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.

This weekend was the best so far this year! Everything was just perfect and I wish so bad I could have more of this, but unfortunately this was the last weekend that was possible…

The day started with me picking up Sarah at her house and drove us both to my ninth LCC meeting – Oceanside’s Harbor Day. For once it was actually a pretty nice meeting. I like my LCC but I think it is boring that she leaves as soon as she talked a little with each and every one of us. I asked her if she knew about getting a new J1 visa right after the one I have expire. Someone told me I might not be able to get a new visa for studying until like 1-2 years has past and if that is true than that would really suck monkeyballs. I’ve just decided that I want to come back and study and now I found out that that might not be possible… I will cross my fingers!

Normally after our LCC leaves all the au pairs scatters and leaves too, but today I think all of stayed and our group has grown from three people per meeting this summer to more than 10 today. Most of them I’ve never seen before. We walked around in Oceanside Harbor (where I’ve never been before and I seriously wonder why, it was so nice there!), had lunch and talked. I overheard some Germans talking about Las Vegas so I asked them if they had been there and if they might want to go with me in two weeks. They were really interested in going with me. So instead of three people we are now six (probably). I’m so excited and it will be so much fun!!

After two hours there me and Sarah continued our day and drove down to Mission Beach. I’ve never been there before and I really wonder why, it was a really nice beach with a boardwalk, rollercoaster and nice stores. Before we lie down on the sand we bought smoothies and then we spent the rest of the day at that beach. Christin joined us later and we watched the sunset together. We had dinner at a restaurant/bar called WaveHouse. It was a really cool place. It was outside, sand as floor, and the most cool thing was the surf wave they had. It is a real wave were guys surfed. Unfortunately someone got hurt so they had to turn off the water. It was something serious, the ambulance was there and carried the guy away on a stretcher.

I drove Sarah home and stayed at her house for a while, while we exchanged photos from yesterday and today. We took a lot of pictures today because it was her last day at the beach. I find it very hard to believe that she is leaving on Tuesday… I guess it will be more real when we say goodbye for real tomorrow night!

I drove home and now it’s time for some sleep.

The Oceanside police were there showing off their trained dogs. That dog was better trained than those animal actors yesterday at Universal Studios. Two old people performing to Gangnam Style. Hilarious!

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 had such an amazing day at Universal Studios with Sarah and Christin today. It was hard getting up to start going at 7am, but with a breakfast from Starbucks on the road it turned pretty fast. Christin had vacation this week and spent it in San Francisco and then two nights in LA where me and Sarah picked her up. We parked by the Universal Citywalk at maybe 10:30 and then got stuck in stores and lines into the park so we didn’t get in until like noon. But that was fine. First we took the Studio Tour which was different from when I was there last time. They showed different things which was nice, but King Kong 360 3D was still the same and still as amazing. I don’t like the fact that I get nauseous so easily nowadays. I got a little sick from that ride…

Then we went down to the place where almost all the rides are. I didn’t even go down there the last time but I’m glad we did it this time. First we went on the Jurassic Park ride which was like Flume Ride at Liseberg, but a bigger boat and with a lot of dinosaurs squirting water and scaring us. It was a nice ride.

Next ride was the Revenge of the Mummy rollercoaster. I wasn’t too excited because I knew how easily I get sick, but it was a short rollercoaster and no steep falls which I think is the main reason for my disorderly stomach. The most funny thing about that ride was the photo! All three of us were laughing so hard when we were looking at it. All of us had different faces and we looked so ridiculous! We should have bought that photo, we really should have!

Then we went on the Simpsons ride because there was a one hour line for the Transformers ride. I’ve heard that one is really nice, so I was a little disappointed I couldn’t go on it. But I have my yearly pass so I guess I could go back again. The Simpsons ride was as fun as last time but oh my god I felt sick after. And poor Christin was even worse. My nausea went away after I drank some Coke and ate a cinnamon roll. Our stomachs settled while we were watching the Animal Actors show and then me and Christin went into the House of Horror. I don’t like that kind of stuff anymore and I was screaming like a little girl the last time. But this time I was prepared, hold Christin’s hand really tight and my other hand covering my sight so I couldn’t see the people jumping out at me. It wasn’t as bad as the first time because this time we were walking right behind a couple so they were the ones getting the most scared.

After that we did some shopping and had dinner at Wolfgang Puck at the Citywalk. We three are ridiculous when it comes to shopping. First of all I finally found California Republic clothes so I bought a hoodie and a tank top. I also found some souvenirs for my cousins. And new sunglasses. About time! They were cheap too, $4 each, so I bought two, couldn’t decide what color.

We also spent a lot of time in a store called Angl. I’ve been in it once before, on the Walk of Fame and bought a very cute top there. This time I found an awesome top again that I was hoping I could wear for my second night out in Las Vegas, but they didn’t have my size. So I will look on their webpage and see if they have it there. They have so many cute clothes there. But I didn’t buy anything else than a necklaces and matching earrings. I decided to wear the black Diesel dress I Bought in Houston, in Vegas and needed a necklace. I think that was all my shopping today.

We stayed outside in the middle of the CItywalk for a while in the evening. I was surprised it was so warm, it was like 77F or maybe even warmer. Down here in San Diego it’s just above 60F… I wish we had that evening warmth down here, if we did it would be perfect here!

First we drove Christin home and that was an experience, for sure! I knew she was living in a gated community but I had no idea you had to cross THREE gates to get to her house! And her hostfamily’s property was ridiculously big. They had three houses, the main and HUGE house where the family lives, the guesthouse and Christin’s house (I think it was on top of like four of her eight garages). They had their own private tennis court and they are building a pool and Jacuzzi right now, and you can’t have a pool without a pool house so one of those will be built too. I didn’t see the inside of the main house but I hope I can do that someday.

Then Sarah drove me home and now I’m so tired. I think I will just throw everything from my bed down on the floor, get to bed and deal with the mess another day, probably after Sarah’s gone and I won’t have anything to do during the days… I’m gonna miss her so much!! But first we have the whole day tomorrow, full of plans, Monday morning shopping/hanging out at the mall, and her goodbye dinner after my class.

Goodnight!

They closed the park at 6pm and then opened again at 7pm for HHN, Halloween Horror Night which they have some days now until Halloween in a month. There were a long line to get in already at 5pm! And when we left at 9pm there were millions of car trying to find a parking spot in the huge parking house right next to the Citywalk. These horror nights goes on until 2am and I’m not completely sure what it means more than there are a lot of scary “actors” running around in the park. They had also set up metal detectors in front of the entrance for the evening, wonder why.

Friday again, another week gone, and another fun weekend lies ahead of me. The end of this week I spent at the boy’s school for a talent show and ice cream social. It’s pretty much eating ice cream while watching elementary school kids do stuff. It was a nice experience but I’m so glad we left after two hours (half the show). There was one guy in the beginning who was awesome at the drums and one girl in the middle who sang a song while her dad was playing the guitar, and she was so good. Other than that I think I’ve heard Katy Perry’s Roar like five times…

My day was nice, I spent the whole morning at Ponto beach with Sarah and her 16 month year old hostboy. I love that kid, he is sooo adorable! And for the first time he actually paid attention to me and wasn’t afraid of me. Today he threw a ball at me and he caught it when I threw it back. And then he started smiling with his whole body when I said “good job” and clapped my hands.

Before Sarah had to go we did some beachvolleyball peppering and she did really good and told me she is gonna join a volleyball team back in Germany.

I drove directly from there to the girl’s school to pick her up. Then left her at home with her mom so she would have time for a shower and to buy a birthdaygift to her friend. The party started at 4pm! Odd time for a birthday party. So I picked up the boy and after snacks he had a playdate with the neighbor and then we drove to the ice cream social.

I started reading the fifth Mortal Instruments book today, I finally finished the fourth last night. They are so good, but I kinda hate this one. This author is really mean to the love couple. First they fell in love, then they thought they were brother and sister while they couldn’t forget their feelings for each other. Then they found out they weren’t brother and sister and now the guy has become super evil. The worst thing is that there will be a sixth and final book, but it won’t come out until like May next year!! Stupid books…

Tomorrow I will go to Universal Studios with Sarah and Christin, I hope the weather will be nice as it was today (it was low 80s after the morning cold (55F) was gone). But I will pack both leggings and shorts so I’m sure the day will be awesome anyway :).

I’ve been so excited this whole day. It started with me spending $265 on concert tickets for me and five friends. We are gonna go to LA in November and see Avicii at Hollywood Bowl!! That’s gonna be so amazing and I can’t wait.

The second big thing that happened today was that the girl got off from school at noon today which meant I had a 10h working day today. I’m tired but I’m totally ready for some yoga with Sarah in an hour. So she didn’t have lunch at school so just she and me went to Panera Bread and had lunch. It was very nice. I had a baked potato soup, it was good.

After we picked up the boy we drove to Swedish school from which I just got home. And now I’m waiting for Sarah and then we’ll have a nice evening together with yoga and hot tub again!

I had a really nice day, even though I didn’t feel so good. I don’t know if it’s because I slept bad or what. But I’ve been very tired and felt like I’ve been radiating heat this whole day. I also had a pretty bad headache. But as I said, I had a pretty good day anyway.

It started as usual and then I spent almost two and a half hour with Moa, Sarah and Paulina at a restaurant called Snooze down in Del Mar. I had pineapple upside down pancakes. So delicious!

It was a dine-out today from the boy’s school. That means that if you save the receipt from the specific  restaurant 20% of the profit goes directly to their school. So me and the kids skipped Starbucks today and had an early dinner together at Rubios. I had a Salsa Verde Shrimp taco which was really good. Pretty much everything with avocado in it is! I didn’t eat more than that because I wanted to save some space for froyo with Sarah after work. I made it “healthy” this time with fruits and nuts instead of candy. Extra points for me. But this day kinda ruined my not-eating-too-much-and-unhealthy-week. But I’m not giving up, I will continue tomorrow and forget about this day!

While we were eating froyo and Sarah drinking her smoothie we were also sitting in her community hot tub. We were talking for a long time and we had such a nice evening. I can’t believe she is going home on Tuesday… I will cross my fingers that she will join me on Hawaii next year.

Today I found out that Avicii is playing in LA in November and it’s not too expensive, $44 for a ticket. That’s nothing! The tickets are on presale until tomorrow so I guess I have to find someone to go with pretty soon if I don’t want history to repeat itself (Swedish House Mafia in March). It would be so awesome to see Sweden’s two biggest house artists perform here in America!

I did a lot of errands today. First I got my B12 shot, then I returned a pair of sweatpants to the Abercrombie store in Fashion Valley and my last stop was at the UCSD Bookstore where I spent a lot of money… I bought my two textbooks for my German class that starts next Monday. Almost $110 for those, and they weren’t big! Then I found a hairbrush that I also bought. Now that I have so long hair, the brush I’ve always used before doesn’t work anymore, needed something bigger. I also found really nice sweatpants there. Maybe I should buy a pair there instead of a pair from Abercrombie. I have to think about it!

When I got home I had lunch and read some. But I didn’t read many pages before I fell asleep and slept for an hour before I had to pick up the kids. I like my naps.

Didn’t do much more than give the kids snacks and helped the boy with his homeworks in the afternoon. And for dinner I cooked a lemon fish stew with pasta and steamed broccoli. It turned out really good!

I’m not gonna look into my Hawaii trip tonight, I want to get many hours of sleep so I will go to bed now, at 7pm… maybe I’ll finish my book before though ;).

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 fall is definitely here. Leaves on the trees are starting to turn red and it’s chilly in the mornings. But the summer warmth is still there in the afternoons. I can’t say I’m a big fan of the mornings though… It’s dark when my alarm goes off at 6am and that makes it super hard getting out of bed!

Since I didn’t get much sleep this weekend I decided to sleep the whole morning when Sarah told me she couldn’t go shopping with me. So I slept for 3.5 hours which was awesome. That meant that my day went by so fast. Monday’s are busy days after school with the kids’ soccer practices. I was supposed to go to bed early, like right after dinner to catch up on some sleep, but instead I got stuck looking into my Hawaii trip in January. I can’t say anything else than that it will be the most awesome vacation I’ve ever had! My guess is that the costs for flights and hostels will be around $1400 for 2.5 weeks on three different islands. It’s not too bad. I guess we might have to rent a car on Oahu and the Big Island, but that can’t be too expensive. The hostel on Maui is offering free tours every day. I can’t believe I’m sitting here, planning a vacation on Hawaii. It’s just too unreal for a Swed like me!

I will continue this planning another day, starting to get pretty tired now…

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.

Last night at the sport park in Rancho Santa Fe was really nice. I was there with Paulina, Lovisa and Moa and we had a nice, but chilly, evening together. The movie was good, but it wasn’t at all as I expected. It was about arcade game characters. There were a lot of people there and the screen was a big inflatable thing. Very nice! The movie was supposed to start at 7pm but I think it wasn’t dark enough so it started later. Which meant I couldn’t go to Chad’s until later and I totally forgot to tell him that, so he sent texts asking if everything was alright and that he was worried. He is like the sweetest ever. And he really proved that later in the evening. My shoulder started to hurt really bad during the movie. It felt like it sometimes does when I sleep on it, but then it hurts right away in the morning. I can’t remember sitting weird or anything yesterday afternoon. But anyway, it got worse and worse and worse and later my whole left arm was hurting. I ended up eating aspirins, having ice on my shoulder the whole night, getting massages and I even bought an IcyHot cream. Nothing helped and I was lying in his bed, trying to understand the new Tom Cruise movie Oblivion, and cried the whole night. I think I finally fell asleep at 4am… I feel so bad that I kept him awake almost all night but he was so sweet, always asking me if I needed anything. Fortunately the pain that made me want to chop of my arm was gone when I woke up at 8am today. So there was no cancellation to my plans.

First I drove to Sarah’s place to pick her up, then I picked Paulina up and then Lovisa. Aquatica was all the way down in Chula Vista, by the border to Mexico and when we got there I saw that the Sleep Train Amphitheatre was right next door, that’s nice, so I won’t have troubles finding it in two weeks time when I will go there to see Maroon 5 :).

Aquatica was really fun, it was a nice day but not many people, I mean, it is the end of September. They had a lot of slides and we tried three different ones. The first we tried was called Tassie’s Twister and we could all four ride in one raft. The end of the slide was like a big funnel. We rode on that one like three times. Then we tried the other big one, Walhalla Wave which we also could go all four in. That one was scary, it felt like we almost reached the edges of the slide. The last slide we tried was the Kiwi Curl where you went alone on a inflatable ring. I really liked that one. Then we tried the lazy river a couple of laps. We had our own inflatable rings and then we had our feet on a fifth ring in the middle of us. We were talking while gliding around there. With a drink in our hands and no waterfalls soaking us it would have been perfect.

When we returned the locker keys we got a $5 voucher and I happened to see a really cute bracelet in the gift store, so I bought it and only paid $2.49.

We had lunch after that and then we were so exhausted that we drove home. I will take a shower now and then maybe fall asleep.

As all Saturday mornings I played beachvolley at Ponto. It didn’t start so well but I played better and better through the morning and me and Chad won a few games. Then the wind came out and everyone played crappy. Winning was more because of luck than skills. It was a really nice morning though, cloudy and pretty warm. The sun came out with the wind and I totally forgot about sunscreen so my face is like a strawberry. Nothing else is burned.

I noticed that the pelicans are back. I haven’t seen them all summer now that I think about it. I didn’t get pooped on though :).

I drove home and asked the Swedish girl about the picnic we were supposed to have in Del Mar this afternoon but they were pretty much done so we decided to meet at the outdoor movie at 6:30pm instead. So right now I’m just waiting for time to go by so I can drive down there and watch Wreck-It-Ralph. That will be really nice and I will meet two new Swedish au pairs for the first time.

And tomorrow me, Sarah and Lovisa will go to Aquatica, that will be really nice too! So much stuff going on all the time it’s ridiculous. Next weekend Universal Studios, the weekend after that a bonfire party at Ponto Beach and the Maroon 5 concert. The weekend after that is Las Vegas and Grand Canyon. Soon thereafter there’s Halloween which I’m really looking forward to. A month later is Thanksgiving which I also really look forward to. And then there’s Christmas and my travel month… I guess I will fill out the rest of the few weekends in between and that’s it. The rest of my year, 16 weeks of work (excluding the last week of december)…

I don’t know if it’s Americans or if it’s kids in general who doesn’t know what personal space means. Every afternoon I wait at the gate outside of the girl’s school and every day all the kids walking past me almost walk into me. The sidewalk I’m standing on is like 2,5m wide and I’m standing as far to the edge of it as I can but still they insist on walking straight into me. And it’s not just walking, some almost ride into me with their scooters and skateboards too. What’s wrong with them?? Today I almost got my whole face scratched to bits and pieces because one girl was walking with cardboard on her head. If I didn’t lean backwards, like a lot, she would totally have hit me in the face. I was too surprised to say anything but that really made me mad. And it’s gonna be like this every afternoon…

My day other than that was nice. My hostdad drove the girl to school and took me with him so we could first leave his car at the car service and then drop me off where my car was. Now it’s fine and working again.

I drove to Starbucks in Vons close to our house because I wanted to try one of those Secret Menu things. It was good, but it was not worth so much extra money. It was stupid going to Vons, because I ended up buying a bag of Rolo’s. The girl and her friend baked chocolate cookies at the friend’s house this week and they had Rolo in them. The cookies were delicious and I didn’t realize what Rolo was, but it looks kinda like Center, but the caramel inside is more chewy. So delicious! I think I’ve found my new favorite candy. It’s hard being healthy here…

In my freetime I took a shower, had lunch, read and then took my daily nap for 30 minutes.

When we got home from school both the parents were home and the girl’s neon pink iPhone 5C had just arrived so she’s been upstairs (except for when she had a chocolate milkshake for snack) playing with it and the boy is over at the neighbors so I guess I’m off work at 4pm on a Friday, pretty awesome! Except that I don’t have anything special to do, haha. I guess I will read until Sarah gets home from San Francisco in about an hour and then maybe have dinner with her or something. Or maybe froyo 🙂