This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

The weekend in Vegas flew by so fast! I had so much fun and I’m already longing to go back. This time I went there with Lovisa, Nicole, Laura and we met up with a Swedish girl from Boston. Five girls in Las Vegas for a weekend, what else do one need?

The weekend started with many hours behind the wheel. My hostdad dropped me off at the car rental place and from there I drove down south to pick up the other three girls. A detour of 1 hour wasn’t too much fun. We stopped at Subway where me and Lovisa bought dinner and I bought chips and cookies, it was gonna be a long drive. But even if it took a long time and we didn’t get to the hotel until like 1:30am it wasn’t so bad driving. The road was just straight all the way and with cruise control it was super easy.

Louise was already at the room since a few hours and we got to bed right when we got there. Five girls with two beds was no problem at all. There was a big arm chair and two footstools and we built a bed for Lovisa. I think she had it more comfortable than the rest of us. The beds were so hard…

Saturday morning started with a little walk to Starbucks where we had breakfast. And then back to the car and I drove us to Valley of Fire. Grand Canyon was closed so we went to another national park instead which was much closer, just a little more than an hour drive away. We weren’t there for so long, but we took photos and saw the extremely red mountains. It was really cool!

After that we went directly to Hard Rock Café for an earlier dinner at 5pm. I wanted to try something new, but the coward in me decided to have to normal California burger. I also had a Strawberry Mojito which I regretted. It wasn’t good, but on the other hand they donated like $1 to breast cancer research.

After dinner did the big tour of the Las Vegas Strip by foot. First we went to M&M’s World where a lady handed out samples of their Halloween flavor Candy Corn and White Chocolate. Me and Lovisa fell in love with that and bought a bag of it each. Then we saw MGM, Luxor, The Cosmopolitan, Caesar’s Palace and a tiny part of New York New York. It doesn’t sound like much but the strip is way bigger than it looks like and walking from Luxor back to Ceasar’s Palace is quite the walk!

At the hotelroom I took a shower, got dressed, drank a glass of wine and at 10:30pm we went to Hyde Nightclub at Bellagio across the street. I was told to be there at 11, and we were there at exactly 11. I asked for the guy who were gonna let us in. But the bouncer looked like he didn’t want to go through the trouble of finding him, so he just checked our ID’s and gave us free cover tickets. And we skipped the line. My self esteem rose like I don’t know what, I’ve never been able to skip the line and the cover like that, we must have looked pretty. The club was small but had an amazing view over the Bellagio fountain. At first they played good music but after a while they changed, just like they have done at the nightclubs in San Diego. So we only stayed for one drink, we talked with a bunch of guys on a bachelor party and when our feet hurt too much to stand the bad music we went out in the casino to try and gamble.

I’ve never gambled in my whole life and I have no idea how to do it. So I sat down at a roulette table with minimum betting $10. At first I didn’t think it looked complicated, but the more I sat there, the less I understood. Louise stood behind me and understood the rules pretty fast but I didn’t understand when she tried to explain. But I guess that didn’t matter because I walked away with $140. I started with $20. I was super lucky and got the right number twice in a row and after that I started to understand the rules and realized how bold I had been with my bettings and walked away while I still had some piles of chips. But it was so much fun! The adrenaline was pumping and I really want to do it again someday. $120 is not super much, but it’s still money and I got super happy. I can imagine how glad I would be if it was ten times as much ;). We’ll see if I have time to come back this year.

We got back to the hotel room at 3am and I fell asleep right away.

Sunday started with a breakfast buffet at the hotel for $12. It was good and I stopped myself before I got too full. Right after that we took a quick trip to the Las Vegas sign and then dropped off Louise at the hotel, she was gonna go on a helicopter tour over Grand Canyon, and the rest of us went home to San Diego. The traffic was horrible but we came home not too late. I was home pretty late since I dropped everyone off. Chad picked me up at the car rental place at 7pm and I spent the evening with him. He invited me to his family’s Thanksgiving dinner in a little more than a month. I didn’t really realize what he was asking because I was so tired and my shoulder hurt again, but it made me really happy that he asked. It feels like that is kind of a big deal :). My hostfamily is also having a Thanksgiving dinner, so I hope they are at different times so I can go to both and get fat twice!

I was too tired to write anything last night. And I have been super tired this whole day too. After a couple of naps and long nights of sleep I will probably be fine again!

Nicole, me, Louise, Laura and Lovisa The Strip in daylight… … kinda different from the Strip in the evening! The pretty view from the club!

My day today was nice and went away fast. I skyped with mom this morning, then I slept for a while. Picked up the kids, drove them to soccer practice, finished my book The Power of Six, started on the next one The Rise of Nine, and then spent the evening at UCSD Extension. The teacher talked a lot about grammar today. I didn’t think the grammar was too bad in 8^th grade, but that was probably because I was studying Swedish grammar at the same time. Now I don’t remember anything at all and it’s confusing. But I guess I will get a hang of it eventually!