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 🙂

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.