decided to stop people on the street as well, but I wanted to find people who spoke different languages and have them write down the word for “happy” in their language. I thought it would be multicultural, fun, and in the theme of the weekend.

So we headed out, sans-escort, into the city and stopped everyone we saw. Sarah’s task was more straightforward, so she had it halfway completed pretty quickly. After awhile, we both concentrated more on my task. Turns out a lot people in Chicago only speak English. The most we got after about 20 minutes of effort was Spanish and one guy who, when I asked, “Excuse me? Do you speak a language other than English?” responded with, “Nyet.”

Then—paydirt. A 7-11. I stood in line and when I got to the front, I was able to add two more languages. Across the street was an Armenian restaurant, but when we got there, it was closed. Luckily, there were two guys in front of it who knew two more languages. Our luck was changing for the better, and after about an hour and 50 or 60 people stopped, I had the word Happy in my notebook written in 10 different languages.

By the time we got home, though, it was about 1am. By the time I got ready for bed and finally fell asleep, it was around 2. I was up at 6am to leave, pick up Sarah, and get back for more enlightenment by 8am.

Sarah mentioned on the way to the seminar that she had a headache and felt like her sinuses were clogged. When we got there and sat down, a fellow attendee also mentioned that his head hurt and his sinuses felt clogged. That was strange, but I felt fine and I was interested to see what would happen.