WashU...I love U?

I began writing this post at the beginning of this week, but I had to quit before I was quite finished. I haven't had time to complete it until now. I have a few minutes while my experiment runs here at school. So, when I mentioned days, know that I was in St. Louis March 26-28.

As Aubree has mentioned, I went to St. Louis last week to attend an admitted students day at Washington University. I flew in to St. Louis on Wednesday night after a long day of travel. I stayed at a Days Inn by the airport that night, and let's just say that it wasn't the nicest place I've ever stayed. It sufficed for my needs, though. I just needed a place to sleep. The admitted students day was on Friday, so I had all of Thursday to explore the city.

St. Louis has an urban park that is about 500 acres larger than Central Park in NYC. It's a really cool place. Within the park there is an outstanding zoo, a Missouri History Museum, and art museum, an outdoor theater, and various other activities and attractions. I rode the metro from the airport to a stop on the north edge of the park. I had some time before an 11:00 appointment, so I decided to walk along the park west towards Washington University. WashU, as it's called by everyone around there, is on the northwest corner of the park. Here are some pictures from the park.

This is the Missouri History Museum.

This is looking across the park at what I think is the art museum.

I walked all the way to the end of the park, where WashU is located. Unfortunately, I didn't have time right then to look more at the campus. My 11:00 appointment was to look at a house that we're very likely to move into if we move to St. Louis. The wonderful world of blogging led Aubree to a family that is living in St. Louis that are moving back to Utah this summer. Anyway, it's been mentioned that we mentioned that we might be interested in moving in. So, since I was already in St. Louis, we figured that it would be smart to check the house out now so that if we decide to move to St. Louis, we wouldn't necessarily have to go back again to find housing, assuming we like the house, and assuming that everything works out with the landlord. The house is in the southwest part of St. Louis county. It's about a 10 minute drive from the end of the metrolink line. Anyone that knows me knows that I really enjoy using public transportation to commute to work or school. The metrolink goes right past WashU, so it would be nice to live somewhere close to the train. With this house, I would have to either drive all the way to school, or drive to a park and ride at the last station. Before I saw the house, this fact was a turn-off for me. However, the house is in what seems to be a really nice neighborhood. Plus, we already know that the neighbors are great from this online contact. Also, being away from downtown is probably better for our family. The drive to the metrolink station is only about 10 minutes. It really was quite nice, and it has a fenced in back yard, so Lizzy will be happy.

I was fortunate enough to get a tour of the inside of the house, but I won't publish those pictures. I think I would find it kind of creepy to see pictures from the inside of my house showing up on someone else's blog.

After I saw the house, I took a cab back to the metrolink station, and then I rode the train (much cheaper than a cab) to a neighborhood called Central West End. This neighborhood is right on the east side of forrest park and west of downtown. This is where WashU Medical School is located, along with some amazing hospitals. It also has a lot of high rise apartment buildings, and so on. The cathedral basilica of St. Louis is also in this neighborhood. I walked a little around the neighborhood and went to the basilica. It was really impressive. The artwork is all mosaic in the basilica. This place was enormous.

After I left the basilica, I walked back towards forrest park and walked along a trail until I arrived again at the Missouri History Museum

My dad flew to St. Louis Thursday to see the city, the university, and to spend some time with me. He met me at the History Museum, where we got some lunch. After lunch, we rode the train to campus and checked into the on campus hotel. This place was really nice. I only want to mention the details about this place, called the Knight Executive Center, because it was such a contrast with the night before. The whole building was georgeous. It fit well with the campus. The room was large with comfortable furniture. The hotel was designed for business travel, so it included all of the necessary amenities for that. Even the soap was from bath and body works. There was a pantry on our floor that had free food and drinks. It was pretty cool. Enough with the hotel, though.

We hung out at the hotel for a few minutes to leave our stuff and rest from walking and travel. The hotel is right next to the law school on the northwest edge of campus, by a metrolink stop. When we left for the evening, we decided to walk to the metrolink stop on the northeast corner of campus. This allowed us to see a lot of the campus. The buildings are beautiful. At that time of day, there were lots of people walking around, talking with friends, and playing soccer. It was a very colegial atmosphere. It was lots of fun. Once we left campus and got to the station, we just turned to each other and said how cool the campus was. I didn't end up taking very many pictures of campus. I did, however, take a lot of video of the campus, but the files are too large to post here. If you really want to see, you'll have to come to my house. Here are a few pictures, though.
We hopped on the train and went downtown to see the area and to get some dinner. Of course, we went and saw the arch. By this time, the clouds had dropped a bit, so the top of the arch isn't as visible. Personally, I think it makes it look really cool. I know that the arch is a very touristy thing, but it was really breathtaking. I really enjoyed my time there. The arch is right on the river, and downtown is right next to the arch. After we saw the arch, we wandered downtown for a while. It was actually really quite nice. I had heard that it was dirty and scary, but I didn't feel that way at all.

On Friday, I spend my day at the law school. We met there in the morning for a light breakfast. I was able to meet a few other students as we mingled during breakfast. They were from all over the country with a variety of experiences. One was from Philly and went to school at Northwester. Another was from DC. Another works for a PR firm in manhattan. Another was from Dallas and went to school at UT-Austin. The list continued with UCLA, U of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, and others. It was really an impresive group of people. In addition to having gone to great schools and such, everyone I met was very friendly, personable, and interesting. While I was meeting these people, I couldn't help but think how much I would enjoy going to school with them and learning from their different experiences. I know that BYU has students from all over, but there's obviously a general commonality amongst students there. When I went to the student day at BYU, the only student I met that went to a school outside of Utah came from BYU-Idaho. I know that won't be the case with every student at BYU, but to be honest, I definitely enjoyed meeting the prospective students at WashU more than at BYU. (No offense to any prospective BYU law students who happen to read this.)

I've had a while to think about my time in St. Louis, and I really like it there. In particular, I really like the school. If the school were the only factor in my decision, I would choose WashU over BYU and Utah. However, the school isn't the only factor. Another factor is our house. We have to figure out what to do with our house if we move to St. Louis. The way things are looking right now, we might put it on the market in the short while. The other main factor is finances, included in that is tuition differences as well as Aubree's work situation. There's just uncertainty there regarding St. Louis. We're pretty settled here in Salt Lake, and this would be a big change. One thought that I keep having, though, is that easy isn't necessarily better. Moving to St. Louis will be harder, but it still might be the right choice. I'm so, so grateful to my dad to offer us some skymile points to go to St. Louis with Aubree and Thomas (in a couple of hours). I hope that this helps clear things up some more for me, but I especially hope and think that this trip will be good for Aubree. She already mentioned why in her post, so I won't rehash it.

Making big decisions is so much fun!