Body Worlds

Wow, I had quite a day yesterday! Here's ths scoop:

Well, the day starts by my mom coming into my room and saying, "Ryan, I just got tickets for us to go to that Body World exhibit in Chicago. You need to get up and get ready."

I was half-asleep at the moment so I screamed out, "Mom, you're my princess!" Yeah, I think it's weird too.

After I was ready, my aunt, whom was joining us on the trip, arrived. All four of us (my sister also came) piled in the tiny VW Beetle that my mom drives and head out to Chicago. My mom had printed off some directions from the museum website so we were set! Or so we though...

Everything appeared to be going okay untill we were getting into Chicago. My mom had taken us straight into the ghetto! Worst of all, they were having a big festival of some type meaning the traffic was horrible and people were walking all over the place! And, because of the parade, a major road was blocked! Major detours were to be found by us as we zoomed around the Chicago area for 2 hours trying to find our way to the museum. After passing the museum twice and missing the turn to the parking lot, we finally got into the museum and found a parking spot about 300 feet underground.

Trust me on this one, being stuck with your fifth grade sister in the backseat of a VW Beetle for four and a half hours is not comfortable in the least. It is HORRIBLE!

We walked through the museum for about 2 hours before it was our turn to go to Body Worlds. If you don't know of the Body Worlds exhibit yet, let me be the one to inform you:

Body World is this big project where a German man named Gunther Von Hagen discovered a new way to preserve dead human bodies by injecting a sort of plastic in them. The process is called plastination. After the cadaver is finished with the plastination process, they are called plastinates. So, they have these plastinates set up in a huge exhibit that you can easily spend 2 hours looking around in. We spent 2 and a half. There are bodies that are spilt open in a variety of ways sitting out in the open for all paying visitors to see. It is truely fasinating. Unfortunately though, the exhibit will not be available to view after the 4th of September. If you are in the Chicago area before then, I stongly recommend visiting. Here are some photos I found around the internet of some planstinates (I wasn't allowed to take pictures when I was there):

So, after looking at the exhibit and taking a strange (but safer) route home, I sat in my room and watched Paranoia Agent. The second-to-last episode of Paranoia Agent is a great one. It is going to be rerun on Wednesday. Check it out!