xkp, kuki

1 week in Los Angeles

June 22 - Thx Mark for getting up so early and moving the remainder of my house to Jerry's (thx for lettin' me store all my 財產 in your house!!)! And I definitely owe ya one for takin' us to the airport and all... thanks so much!!

We got to LA around 2 pm and Shalynn (an awesome girl I've known ever since I was 3 years old) & her mom (my mom's best friend) picked us up from the airport. We waited for my mom to arrive around 4:30 pm and then went for dinner at a Shanghai restaurant, then went for bubble tea at a Tapioca Express.

Jerry checked-in to Lincoln Plaza Hotel, and I went with my mom to a family's house to stay for the remaining week. The family had been old friends from Paraguay that had recently immigrated to the States...

June 23 - Shalynn picked me up at 9 am, picked Jerry up, and we went to have breakfast, then set out to Disneyland! We took about 40 minutes just trying to get on the number 5 southbound, but we ended up in Disney still laughin' happily :D

Disney was crazy... or not really... I should say, we were crazy. Ya know Janice's annoying laughter in Friends? Ya, we were imitating that, and much more. Anyway, we went thru most of the rides without much line up, so that was good :)

By the end of the day, we just went to all the stores and tried on their weird, wacky, and tacky merchandise and took pictures like crazy, as you'll see from the pictures... We went to dinner with another friend from Paraguay at Rainforest Cafe before we called it quits for that day.

June 24 - I got to Lincoln Plaza Hotel at 9 am and went to breakfast with Jerry. We took the bus without knowin' much about downtown LA, and headed to downtown LA :| We heard 3rd street was pretty famous, and well, the map showed a third street in the downtown area, so hey, it's not too hard to get there.... or is it? We got off the bus and.... er.... it looked more like downtown Paraguay in my opinion... so we asked around and of course, the famous 3rd street is the one in Santa Monica, not downtown LA.... *stare* ...

ya so we walked around, hoping to find interesting stuff there.... after about... say... an hour or so of walking in the wrong directions several times and "shopping" at Macy's for about 10 minutes, we decided, screw it, let's go to universal city... so we took the metro red line (it's the skytrain) and went. Good thing there weren't any mistakes this time, and we were glad we went^^

Citywalk is really cool, lotsa weird and wacky stores to look at :) We decided to go into Universal Studios even tho it was 2 pm and the park closed at 6 pm. First thing we went to was Van Helsing's movie sets that were supposed to be "scary"... but hey, Disney's haunted mansion was nothing, so this can't be too bad either... and then some character from the movie jumped out and scared the HELL outta me and after that, I never let go of Jerry's shirt sleeve and hide behind him, laughing and frightened outta my mind the whole way out. :D That was pretty funny.....

Other than that, other things that stood out for me were Spiderman Rocks (the story of spiderman in the form of a rock musical with spiderman actually doing pretty awesome acrobatics) and WaterWorld (a show with actual jet-ski action and pyrotechnics, and lots of water sprayin' at ya if you are in the right zone!) Unfortunately, the revenge of the mummy wasn't open until June 25, so we missed the ride by a day :( Anyway, we were able to finish most of the rides since the line-ups were decent :)

We finished the day off with dinner at Hard Rock Cafe, where we ordered WAY TOO MUCH FOOD.... hrc was really cool tho, it had collections of many rock stars' guitars, leather jackets, etc... metallica, lennon, and pink floyd's acoustic guitars, and the rolling stones' car were all there, just to name a few.... but ya... that was another fun fun day ;)

June 25 - Jerry left for Cornell, and I stayed home catchin' up with email and spent the day chatting on msn and with my mom.

And..... My photos albums (with some photos from Jerry's camera -- not all of them in the album Universal Studios have been upload yet cuz of my very extremely slow internet that cannot support transferring many photos thru msn, from cornell to paraguay):

1. Disneyland

2. Universal Studios (Incomplete)

Enjoy!

June 26 - In the afternoon, Shalynn and her brother David and their mom picked me and my mom up, and we headed out to Laguna Beach (heard Santa Monica was way too dirty so we went to Laguna instead).

It was tonz of fun, playing in the sand with long jeans and socks and running shoes...... *ahem*........ well..... I took off my socks and shoes and pulled up my pants but still, it was all wet by the time we were tired of playin'..... since I was gonna stay over at their house, I had pajama pants with me.... Good thing they are plain, navy pants, so I changed into them and went to dinner in pajama pants :)

We had a good dinner and then went to Shalynn's house... their home is beautiful, with tonz and tonz of paintings, pottery, and other artwork. I took some pictures, but since my camera sucks, you can't really tell how beautiful it really was...

June 27 - We went to church together and then to lunch with Shalynn's younger cousins. Haven't hung out with kids for a long time - I forgot how much fun it was!!! We went back to Shalynn's house for a while, then went back to the family we were staying with originally. They dropped off my mom and took me to old town pasadina and walked around and did one of my favorite things..... EAT ICE CREAM!!!! :) hehe, except it was actually frozen yogurt, but it was still very very good (i hope I dun get 劈 by Goddess...). I bought me a shirt from Guess.... it was....... $13 bucks! heh^^ good deal in my opinion.... anyway, I went home for dinner afterwards, and that was my day.

June 28 - Sara, another friend from PAraguay that immigrated to LA, picked me up at 10 am to go to Rodeo Colorado outdoor shopping mall at old town pasadina (again) .... we just sat at starbucks for quite a few hours just chatting and stuff, then shopped around and I bought a tank top ;)

Later she took me home and David (Shalynn's bro) picked me up to go to Shalynn's apartment outside of UCLA... I got to see UCLA and boy, it is really pretty ;) Later we also went to beverly hills and on rodeo drive to visit all my 只能看不能買的明牌店...... i've never felt so financially-deprived in my life :D hehehe^^

We ate at Cheesecake Factory (DELICIOUSSSSS), caught up with everything we've missed, and then finally my mom phoned me to get my butt home.

June 29 - I went out with my mom and our hosts to yam cha... the bus system in LA is CRAZY.... if you miss a bus, you get to wait about.... uh... an hour for the next bus? >< >< >< it was crazy... but that was exactly how I spent that afternoon.....

later in the evening I went out with Sara again, with her friends, to OLD TOWN PASADINA (again) to have dinner.... hehe oh well, at least I know one area in LA well :D

June 30 - Crazy LAX airport.... we were in line for half an hour to check in, and 2 hours to screen our luggage.... omg it was crazy.... On the plane tho, I slept for a while, then started watching movies.... I watched like... 3 or 4 before I fell asleep again :) But yes, that was my LA week :) :)

More Albums.... and more to come...^^

3. Laguna Beach

4. Funny Sunday

Posted by kuki at July 5, 2004 07:24 PM