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?!)

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 a great Sunday at SeaWorld today with Sarah, Jessica and Marie. Marie is also French (like Jessica) and this was supposed to be the first time I met her. But when I saw her I got the feeling that I had met her before but I really can’t remember where or when. I told her this when we said goodbye and she said she had the same feeling. I really wonder where I met her before. She was really nice anyway and we all four girls had a very great day watching cute animals perform and going on rides.

The first thing we did was go on the rollercoaster Journey to Atlantis. It was fun and we got wet. The cars went into the water a few times. It was nice being wet in the hot day. Then we walked around, looked at the polar bears, beluga whales and walruses before we went to the first show, Blue Horizon with bottlenose dolphins, pilot whales and birds. It wasn’t the same show I saw in June with mom so that was fun. We didn’t sit in the soaking zone because we had purses with sensitive stuff in them, like phones and cameras. The next show was the killer whale show One Ocean. Last time I was there the killer whale baby was too young to be on the show so he was swimming in a pool next to the show pool with his mom. But today he was in the show and that was just too adorable! He didn’t to particularly much, I mean he is like 7 months old. But he did two big jumps with his mom and tried to soak the audience, without success unfortunately, but it was so cute! The rest of the show was like the last time, completely awesome. My two favorite animals: polar bears and killer whales for sure!

Hamburgers for lunch, then we watched the Sea Lion and Otter show. That was exactly the same as last time but it was still funny. The show is called “SeaLions Live: Join our comedy duo Clyde and Seamore, OP Otter and their stagehand, Biff, as they perform their own wacky versions of some of today’s pop culture.” Survivor, dancing with the stars, CSI and a music performance; Gangnam Style.

We went on the Manta rollercoaster which is pretty much the same as Kanonen (the cannon) at Liseberg in Gothenburg. The type of it is exactly the same and you get shot out. But this one was a little less scary, no loops or corkscrews. But I still got a little nauseous. Maybe it’s a bad idea going to Six Flags if I got sick after this “lame” rollercoaster. We’ll see.
Speaking of amusement parks, we decided to go to Aquatica here in San Diego in two weeks. It’s a water park with slides and pools and stuff. That will be so much fun!

Last time I tried to pet the bat rays but couldn’t because they were swimming at the bottom of the pool and far away from the edges. But today they were super friendly and came up to us so we could pet them how much we wanted. It wasn’t at all as I expected. I thought it was gonna feel like a cat’s tongue. But it was so slimy! Still cool though, and the water was cold so it was awesome having half the arms in the water for a while.

In the end of the day I bought a new strandbag. I really love the one I already have from Abercrombie, but it is kinda small and it’s completely open so I always get a lot of sand in it. This one has a zipper. I will try it on Tuesday. Those bags were only sold for $15 if you bought something else for $25. I asked a cashier about this and when I told him I only wanted the bag he sold it to me for $15 without buying anything else, awesome!

I had a really nice day and it ended with a nap, dinner and a movie at Chad’s. I’ve finally seen Transformers (just the first one so far). It was good. Now it’s late but that’s fine, as soon as I get home tomorrow after dropping off the kids at school I will go back to bed. One could have a way worse job than I do ;).

Marie, Sarah and Jessica at the dolphin show. Such a magnificent animal. The shark tunnel.

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.

Another month just disappeared right in front of me. Time has its own course of flowing here on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I miss home, but lately I’ve realized how wonderful I have it here and I am dreading the day I have to leave way more than I long for it. My hostfamily is amazing, the kids are the best ever, I get to play beachvolley at the beach instead of indoor, I have new friends for life, I have a really nice guy. And I live in San Diego, California!! Life couldn’t possibly be better! And I can’t believe I only have four more months of work before I have to go back to cold winter Sweden…

Anyway (shoo away, sad thoughts), I just put the kids to sleep. My hostparents were on a date tonight so I worked for a few hours. Me and the kids had a really nice evening together. First they told me about their day. Both of them played soccer games, all games lost unfortunately and after that the girl went to the pool with a friend. For dinner we had scones, they didn’t turn out nearly as pretty as my hostmom’s, but they tasted good and that’s what matters. For dessert we had Baked S’mores and, oh my god, they were delicious!! I can’t really say they tasted like a normal s’more, but they were really really yummy! The recipe’s in the post before this one.

After that we watched half of a movie, The Adventures of Food Boy, a very strange movie about a high school guy who could make food appear in his hands. The boy laughed so much in the beginning before the guy in the movie could control his hands. He was shooting food all over the place. Actually kinda funny.

My day before that was perfect! Finally, after three months, there was another beachvolley tournament. I was paired up with a guy named Garth. But unfortunately we ended up in the best of four groups. We had all the awesome players… The first game we won big time though, there was one new guy, visiting from Germany, who wasn’t so good. But the rest of the games we lost by as much as we won in the first game, like 15-5… We played really good against the team that came in second place in the whole tournament though, two really good guys. After the pool play we lost the first game and were out. I think we could have won it, but the sand was so darn hot it was hard to move when you had dug your feet under the hot surface. They used watering cans, later during the day, to wet the sand, but it only helped for a short while. Some players used sand socks. It’s funny that they use those here to avoid the hot sand, but in Sweden we use them because the sand is too cold and wet. When I was done playing I grabbed a grilled chicken burrito and sat in the shade under an beach umbrella rest of the day.

I went into the water many times too. Surprisingly cold, but that might have been because you’re kinda cooked after playing beachvolley in like 85F.

Last night at Stacked was really nice. The only thing that wasn’t, was that the 14 of us were divided into two tables. I had the same type of salad I had last time, the one with chicken, caramelized pecans, dried cranberries, bleu cheese and a sweet dressing on top. I also added avocado and red bell peppers. So good! What I really wanted was a burger and I probably would have taken it if it weren’t for the restaurants lack of pineapple… Why wasn’t pineapple an option to have on a burger? So I took a salad because I wanted to have dessert even if I really tried to convince myself yesterday that I didn’t want one. Me and Kristel shared an ice cream sundae with marshmallows and caramel sauce.

Tomorrow I will go to SeaWorld again. I’m really excited! And now I’m so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open, so it’s time for some sleep now…

Endless Summer Salad with avocado and sweet potato fries on the side at Stacked.

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.

Also called cycle here in America. I don’t remember it being so darn tough. I was taking it easy with little resistance but I still almost got cramps in my legs. Horrible! And the seats were so hard that I’m having a hard time sitting down now because of the pain in my butt. I guess that’s what I get from avoiding it for 8 months… I prefer doing it at my gym in Sweden though, it’s way easier knowing how hard one should push oneself with the pulse watch and percentage of maximum pulse. But I will bit my tongue and try to do this at least once a week. I will also try to do yoga at least twice a week, and the rest of the times do a normal workout. I’m also gonna try the class called Body Works Plus Abs next week and see if that is similar to Body Pump.

I’m so exhausted now and I didn’t have time for a real nap today either. But I had an awesome lunch and a long and nice shower.

When I had picked up the kids from school we baked Baked S’mores. Haven’t tried them yet, they have to cool before we can cut them into pieces. But I think it will be really yummy. Here’s the recipe for it if anyone’s interested. A review of it will be uploaded later.

Ingredients
* 1 cup melted butter
* 1/3 cup white sugar
* 3 cups graham cracker crumbs (9 sheets HoneyMaid Graham Crackers)
* 2 cups chocolate chips
* 3 cups mini marshmallows

Directions
* Preheat oven to 350F and butter a 9×13 inches baking pan. After doing it I can recommend a smaller pan, maybe even half that size.
* In a medium bowl, combine butter, sugar, and graham cracker crumbs until well coated. Press half of crumb mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan. Top with chocolate chips, then the marshmallows. Sprinkle the remaining graham cracker mixture over the marshmallows and press down with spatula.
* Bake in preheated oven 10 minutes until marshmallows are melted. Cool completely before cutting into 24 squares.

I’m excited! It smells delicious!

Now I’m just waiting for the clock to turn 7pm so I can go and pick up Kristel and Sarah so we can drive down to Mission Valley and the restaurant Stacked for Jessica’s goodbye dinner. I really like that restaurant. Kinda stupid I’ve only been there once. The restaurant’s thing is that you make your own dinner. So you choose ingredients on your pizza, hamburger or in your salad. For dessert you can make your own ice cream sundae. But no dessert for me today, I feel so good about myself after the spinning so I will save that for another time.

Until I have to go I guess I will move over to my bed and read for a while, maybe take a nap.

I feel different. I feel happy, relaxed and like I have more energy. First time ever and I already feel yoga changing me. It wasn’t as hard as I expected but the lunge poses did hurt after a while but I think I did pretty well for my first try. I went there with Sarah and she really liked it too. So we looked at the class schedule and decided to go again on Monday but do a whole evening at the gym. She is not a member of LA Fitness so she had to pay $15 as a daily fee. So on Monday we are really gonna use those dollars. At 7pm we are gonna go for an hour of Zumba, first time there too. And then one hour of yoga and some relaxation in the Jacuzzi/sauna afterward. Feels wrong to say that I long for Monday, but I do.

After dropping off the kids at school I went for some grocery shopping and bought fruit and vegetables. Back home I took a shower and did some laundry. Talked to mom, added the new books mom got me to my eReader, had a really good salad for lunch and then talked to Dzejna for a while. It was a long time ago we talked and it was nice. I miss her! So I asked her if she wanted to come here and visit me in January and go to Hawaii with me. Hope she says yes, that would be awesome!

My freetime today disappeared a little too fast for my liking, I didn’t have time for a nap… But on the other hand, this whole week disappeared super fast. Just one more day and then a nice weekend awaits.

Tomorrow night Jessica will have her goodbye dinner. She is moving to a new family in San Francisco on Saturday. On Saturday it is a beachvolley tournament and beach BBQ after. I will work in the evening on Saturday and I was thinking about taking the kids out to dinner. I wanted to go to the movies but the movie we all wanted to see, Monsters University, doesn’t show anymore… And on Sunday I will go to SeaWorld with Sarah and the French Jessica. A full weekend indeed!

In my freetime tomorrow I will try and go to Cycle in the morning. I miss all the classes at my gym back in Sweden, they had millions. Here they only have like zumba, yoga, cycle, aquafit and something called body works plus abs. I might try that out on Wednesday next week, it sounds nice.

Time for bed, goodnight/goodmorning!

Not much going on today. I didn’t go to the gym again, surprise! I had to get my B12 shot and then I decided to go to the post office to finally send those two packages to Sweden. I really hope they like it!

It was early release day today and because it was so hot we went for ice cream at Cold Stones instead of going to Starbucks. I had watermelon sorbet which was really awesome in this weather. An iced Chai latte had been nice too, but since I had a hot on from The Coffee Bean (finally! The Chai at the Coffee Bean is so much better than at Starbucks, but I haven’t been there since mom was here in June) for lunch I thought ice cream fit better today.

In the afternoon I did some homework with the boy, we read for 15 minutes from a first-grade-book. He did really well! He also had a friend over for a while and they were running around the house playing Star Wars I think.

The girl did a very nice bracelet for me from her new rubber band kit.

I made them dinner, made sure they brushed their teeth and took showers. My hostmom had to go to a late meeting tonight again so I just got off work. And now I’m so tired I will head to bed as soon as I’ve asked mom to download some more books I found today. Suzanne Collins, the author of the Hunger Games, have another series called the Underland Chronicles which seems really good. It’s about a guy who finds a city under New York. Humans live down there among supersized animals. There are so many books I want to read! I want to marry rich so I can stay at home all day and read :).

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.

Oh, I am so tired right now I am almost falling asleep on my keyboard. Don’t know why though, I didn’t go to the gym, the only thing I did was being a beachvolley coach this morning for an hour. It was pretty hot, but I shouldn’t be this tired because of it. My legs also feel like spaghetti. I will take it easy tomorrow. I think it’s finally time to go to the post office.

So, this morning, after I dropped off the kids, I drove to Moonlight Beach and read while I was waiting for Sarah and Christin. I tried to explain everything as good as I could and I think they understood what I meant. I showed them how to properly take a bump (also called bagger), a set and where to place those when playing. I also showed them the serve. I thought it was really fun and I hoped they liked it too. Since they wanted to do it again I guess they did.

After our hour we went into the water and then watched Sarah’s 16 month old hostkid playing in the little stream up on the beach. There we found a seagull just lying in the kelp. At first we didn’t understand why it wasn’t flying away when the little kid was playing right next to it. Then we saw that he was stuck. He jumped like a feet away and we saw that a lot of seagrass was stuck to his foot. And soon thereafter we saw that the seagrass was stuck in a fish hook, which line were twisted around his foot and then up around his head. I hate seeing animals in pain, even if it’s “just a seagull”, so I sat down and removed the seagrass and then tried to take away the fish line. I got it away from his foot so he at least could stand up straight. I didn’t dare touching his face, even if he was super nice and still while I was working on his foot. And he flew away with that line and hook dangling from his neck. I hope someone else sees it and takes it away!

In the afternoon I drove the girl and her friend to soccer practice and after that it was just me and the boy until my hostmom came home at 8pm. We looked at his rock collection and then he wanted me to play Mario Kart. He wanted me to win new guys for him because I’m so good, haha!

It will be so awesome going to bed now!!

It was really nice spending the morning of a weekday at the beach. But it was hot! Hot, sunny, and foggy. And a lot less people compared to Saturday. You could hardly see any sand that day…