This weekend was the best weekend since I got here! It was so much fun. Hanna, from my class at Chalmers was coming down from San Luis Obispo with her roommate and the roommates friend from Germany. I got there at 9pm on Friday because I was at the girls showcase at her school. It was a musical about Dr Seuss, I think they were mixing Horton Hears a Who and the Grinch, but I’m not sure. It was really good, but I had a hard time understanding what they were saying/singing. Right after the show I drove to San Diego and met the three girls. Me and Hanna never spoke much in Sweden, but we found out we have much in common and I’m really glad I decided to spend the weekend with her. We decided that I’m gonna go with her to Texas on Spring Break. Some other class mates from Chalmers is visiting and I’m really looking forward to it!

FRIDAY

When I got to San Diego they were in a restaurant and had just eated dinner. I wasn’t so hungry so I just ordered a coke and then we went to the hostel. It was a really nice one in the middle of downtown on 5th Avenue. I’ve never been at a hostel before, but Hanna said it was a really good one and I was lucky to have that as my first. Two nights, $58 and that is pretty okay. So when I’m going to San Diego next time to party, if I don’t have anywhere to sleep, I’m gonna stay the night there. We shared room with two other girls and in the room next to ours there were to Swedish girls who had been backpacking mostly in Asia for some months.

In the room I changed clothes very quickly, and we went outside to find a nice place. First we went to a tequila bar. It looked funny from the outside, but was actually pretty nice inside. The drinks were good and cheap.

After the drinks the two German girls were too tired to go anyplace else. So it was just me and Hanna. We went to a bar called Analog and it was really cool inside. The music wasn’t the best and it was too loud, but it was really fun. Half an hour before it closed at 2am, two guys came up to us and started talking. They were funny to talk to but they wanted to keep on partying and we wanted to get some sleep. But first we went to IHOP, Hanna had never been there. It was an express restaurant, and the pancakes weren’t as good as at a real restaurant. But it was nice at 3am. Got to the room at 3:30 and I feel asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

SATURDAY

We had big plans for Saturday so we woke up at 8am, had breakfast and went to San Diego Zoo. I bought a membership, a yearly pass so I can go there as many times as I like and that includes the Safari Park too. I paid $59 and one ticket for the day was $44. Pretty nice!

The zoo was huge and I don’t think we saw everything even though we were there for 4 hours. My feet hurt like hell after all that walking, but it was totally worth it! I saw the panda daddy, unfortunately not the baby because we got to the exhibit at 12:30pm and the baby was only available 9am-12am. Next time! I also saw giraffes for the first time in my life and it was really cool. They are super weird animals. Hummingbirds were everywhere and I actually got two really good pictures of one drinking nectar!

After the zoo we went to Balboa park for a short while. And I want to go back there. A lot of museums that seemed nice! Good thing I live so close to San Diego because there are a lot of things to do there.

After that we went to Vons, bought some food for the barbeque and then we went there. We got there soon after 4pm  and it was already a lot of people there. Anna, who invited me, told me her boyfriend (who was hosting the barbeque with his roommates – they are four guys sharing a house!) invited 300 guys. I’m guessing there were about 80 people maybe. It was a really nice barbeque, not too cold to be outside the whole evening and everyone wasn’t too drunk. It was very international, not many Americans. A lot of Germans, some Danish, Norwegian but no other Swedish than me and Hanna.

I didn’t drink so much but I had a really great time anyway! We left the party pretty early, about 9pm because we wanted to go to Coronado to se San Diego skyline. It was as bueatiful as last time I was there, but now it was warmer. It is still chilly in the evening and you have to wear a hoodie or jacket, but I’m guessing that’s gonna change soon :).

Back to the hostel and nine hours of sleep!

SUNDAY

Hanna, Martina and Helena didn’t want to get stuck in the traffic to LA so they wanted to go back to SLO pretty early. That meant that I was in Carlsbad again by 11am, in time for the T-mobile store to open. The guy inside cut my sim card but it didn’t want to work so he gave me a new one, even though he couldn’t do it because Bill wasn’t there with me. And it started working and I was so happy!! I can use my HTC again! The only thing is that my plan is the worst ever. 300 texts every month, 1500 minutes and no internet for $49. For the same price I could get unlimited texts every month, 500 minutes (I only use about 100) and 2GB of highspeed internet. I’m gonna ask Bill when he get home if we could change. It will be a new plan and locked for two years. But why wouldn’t he want to change? It’s way better for the same price!

Now the girl is performing her last show at the school. Pia and the boy is watching and I think I need to go to the gym, but I’m so tired. Or maybe I should go the the wax center. Or start studying for my driver license. Or maybe just sleep…

No, the gym it is! And photos from the weekend will be posted tonight!

When I left the boy at kindergarten at noon his teacher asked all the parents who had time to come inside for ten minutes. There were a veterinary and her son with four snakes. The son told the six-year olds about the different kinds of snake he brought. And afterward they could pet them. And when I was just about to leave his teacher asked: ”Doesn’t A’s nanny want to pet the snakes?” I’m not afraid of snakes so I did it, and oh my god, they were soft! Super cool!

In my freetime I was, once again, in bikini in the backyard reading. It was awesome. The girl was at soccer tryouts right after school and her dad drove her there so I åicked up only the boy today again. And today I walked to school to get him. It was so nice weather and it only took me about 10 minutes to get there. A little longer on the way home obviously.

In the afternoon I sat with the crazy-kid-next-doors mum on the sidewalk outside our houses and talked. It was nice! And then the kid came over on a playdate.

I can’t believe it’s only February. Since Saturday it has been awesome weather and the sun is burning when in lee (don’t know if that is how you write it…) . Today I spent 40 minutes of my freetime in the backyard in bikini with sunscreen on, music in my ears reading a book. I haven’t been able to do that in such a long time (okay, like once or twice last summer) and it felt so good! If it’s warm tomorrow, I will do the same again and work out after dinner. It’s a good thing it’s always windy here, otherwise I think the summer would have been unbearable.

Today I was mocked by the guy responsible for courses at my program at Chalmers. He asked me how I could think that 80h, 3 credits, here could be the same as 160 in Sweden, which is a 7,5hp course. I had no idea how many hours it was…. So it was totally unneccesery for him to write it the way he did, like I am stupid or something.

Anyway, that means that I can’t be credited for it. It’s a lot of extra money for something I probably won’t need. So we’ll see if I find something better.

Now I’m gonna have some carrot cake and watch a movie!

Over and out!

This weekend one girl from my class at Chalmers is visiting San Diego (she is studying at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, north of LA, this year) and we are gonna hang out, a little partying, visiting the San Diego Zoo and maybe go to a barbeque. When I told my H-parents about what she is doing here I started to think about what it really was. And I’m seriously thinking about doing the same. Take my last year at Chalmers here in the US! So I’m gonna ask her this weekend how she did it and everything. It would have been so awesome!

It was my H-dads birthday today so we had a big cake for dessert after takeout dinner from Noodles. It’s not working so well with the whole ”being healthy-thingy” for me… So that’s why I just now finished a new and tougher work out schedule. Five days a week and more exercises every day. I think I will start on it after the weekend!

I think the spring has arrived. It has been about 70F for a few days now and it’s so amazing! It’s still chilly in the shadow and it’s pretty windy. But I can go outside in shorts and a t-shirt if I’m in the sun. I was actually very close to  skip the gym today and stay in the backyard reading this afternoon. But I decided to do that tomorrow instead. I have a tiny tan already. One weekend ago I was out reading for about an hour in the yard in shorts and I can see the line on my thigh! Wonder why I didn’t notice it until a week later… And my arms and chest have a little color since LA. Awesome! 🙂

It happaned one more fun thing today. No, it wasn’t fun, but I think it’s worth writing about. And I’m warning you, it’s disgusting. The six-year boy  can’t wipe himself after number two so I have to help him. I’m used to it now, but today was weird and awful! It was green. And I don’t mean greenich brown, it was green, the same color the leaves have in the spring!! What the fuck?! What did he eat?? Ughh….

I’ve been sooo tired today. When I got to the gym I was really close to drive home again to sleep instead. But I didn’t, I clenched and did my one hour of work out.

When the kids were back from school we pumped my beach volleyball and I was the girls personal trainer for 30 minutes. It was fun! We are gonna practice as much as we can from now on.

Dinner was really good. We eat normal food, but it’s so good. Mashed potatoes with a chicken casserole, delicous! I love the food my host parents are making :).

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.

SATURDAY
Feb 23rd

Manuela, Alejandra, Monica and Dina.

Our hotel, Andaz on Sunset Boulveard in West Hollywood.

House of Blues LA was way cooler than House of Blues San Diego.

They had closed all of Hollywood Boulevard because of the Oscars on Saturday. But we were able to go inside the Dolby Theatre and see the red carpet inside. On Sunday they had closed all the road leading to Hollywood Blvd and put big screens on the fences so you couldn’t see anything at all!

Hard Rock Cafe Hollywood! Our menus was on iPads.

A cool fountain in the middle of Hollywood & Highland mall. A cute girl was running around in the colorful water.

A really fancy mall and the prices were kind of the same as in Sweden so it wasn’t that bad.

The red carpet inside the Dolby Theatre!

SUNDAY
Feb 24th

Big and fancy houses behind our hotel.

The sun deck at our hotel. Too bad we didn’t have time to hang out there because it was really warm (80F, 25C) and sunny!

The view from the sun deck.

Me and Paul Johansson (Dan Scott from One Tree Hill series)!! Highlight of the trip :). He was nothing at all like Dan, he was nice and was asking us if we wanted to take photos when he noticed that we recognized him.

Brunch at IHOP! The best brunch I’ve ever had!

This is as close as I could get to the Oscars. By the big tower was the red carpet…

A train restaurant on Sunset Blvd. We have one at Chalmers campus, copycats…

I don’t know if this is where the afterparty was held. But it could have been.

A pair of jeans from Guess, a top from Angl, a pair of heels from Bebe and three panties from VS. A good shopping day :).
The heels were super high, but my feet didn’t hurt at all!

SATURDAY
Yesterday was the first day I didn’t post anything, and that was because I was in West Hollywood (without a computer). The weekend in LA didn’t go as I expected, but I’m glad I came along anyway, another weekend alone at home would have been really boring!

Yesterday Dina, Alejandra and Monica picked me up at 8am. We picked up another girl in Manhattan Beach. First we went to the Hollywood sign. I didn’t mind seeing it again because the weather this weekend has been amazing! Really warm and blue sky with a lot of sun. I even think I got a little tan today. Then we met another girl outside of Madame Tussauds and went to Hard Rock Cafe to eat lunch. Super delicious once again!

The last girl, Marcela, had seen the museum too, so she and I went to the mall. I wanted to buy a pair of heels for the evening. I thought that I was gonna buy a pair of kind of cheap shoes, but when we were done and went to meet up the other four girls, I had four bags and spent almost 2000kr. I bought a party top (I really needed one), a pair of heels (really high heels from Bebe), three seamless panties from Victoria’s Secret, and a pair of jeans from Guess. They had $20 off, so it wasn’t so expensive, like 450kr which is very cheap for a pair of jeans in Sweden. And this is a big brand too, win for me!

Back to our hotel, Andaz in West Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard. A really nice hotel where they parked your car for you and brought all of your bags to the room. We all got dressed, put on makeup and everything else a girl needs to do before going out.

We found a bar/nightclub that had good reviews on the Internet. When we got there we got a free shot and the music was really good. But when we started to look around we saw half naked (and muscular) male bartenders and half naked male dancers… It was a gay bar… All the bars there were gay bars. One of the girls got mad, so we got back to the hotel and took a cab to a nightclub called Avalon. I think it would have been relly nice inside, but a cover of $55 is a little too much when it was midnight. So we got back to the hotel and I got to bed. I think two more got to bed and the rest went back to the gay bar, the ones who has boyfriends.

SUNDAY
I woke by myself at 8am and the sun was shining like yesterday. We all got ourselves ready and we took a quick tour up to the penthouse and the pool. It was really nice up there and I wished we had time to lay there in the sun. But we had big plans!

Everyone except for Dina went to Starbucks next door because she had to check out. And when we are there I see a guy coming towards us. It was Paul Johansson (Dan Scott from One Tree Hill)!! OMG! Me and Monica were the only ones who recognized him but we were so excited and I don’t think we were so discret because he said Hi to us and said that he was just gonna get something to drink first. So when he came out we took photos of us with him and that made mine and Monicas day. It was the only celebrity we saw today, but it was good enough :).

Dina drove Marcela and Alejandra to the Oscars because they are crazy about famous people. I am not, I promise. It was just so surprising when he just walked there in ordinary clothes like nothing :P. We other went to IHOP for brunch. I had a stuffed french toast combo. Hash Browns, scrambled eggs and bacon. And of course the stuffed french toast. Everything was really really good!!

After that we tried to get close to the red carpet but the whole neighborhood was closed to the public. Marcela and Alejandra got places pretty close because they were there earlier than us, but they didn’t see any celebrities except for Ben Affleck and Salma Hayek, so I think it was worth missing for that brunch at IHOP.

Me and Marcella was at the red carpet yesterday when the public was still able to see it from inside the Dolby Theatre. It was really cool. And when we were walking around inside a couple with a big camera and mic came up to us and asked us if we wanted to be interviewed. They were from Voice of America and just asked us where we were from, what we expected from the Oscars today and what movie we wanted to win. It was soo awesome!!

When we didn’t see anything on the carpet we decided to go home. But it took time because Marcella and Alejandra needed to eat and we had to drive Marcella home to Beverly Hills where she is working as an au pair. I didn’t get home until 10pm and now it’s really time to go to bed. So all the pictures from this weekend will be posted tomorrow. Good night!

Every day looks kinda the same now. So perhaps I don’t have to update my blog every day… But it’s nice to practice English.

It was a very good day, no problem at all with the boy and I really loved being an au pair today. Nothing special happened, everything just felt good. Before lunch we played New Super Mario Bros. And then I made pancakes for an hour and prepared a lot of them for the boy. Before I hated Fridays because he ate too fast so I couldn’t eat anything, just prepare new pancakes for him.

In my freetime I was at the gym and then I skyped with Hanna. It’s so weird not to be able to talk with her whenever I want. I hope she decides to come visit sometime during the year :).

I haven’t found anyone who wants to go to Maroon 5 with me and that’s sad, I really want to go! I’m gonna talk with my host parents on Sunday or Monday and ask them what they think about me going to LA all by myself.

Tomorrow I’m going there again, not by myself, but with three of the girls I met some weeks ago, it’s gonna be so much fun! The part of the trip I’m looking forward the most is our girls night out in LA tomorrow! It’s really hard to party here since you have to take the car everywhere, so I’m taking every oppurtunity I get.

Now I have to start packing and then get to bed, I’m being picked up at 7am tomorrow…

Days go by so fast here. Even if I don’t do anything special. It is kinda nice though because I’ve found my pattern and it isn’t exciting anymore. I’m just very tired all day and have no energy to play with the kids. I tried today when I played a shooting game with the boy, but I died the whole time. I hope it will be better when we can do fun stuff outside. Playing with guns inside and tag an so on isn’t fun to be honest. But games in the backyard, like soccer (oh, I’ve americanized, I don’t say football anymore!), or beachvolleyboll will be nice!

The boy and me have been playing a lot of Wii these last days and I love it! I wonder what the parents think of that though. I am a nerd and love technology and games. I’m by my computer a lot but I think that kids aren’t supposed to. But on the other hand, it’s another generation.

At the gym I was bold and tried to add some pounds to some exercises. No problem! I barely made it but I think that’s how it’s supposed to be. If I want to see some results I have to start put some pressure on myself. And I think I’m gonna change my schedule to three muscle groups per day instead of two. And work out every group twice every week instead of one. We’ll see when I have time for that. And I’m not allowed to do it late at night, because I really really need more hours of sleep every night…

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.

I woke up to the sound of hail today. Now I’ve experienced all but one of the Californian weathers, the summer warmth! And if my sources here are correct, it is pretty soon. Longing!

Today was a really good day! I was in a very good mood and so was the kids. He has such mood swings!

We were studying for a big reading test he has coming up. Every week he has gotten a new piece of paper with 24 words on it that he has been tested with every week. Today we went through almost everyone of them. And he didn’t get angry once! Maybe that was because we played New Super Mario Bros on their Wii in between every sheet. I love that game, and all the Super Mario games for Wii. I’m thinking about buying a Wii when I get home to Sweden. And a bigger TV of course!

This night I had a very strange dream. Ever since I saw the big billboard in LA about Maroon 5 playing at Staples Center on March 15th, I’ve had that concert in mind. I didn’t think about it so seriously. But the other day I saw that they were playing with Owl City and Neon Trees. I love Owl City, and Maroon 5 isn’t so bad them either. And this night I dreamt that I was in a cafe or something and through the door came Adam Levine (the singer in Maroon 5). I recognized him right away and approached him trying to get a photo of him and me together. And then he started to flirt with me and kissed me on the cheek. I think that dream is a sign that I should go. Owl City is never gonna play in Sweden, and probably not Maroon 5 either. So the more I’ve been thinking about it today, the more I want to go. I’m here because I want to do things, not save money! I think Monica wants to go with me, tomorrow she knows if she has to work that weekend. If she doesn’t I’m gonna buy the tickets as soon as possible.

The dinner today was a success! I made chicken tacos and the girl even had two and said she loved it. It was a really good day today!

After dinner I went to IHOP again with Lizzie and Anna. I tried pancakes and they were really good. I wish that everything good didn’t have so much calories they have… Or that I could eat as much as I want withouth gaining weight… Or maybe I have to increase my work out schedule!

Late to bed today again. But it’s just sleep, right…

I got my ticket to SHM today!

Success!!