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 was so freaking amazing! I can’t believe I saw Avicii, a Swedish DJ, in LA, making the sold out Hollywood Bowl go crazy. I am proud to be Swedish, once again, exactly eight months after I saw Swedish House Mafia in the city of angels.

Our rental car was a Kia Optima, and Emma was nice and drove both there and home. It was a lot of traffic and it took us more than two hours to drive to the pregaming in West Hollywood. But we got there, played a fun beer game (I have to remember to ask for the rules again, it was a bit confusing but really fun).

We got the the Bowl late and missed two of the artists and saw a few songs of the third. He was good though. Then Avicii was up. He started with Hey Brother, played a few great songs and then he played a lot of dull songs and I don’t think I was alone wishing for Wake Me Up to be played. It got really cold and my feet started hurting. So two hours was a bit too much. But then came good songs again, like Levels. And then he finished with Wake Me Up. But you couldn’t really hear anything because of the huuuuuge firework that was going on through almost the whole song. That was the end!

The arena was really great. Everyone had their own seat, but we had plenty of room to dance and move around and everyone saw the stage perfectly. I really liked it there.

He is playing in Stockholm in February again, but I don’t think he can match this one in LA, so I’m not even gonna bother go to that one, haha!

When we got in the cab to get to the arena I did something awfully cool. I told the cab driver to “follow that car!” We were gonna follow the other cab to the right place. Now I can check that off the bucket list!

On the way home I fell asleep right when I allowed myself too. And when I woke up like an hour later, when we were almost at my house I was gonna ask about the gas and I totally did it in English, even if the other two girls were Swedish. That was so random! I took over the car, drove Lovisa home and then returned the car and drove home to my place. I got to bed at like 4:30am and got out of it at 1pm today. But I did get awoken a lot of times. My hostfamily isn’t exactly quiet around here. And then the girl across the street started playing tuba outside. I think I’m well rested now.

I’ve been in such a good mood this whole week. I’m not usually in a bad mood, that’s not what I’m saying, it’s just that this week has been better than a normal week. At first I had no idea how I could wake up at 6am and smile and wondering what the day would bring. But then I thought about it and there have been a lot of good stuff happening this week. For example, the weather has been awesome, today it was 75F. Unfortunately I spent my freetime in the gym, but I have a feeling I haven’t seen the last of the sun. Daylight saving time makes it light in the morning, a big plus factor for my good mood. I’ve lost weight and found motivation to start exercising again. My toothache is completely gone, I’m going to the Avicii concert tomorrow and this morning my mom told me she get her company’s apartment in London in May next year. I’ve always wanted to go there and was so happy when mom told me that I could join her and her friend!! 😀 It’s for a whole week, and probably the week before the exams, but I will only have one, so that won’t be a problem. I’m so excited!

But today I found out that I have to work a lot the rest of November, there are a lot of days off and halfdays for the kids. Then there is December which will probably be as normal and then I will finish my year with Winter Break. So there’s gonna be a lot of work these last two months which also means less time to work out now that I’ve finally found my way back. Too bad. But I’m not complaining, my hostfamily is very fair and never make me to work more than what my contract says.

I’m really excited about Avicii tomorrow, can’t wait!!

Today was crazy! It’s november 7th and this morning at 8am it was 75F outside and it got warmer and warmer. When I was lying at the pool in my freetime it was more than 80F and I was about to melt away in the sun. It was awesome! And it is November!! I don’t wanna go back to Sweden where there are no palm trees, no sun, no beaches, no dolphins…

It feels like I’ve been here one month per season. One in the winter, one in the spring, one in the summer and right now I’m in my fourth, the fall. It sure doesn’t feel like ten!!

When it comes to work it was a kinda weird day. The girl had minimum day, which means she got off school at noon instead 2pm. But I picked her  up at a friend’s 45min later to drive her to the boy’s school where she was gonna do 2h of community service in his class. So then I had a second freetime for an hour today. And then at 3pm I picked up them both and we went to Swedish School. But we were only there for an hour because the boy had cub scout meeting so his mom picked him up and then of course the girl wanted to come too.

So I got off work at 5:30, did some errands, for example I bought my $15 gift to my next LCC meeting when we are gonna play a game called White Elephant, a Christmas gift game.  I bought a hand lotion and lip balm from Ulta and I think I will try and get that gift on Dec 8^th. They both smelled delicious!

After that I went to the gym for the second time this week. First I ran 35 minutes on the treadmill and then one hour of yoga. It is surprisingly hard and I have to start doing that regularly so it won’t hurt so much doing the different postures. I’ve also decided that I’m gonna practice for the 5K run I’m gonna do in a month. So I will try to run at least one 5K run every week at the gym. One 5K run is about 3miles and today I ran 2.3, so it shouldn’t take too much time. We’ll see.

I’m just glad I’ve started working out again and I’ve really tried eating healthy this week and since Monday I’ve lost 4lbs already. Now that I see results I will hopefully keep going like this. 2.5 weeks in bikini awaits me in January!

A normal Tuesday is just about to end and I think I will end it earlier than usual and go to bed and read or maybe watch a movie. It was a good day, didn’t do much. Had a long and nice nap in the morning. I tried doing one of the two days with less than 500 calories but my hostfamily made a too good of a dinner for me to resist. So I will have to do it again tomorrow.

In the afternoon I wrapped up the girl’s birthday present, she is turning eleven next Thursday! She is getting so big. I know I’ve just known her for ten months but she’s grown so much, not just with her height but maturedness (if that’s even a word).

I am gonna miss these kids so much, not just being around two amazing children, but seeing them grow up. They are like my two younger siblings and I love them so much, and not being able to see them grow older than 7 and 11 years old makes me sad. I will see them again, for sure, but I won’t see them grow up.

Both of the kids, especially the boy have realized that my time here soon is up and tries to talk about it, that it’s not that much time left and so on. Since that also makes me sad I try to avoid talking about it by changing the subject. But it is really touching that they are aware of my departing and doesn’t like it anymore than I do.

I forgot to write something on Monday. I’ve finally sent in my exchange program application to Chalmers about studying at CalPoly next year. I got some amazing help from one of the beachvolleyball guys. I wrote the letter, he just added some fancy words and made it sound better. So very nice of him. I can really see myself getting accepted with that letter.

This day started with a fire alarm at the boy’s school. We were in the computer lab doing some reading excercises on the computer before school started and in the middle of it all the fire alarm went off and almost killed my ears. Weird to have a fire drill 30 minutes before school starts and since it was over after 10 minutes I guess someone just accidently turned it on.

In my freetime I went to the gym for the first time in a very long time. I went to a spinning class and I think I did pretty good even though I tried taking it easy. I got a headache in the middle of it but I survived one hour.

After the gym I rewarded myself with leftovers from Famous Dave’s. A lot of protein, that’s good after a workout!

For dinner I made Knorr’s lasagnette, the last package my mom brought. Delicious! But soon I can eat it as much as I want.

And now, everything for Hawaii (except car rental) is booked, all the flights and all the hostels/hotels. The total for that ended up at $1500 which is cheap. I mean I’m gonna spend 2.5 weeks on three Hawaii islands!! On Oahu we are staying at Hostelling International Waikiki (I’ve stayed at HI before and they are nice hostels), very close to the world famous Waikiki beach. I’ve heard that that beach is overrated though, but we will see in 71 days! At Maui we are gonna stay at Banana Bungalow Hostel which offers free tours. The location is pretty bad, but with the daily free tours, like beautiful hikes, turtle tour and whale watching. I seriously can’t wait!! And last but not least, the Big Island, where we wanted to make it a little bit more luxurious. We are gonna stay at a hotel resort called Royal Kona Resort. According to the pictures it looks very nice. And for only $135 a night. And we also got one night free because of one of Caroline’s brothers. Awesome!!

I’ve done some googling to see what we can do on the three different islands and I have a long list now. Unfortunately most of the beautiful places on Hawaii are a bit away from everything else so it does seem like we are gonna need a car, at least on Oahu and Big Island. I want to go to Hawaii and see all these beautiful sceneries and if that means we have to get a car, than a car I will get. I love hanging at the beach, but this is probably the only time in my life (hopefully not though) I will go to Hawaii, so I might as well see as much as possible. I can sleep and rest back in Sweden.

I am so thrilled about this trip it’s ridiculous! I’ve said it so many times, but I seriously can’t believe I’m gonna spend 2.5 weeks on Hawaii in such a short time. Two months and ten days!

Daylight saving time made me in a really good mood this morning. For the first time in a very long time the sun was up before me! And my good mood kept going during the whole day for unknown reasons. When I got back home after dropping off the kids me and Caroline booked hostels on Oahu and Maui so after the hotel on Big Island is booked everything is done with that trip. I still have a hard time understanding I’m going to Hawaii!

Today was the first day of my new diet, this 5:2 thing that’s so popular right now. It means that five days a week I eat normally and two days a week I eat less than 500 calories. Today was one of those two days and it worked perfectly fine. My new healthy lifestyle continues tomorrow when I will go to the gym for the first time in ages.

I wasn’t too excited about class, I’ve been tired, but it went by fast. It was a little bit hard today actually and my homework from last week had a lot of red marks on it. Oops.

One bad thing about daylight saving time is that now it gets dark so early in the evening. No, not even evening. Today at 5:30pm it was pitch dark outside… Winter is coming to San Diego aswell….

I have now spent 300 days away from home. Up until this point I haven’t really missed Sweden, but now I do and all of a sudden time stopped moving so fast. But that’s good because I know that I have a very limited time left (10 weekends in San Diego!!). I realized this weekend that I still have a few things I want to do before going home, like the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and Disneyland. I hope I will be able to squeeze that in somewhere.

I did a lot of stuff today and I started the day by having my LCC meeting at the beach in Carlsbad. It was an international potluck and my contribution was Swedish mudpie. It was very nice but I was so full after! I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to eat at Famous Dave’s later… But that wasn’t any problem. Me and Lovisa shared a feast for two and both of us got boxes with us home. So much food!

In between my two feasts today me and Lovisa were shopping with Christin in Escondido. I wanted to buy a pair of boots but couldn’t find any so I ended up buying a t-shirt and a thin hoodie instead, oops. From now on I’m not gonna buy anything else, I really have to save for Hawaii, it’s just 73 days away!

The summer just goes on and on. It doesn’t seem to have an end here in SoCal! This morning at beachvolleyball was so nice, it was like a really warm summerday in Sweden. Clearblue sky, no wind and a lot of dolphins. I played really bad except for when I played with Chad. For the first time since I started playing at Ponto I was bothered by the sun. It was right in my eyes and super annoying.

It was a beautiful morning but after noon something weird happened. One minute it was like I described and the next it was super foggy, cold and windy. So strange! When the fog came everyone left including me.

I switched the beach for the pool where I spent 3 hours reading. I actually got a little burned in my face. In November!!

Tonight I was supposed to have dinner with Lovisa at Famous Dave’s but out of nowhere she started feeling sick so we had to cancel :(. I had really been looking forward to it and now I’m lost and I have no idea what to do… Maybe I should watch a movie or something.

The mornings are really cold now, today it was as low as 52F (=11C)! The sun is still shining though so at noon and in the afternoon when the sun has had some time to warm up it is really nice. Today it was 85F. So it doesn’t really feel like November.

Even if I didn’t go to bed later than usually I was really tired today, so I spent my whole morning sleeping which was awesome. In the afternoon the boy was with his mom at an All Star soccer tryout. That means that a scout was looking at his team playing and the boy was the best in his team so he have the opportunity to join an all-star team with all the best players from different teams around here.  I think me and his mom are more excited about it than he is.

So while they were there me and the girl had some alone time at home. She organized her candy from last night, ate some and while I was baking a Swedish mudpie for my international potluck au pair meeting on Sunday, she was reading. When I was done we both read for a while.

I’m getting used to the complicated language in Under the Dome, but if I’m not focused I don’t understand what I’m reading. I’m one fourth in the book now, just 600 more pages!

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.

Now I’ve experienced the real Halloween and I liked it. I’m gonna try to introduce it to Sweden. My mom told me today that my grandpa have had kids trick or treating this whole week. And if my memory doesn’t fail me I remember that kids used to go trick or treating during two whole weeks, last of October and first of November. It’s supposed to be a big thing on October 31^st!

So first there was a block party across the street with a lot of food. The kids were playing around and the parents were talking, but I, right inbetween a grown up and a kid, was a little left out, so it wasn’t that fun for me, but it was a nice event. When the sun started setting it was time for trick or treating. I was expecting to go with the whole family from house to house, saying “trick or treat” and then get some candy. But not at all. Parents were pretty much running after the running kids who just ran from house to house taking candy. And when it got really dark it was hard seeing the kids up ahead. My kids got glowsticks around their next though, so they were easy to see.

After walking around for a bit we stopped at a house who had a party with more food and drinks. They had real chili so I tried that for the very first time, it was good. They also had my favorite, corn bread!! Maybe I should buy a mix and take home to Sweden.

I had my own pumpkin bucket for candy. The kids had pillow cases and got a lot of candy. I got a reasonable amount. I just went up to a few houses and one lady in one of them told me that I had the most beautiful costume she saw that night. I got a lot of compliments tonight. I was wearing a flapper dress with a feather in my hair, long black gloves, fishnet stockings with rhinestones on the backside and a long pearl necklace. I was from the 20’s tonight. It was cold walking around like that and I will probably sleep with an extra blanket tight around me tonight.

I had a very nice evening with my hostfamily and I’m glad I got to experience Halloween the real way!

I got myself a real big surprise this morning when I saw this, hahaha! xD We finally did these evil eyes but we didn’t have time to put them up. At least I got some arts and craft time with the kids. It’s so hard getting them to do anything like this normally. We were supposed to put a glow stick in them and put them in a tree. My 20’s outfit for the evening. High heels would have killed me and no one saw my sandals in the pitch dark later. I got a lot of compliments during the evening though :).