No, not really. No car means that I hardly can work at all since pretty much most of my workday is to drive the kids to and from school and activities. So this morning my hostdad drove the girl to school and I was supposed to walk the boy to his school. He got so sad when I told him that he sat down in the middle of the stairs and just cried… So his mom offered to drive him even if you can see the school from our house.

In my freetime I couldn’t really do anything except read and sleep. So that’s what I did. I read a lot last night before I fell asleep. Normally I can only read a few pages before I blackout. But it was so exciting last night so I almost finished the whole book. I thought it was kinda disturbing that the two main characters in the book fell in love when they met and then found out that they were siblings. That was the end of the first book but it was so sad, so I kept thinking and waiting for the better truth to be relieved, that they weren’t brother and sister after all. And last night that happened! I was so happy. I love when a book turns out just like you want it to. Right now I’m reading the epilogue so I guess it will be done any page now.

My hostmom picked up the girl from school, came back home to pick me up and then we picked up the boy. She drove us to Swedish School and left us there. My hostdad picked us up after. You really are nothing without a car here!

Panda Express for dinner and now I will buy my ticket for Aquatica on Sunday.

It feels like it’s always something wrong with my car. I feel guilty, but how can I help that light bulbs break, or the dash board stops working, or the AC isn’t what it used to be 10 years ago? My mom cheered me up by telling me it’s an old car (I don’t think 13 years sound so old, but it made me feel better hearing her say that on Skype today). So this time the Check Engine sign is on and my hostparents thought it best not to use the car so much, so I didn’t have to drive the girl to her school, which is like 5 miles away. And that also meant that I couldn’t go to spinning class this morning which sucked a little. I’m feeling better and my cold from the weekend is completely gone by now.

So I spent my morning skyping with mom and then in bed reading until I fell asleep for half an hour before I had to eat lunch. I had a “fika” with the kids at Starbucks where I tried a new thing for once, and I was disappointed. I tried the Hazelnut Macchiato. I really like my chai latte. But next time I will try something that’s not even on the menu. There is something called Starbucks Secret Menu which is pretty much baristas trying new combinations and adds their recipes to a website. So I found one called Fall in a Cup, made from Pumpkin Spice Latte and with Caramel Syrup and Chai syrup in it. It sounds pretty good!

After that I helped the boy with his homework and had to drive to the car doctor whit the kids. My hostdad picked us up there and drove me and the boy home. He had a playdate next door and I was sitting outside keeping an eye on them while they were playing outside. It was cold even with my new knitted shirt and leggings. I read while I was sitting there and I really like this book series now. I was a little skeptic in the beginning but now, after almost three books, it’s really good!

After dinner me and the boy played with paper airplanes for a while and we decided to fold some really nice ones on Friday after school. Tomorrow there’s Swedish School so we don’t have time to do anything after school.

I really love tacos, and I don’t think it’s just a festive meal. I’m used to eating it on normal days (I remember when I was a kid and my dad made that for me and my brother like once every two weeks, that was awesome!) so I’ve made it three times for my hostfamily so far. The first time I made chicken tacos, the second time with minced meat and now the third time with fish and shrimp. In Sweden we have special spice mixes for all three of those but I couldn’t find fish seasoning today so I took the normal one and it ended up tasting and looking like chicken. But it was good, and it felt healthy with the fish. There were a lot of vegetable leftovers so I will have a nice salad for lunch tomorrow.

My day was really nice today as well. It started with a beachvolley ball lesson with Christin at oonlight Beach. All the courts were occupied so we just did some peppering closer to the water. She did really good and especially on the smash which she never tried before. Her sets were very improved today to. I think with the sets (sv: fingerpass) you just come to one point when you realize how to do it and after that you just know how to. I had that day one day at beachvolley camp in the summer of 2010.

After that I drove home, had lunch, did some laundry and put all my new clothes in my dresser. I’m gonna need a second checked-in suitcase when I go back to Sweden… Unless my mom comes to Hawaii and comes with an almost empty one!

In the afternoon it was just me and the boy. The girl was with a friend. So we did a little grocery shopping first. Then a big snack, he was super hungry for some reason. We mixed homework with games the rest of the time before I had to start with dinner.

It was very cold in the morning and in the afternoon very warm. It’s pretty annoying to have to change clothes in the middle of the day. But I guess I have to get used to it again, fall is here!

Time to finish Rise of the Guardians and then some reading.

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.

Not completely healthy yet. Feeling better than yesterday though but my head has been a little weird. Can’t tell if it feels like it’s hollow or extremely heavy. It’s annoying and because of this I thought it was best to stay away from spinning this morning. So I spent the whole morning in bed sleeping. It was awesome!

So the day went by very fast. It felt like I was dropping off the kids and then right after picked them up again. Both of the kids had soccer practice so we had to hurry with snacks and then I had an hour waiting for the boy. So I sat in the sun reading my awesome book. After seeing the movie last Friday I realized what a good book series this is. More things made sense and I had real faces on the characters.

The girl got driven home by her friend’s mom so I only had to stay and wait for the boy. When we got home we did some homework, he took a shower, I prepared the kids’ lunchboxes and then the boy played some math game on the iPad until his parents came home and started with dinner. We had a chicken pie of some sort and it was delicious! I remember having it once in the beginning of the year. We had leftovers which will be perfect as tomorrow’s lunch for me.

Now I think I will have some ice cream and watch a movie on HBOGO.

Once again, the mornings here in SoCal are foggy. This morning after I dropped off the girl at her school and was driving to the boy’s school I saw this floating house in the fog. (It’s in the middle of the picture, below the right light signal)

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.

WHAT AN AWESOME WEEKEND!

Saturday : beachvolley, shopping and bonfire

It was chilly on Saturday, almost the whole time I was at the beach. It was cloudy, foggy and below 70F, just like a winter/spring morning. I thought the summer was already over… but it was the perfect weather for some beachvolley playing! Almost no wind at all and no sun to disturb until like 11am. I played three flawless and winning games with Chad and I was in an awesome mood the whole day after that. It doesn’t take much to make me happy.

Sarah came to the beach later this morning. We talked for a while while we were waiting for Christin. As soon as she got there we took my car to Westfield North County mall. I’ve never been there but it was an awesome mall, they had like all of my favorite stores and all of them had huuuuge sales! I don’t want to know how much money I spent this weekend… We were there for four hours and in four stores. First we went into a store called Windsor and I love that store. Never been there before, but I probably should have. It’s a store full of pretty dresses and party clothes. I asked Christin to show me something to wear at a nightclub since I’m not used to going to them (I thought it was better with almost-free-beer in the basement of my university). I tried it on and it looked really good, but I’m not used to using those kinds of clothes, so I tried on a dress also and that fit like a glove so there was no question about it. It was cheap also, $30.
The next stop was Charlotte Russe where I bought some extremely cheap (and probably very bad quality) accessories. After that we spent some time in Victoria’s Secret and lastly Hollister. We were in there for more than an hour I would guess. Their sale was awesome and all of us bought a lot of stuff. I bought mostly $6 tank tops, but also a pair of jeans, patterned leggings and a pair of sweat shorts.

Time flew by so we didn’t have time for more stores before we had to go to Ponto for our small bonfire at Ponto Beach. We got a little late so Chad had already had time to start up the fire, very nice of him. Soon after we three girls arrived Kristel came too and then the two lifeguards friends of Sarah and then the two German friends of Christin. They weren’t very social, they spoke only in German which was kinda rude and boring… The lifeguards got a call and had to run away to some emergency pretty early and Kristel had to work early the enxt day so she left pretty early too. Me and Chad stayed until eleven and all the Germans stayed until 1am. There were a lot of people at the beach last night and one of the groups were of older men and women and they had like a party. They were dancing to bad music and it was just so weird and kinda embarrassing. But it was a perfect evening. No clouds so you could see all the stars, it wasn’t cold and the s’mores (smurfs as Christin called them xD) were delicious.

Sunday : shopping and home cooked dinner

This morning I was feeling awful. I slept for two extra hours while Chad was studying. I watched a little of the Chargers game on TV after breakfast and was cuddling with the two dogs. Until I sneezed and they got scared and ran away.

I drove home, took a shower and some aspirin so I was feeling a little bit better when I was driving to Sarah’s. I’m so glad I decided to go with them today instead of resting alone at home. We had a great time at the same shopping mall and we bought a lot of stuff today as well. I think I bought most, but that’s because I haven’t been shopping in like three months. Today we started in Abercrombie where they also had a big sale. Instead of $6 tanks they had $15 tanks and t-shirts. Abercrombie is more expensive than Hollister, but it’s still cheaper than brand clothes in Sweden, so I bought some… I feel like I’m wearing the same tank tops all the time so I felt that I needed new ones!

The next store was Sun Diego where I bought a tank top from Billabong with the text “Life is better in San Diego” on it. And then we headed for Macy’s where I finally bought more of those super awesome tanks I have when I work out. Clothes you workout in will be worn out sooner than normal clothes. The second last store was Hollister again because Sarah wanted to buy sweatshirts for her sister. I didn’t see those the last time, so I bought one today, $20. Then I also found a really cute knitted pullover with buttons. It’s perfect over a pair of leggings, which is a piece of clothes I’ve really started to like since I moved here.

The last store was American Eagle Outfitters. I’ve always been told that they have really good jeans. So I tried a pair, and they fit perfectly and were on sale. I also found a pair of cheap black leggings with a zipper by the ankle.

And that was it today. I don’t feel bad for spending money, I feel happy, I love buying new clothes!! 😀

After our shopping we went to Sarah’s house where we cooked a dinner together. Pasta with a ham stew with bell peppers, onions, garlic, tomatoes and mushrooms. Really yummy!

Now in the evening Sarah came with me to my house. I’m transferring some movies to her external harddrive so she has something to watch (except her hostkids) in San Francisco next week. We played a little The Sims 3 and we will continue next weekend, when she is back. It’s such a bad timing with this San Francisco trip. She gave me some very sad news yesterday, she is leaving for Germany on October 1^st… So we only have a little more than two weeks left together. So we said that we are gonna hangout as much as possible when she gets back from SF. I’m really really sad that she is leaving, but it’s not gonna be a permanent goodbye. We are planning on going to Mallorca together next summer and she said she might be interested in coming back to go to Hawaii with me in January! That’s nice, but it’s not nice that she will go back to Germany so soon. She had to do like an internship before she started her studies which is starting next fall. So stupid…

Oh, yeah, right. I went to the movies all by myself on Friday and that wasn’t weird at all. I enjoyed it and might do it again something if there is a movie just I want to see. The movie was really good by the way, I hope they will continue and make the other books into movies too.

It was a really nice weekend even with Sarah’s sad news. So now I will head to bed and hope I will be able to go to spinning tomorrow. I probably shouldn’t because of my cold, but we’ll see how I’m feeling tomorrow.

No bad things happened to me so far today except that I woke up after a horrible nightmare. It was February 4^th 2014 and I was back in Sweden. It was cold and snowy and I wasn’t feeling particularly good just leaving California. No one cared that I was back home and the worst thing was that I realized that I forgot to go to Hawaii. Time had just flown by so fast so I didn’t have time to remember to book the vacation I had been waiting for so long. It doesn’t sound so bad now that I write about it, but it wasn’t nice at all!

But after that my day turned out to be pretty okay. I started my morning as usual with making breakfast for the kids. I had already prepared to lunchboxes last night so I could focus on the kids eating breakfast fast. They come down late nowadays and if I don’t remind them all the time that we are in a hurry they eat super slow. Today we almost got to the girl’s school late actually.

After I dropped off the boy at his school I drove to the gym for a spinning class. It was the same as I went to last Friday so it was tough. Tougher than the class on Wednesdays. In Sweden it’s easy to keep track of how hard you are working, but without the pulse watch it’s hard. But today the instructor told us almost all the time where our RPM’s should be and I was always in those ranges so I felt really good about myself!

When I got back home and wanted nothing more than to take a shower, the cleaning lady was cleaning my bathroom… So I had to had a little earlier lunch than I usually have and then I took a shower right before I left to pick up the kids. It turned out okay. But next time I know she will be cleaning the house I will probably take a shower at the gym, even if I don’t feel like I get clean there. I hate public showers…

In the afternoon I took the kids to Froyo. I just love it and it’s not as unhealthy as ice cream so I thought it was okay to have it two days in a row for me. Back home the boy went over to a friend’s house, the girl is upstairs reading so I don’t really have anything to do now. I will read I guess and when I get off work I will head to the movie theatre and see The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. By myself. No one wants to see that one and I want to try to go to the movies by myself here so I might as well try it on a night I don’t have any plans.

Oh right, in the morning, when I was still driving in the neighborhood to drop off the girl, there was a peacock running straight in front of my car!! I had to stomp on the break really hard to avoid running it over. Stupid suicidal peacock!

This day went fast. My morning was spent with Sarah in San Elijo teaching her some volleyball again. She is learning fast and told me that she would try to play this Saturday at Ponto. When we were done peppering in the wet and very slippery grass we went to a froyo place close by. It was a long time ago I had it. And this place was the best one I’ve been to so far.

After that I drove to the Hertz office to validate my driver license so I could start renting a car with their thing called 24/7. But when I got there it turned out my online account didn’t come through, so now I’ve tried again at home and will go back tomorrow and try to make the car reservation for Las Vegas on Oct 11^th. I’m really excited about that trip!!

In the afternoon I took the kids to Swedish School like every Thursday. I didn’t have anyone to talk to today since the Swedish Sarah was helping out in one of the classes so I sat there reading for a while. That was very nice too!

I cooked dinner for the kids because the parents were at back to school night at the girl’s school. And after their showers we watched the rest of the Food Boy movie we started last Saturday.

Now I’m so exhausted and tired I probably only have enough energy to keep my eyes open for two pages… Goodnight!

I’ve never tried anything with pumpkin before, but now I understand why the pumpkins are so dear to Americans, it’s delicious! Well, the latte from Starbucks was good, but I think I prefer my non fat chai latte. I tried a pumpkin scone too (it was my lunch today). It didn’t taste much, but the girl’s pumpkin bread was really yummy. It tasted like soft gingerbread cake we eat at Christmas in Sweden. I can’t wait for Thanksgiving to try pumpkin pie.

In my freetime I went to the gym for a spinning class. I don’t know why, but today wasn’t tough at all, even if I had more resistance and really tried to push myself further. But I was exhausted after and I was soaked with sweat. You just gotta love a hard workout!

The girl didn’t have her soccer practice today, instead the whole team with families went to Pizza Port. Crowded but the pizza was good as usual!

Today I finally finished the second Mortal Instruments book. It took me nine days! Unbelievable. I will try to finish the next one faster, but it has 100 more pages so maybe not…

I’m sad. I don’t want to go home. I have a second family and kids I love so much. I’m so incredibly lucky I got this opportunity. It’s still five more months and as my hostdad told me today, it will not be a permanent goodbye, we will meet again. But it’s sad and I’m dreading the day, someday between Feb 3^rd and 6^th. I requested my flight home today after talking to my hostparents about it. They told me I should request a flight as late as possible, even if there will be a new au pair here. That’s very nice of them! So now I just have to wait for my flight itinerary, but I know for sure I will be home some day in the first week of February next year.

I told my hostparents about my travel month plans and that I don’t have anyone to go with yet. I’m not as stressed anymore though. But I still have to find someone to go with me to Hawaii pretty soon. I also started to look more into Cancun in November and since I really wanna spend Thanksgiving with my hostfamily, maybe just Friday through Wednesday will be enough. I talked a little about it with Christin and Sarah today so maybe they will go with me. I have to ask my hostparents about that week though, if I’m off or not.

But first I will go to Las Vegas on Oct 11^th to 13^th. I asked if that weekend was okay to go, and they said yes. So now I just have to book everything and then I’m ready to go. I’m so excited!! I have to convince Sarah to come with us first also. Christin is coming so I don’t think she needs too much convincing, haha!

I spent the morning with those two and we had a really nice time at Moonlight Beach again. I made it a little more advanced for them at the beachvolleyball court and they did really good. It’s a difficult sport but if they just have the right spirit they will do great in no time at all. They just have to start believing in themselves first.

The dinner I cooked tonight was awesome! Super simple but really really good. Smoked pork chops (sv: kassler) with mashed potatoes/broccoli and creamsauce (sv: gräddsås) that I made for the first time ever. Leftovers for lunch tomorrow, awesome!

Not much happened today. As soon as I got home this morning I lay down in my bed and slept for three hours. That was so nice! But I’ve been tired this whole day anyway and I have no idea what I’m still doing up. I was thinking about going to bed right after dinner. One reason might have been that I talked to Louise about our upcoming trip to Las Vegas. I am so excited it’s ridiculous. I haven’t talked with my hostparents yet though, but I don’t think it will be a problem going away for a weekend in October. I’m gonna talk to them tomorrow so we can book the hotel, Bally’s, and I can book the car.

Both of the kids had soccer practice today so we didn’t really have time for anything else than snacks, changing of clothes and a little lunch preparation for tomorrow.

I don’t have anything more to do now, so I guess it’s time for bed and some reading. (Why don’t I want to go to bed early anymore?!)