Just got home from an evening in Mira Mesa with 5 other au pairs. I’ve been meeting so many new au pairs lately it’s crazy. At 8pm we met up at Applebee’s for dinner. I had sirloin with shrimp and it was really good. We had to hurry after so we wouldn’t miss the movie across the street at 9:15pm. Fortunately it was commercials and trailers until 9:40 so we didn’t miss anything. But since it was premiere night and you don’t have seat numbers here in the Sates we got the worst seats ever, first row… We’ll se tomorrow if I will have any neck pains.

The movie was okay. I didn’t understand any of it so I think I have to read the book! But it was well done and pretty with the 20’s theme.

Before that I spent most of my afternoon outside watching the boy playing with his two different playdates. And later in the evening the girl and her playdate too. When I was sitting there on the curb and my hostdad was home he told me a really funny thing. Today at his work there had been a tiny mouse. It dissappeared after a while but some people went home because there was a mouse in the building. That’s so ridicolous, haha! Mouses aren’t that dangerous.

In my freetime I was at the pool reading. Well, reading for 20 minutes before I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more and slept the last hour. I’m glad my sunscreen is working :).

It’s super late now and tomorrow I have to be at Ponto Beach at 8am to play some beach volleyball for the first time since I left Sweden. It’s gonna be so much fun and I hope I haven’t forgotten too much. I’m not sure what to wear, in the mornings it is really cold and I don’t have any warm exercise clothes here… I guess I have to run a round a lot!

Good night/morning!

This class has been very easy. I think I am to good at speaking American English, but I learn a lot of stuff I had no idea about before. But it is a bit confusing though when you are thinking about your speech. Tonight was about how to shorten words and how to intonate sentences. I think I did pretty good on all the excersises. But it’s going better if I’m not thinking about what he’s saying.

Before that me and both the kids were doing Mothers Day’s cards. The boy wasn’t so happy about it, but when I told him he could do something card-like on a toilet paper roll he shone up and started painting the roll and writing and drawing hearts on it. Pretty and special!

After school, and before our arts and crafting, we had a little visit to Starbucks and their Frappucino Happy Hour, half price on all the frappucinos. I tried Chai Frappucino and it was really good. Almost as good as the warm one.

The day didn’t start very good. I overslept, my second time since I got here. I woke up at 7:30 am when the girl knocked on my door. At first I thought I accidently turned off my alarm like I did two months ago. But when I got up I realized that my phone was dead. My first thought was that it broke down like a month ago. But when I plugged it in the computer it started charging. Puh!

I can proudly say that today was the first day in a very long time that I ate my daily calorie goal of 1400. Now I just need to get every day to be like that! Easier said than done unfortunately…

My day started with an animal I haven’t seen here yet, a racoon! It was walking right outside the fence when I had breakfast, cool!

Before lunch I spent my time at a swim center close by because the boy started his swimming lessons today. Here in America the kids learn how to crawl before they learn how to swim ”normally”. It’s awesome and I’m super jealous. I want to learn how to crawl so I can start swimming at my gym as conditioning.

In my freetime I didn’t so much, watched an episode of Two and a Half Men and then slept a little. After school the boy had a playdate and me and the girl were inside making cards for mothers day on Sunday. It’s nice sitting down doing arts and craft with them. I’m hoping maybe me and the boy can do something tomorrow afternoon when the girl is at soccer practice.

For dinner tonight I made tacos. It was good but kinda spicy, don’t know why, I did exactly as I usually do. But everyone ate and were happy anyway! It was a very nice dinner tonight, a lot of laughter and conversation :).

I can’t believe one third of my year is already done. It’s still eight months left wich is quite much, but four months passed so fast! I am glad I’ve been doing a lot of fun stuff already so I won’t feel stressed out when I only have one third left.

Time goes by too fast… But at the same time I want it to go faster. I can’t wait till I go to San Luis Obispo (I have to book those flight tickets soon!), Phoenix and when mom comes. June is gonna be a packed month!

I heard that nickname today and I totally understand it. It has been raining the whole day and it’s probably gonna be cloudy the whole month. It’s just the way it is in California in the spring apperantly. But on the other hand, the summer is gonna go on until October, so I’m not complaining.

Before lunch I went with the boy to the hair salon. He was super handsome when he came out of the chair. The hairdresser is a Swedish one and she was really nice.

In my freetime I read in the UCSD Extension catalogue and there are so many courses. I think I’m gonna skip the environmental course and take something else instead but I have no idea what! That weekend course in LA about how to write a resumé and so on seems awesome too. I have some time to decide fortunately!

After school we were watching the girl’s musical in the school cafeteria. We didn’t see the whole thing, it was two hours, and went home instead.

At the dinner table we had the door to the backyard open and we heard coyotes! I haven’t seen any here yet but they live right next to our house in the big ditch. Scary!

Now I’m gonna go to bed and watch the new episode of Game of Thrones! 🙂

My fifth LCC meeting was today, we were four girls + one friend walking around in Carlsbad downtown at the annual Street Faire. It was fun and nice. And apperantly something you have to do while in the States, going to a street faire. When my LCC saw me she said that I was getting prettier and prettier for everytime she saw me and that I have a really nice tan. She is so nice and she loved my tattoo and was super happy for me that my mom is coming to visit so soon! I like her :).

I didn’t buy anything except for lunch consisting of a teriyaki chicken stick and a bb corn on the cob. Then we went in to the ”cool” area where you could drink. I didn’t because I was driving but we listened to the band playing live for a while. After that we thought we were pretty much done with the street faire. I went to Oceanside and a store called JoAnn. I wanted to buy thin ribbons to make a new footlink. I’m half done and so far it looks nice.

I was home for a little while, had a delicious dinner with the family and then I went to Mira Mesa to meet up Jessica at Starbucks. When I got there Jessica stood and talked to Maj and Pernille who had decided to spend their night there too. A weird coincidence. But what was more a weird coincidence was that the girls at the table next to ours looked Swedish and were Swedish! One Swedish au pair, her sister and one German au pair. Haha! We talked for a while and when they went home me and Jessica started doing what we were supposed to do, book flight + hotel to Phoenix in June! We found the perfect flight tickets so we don’t have to get off early from work and we will get 2 whole days in Phoenix. $250 for the whole weekend is pretty awesome. I’m super excited, it’s gonna be so much fun :).

I heard about a weekend course in LA tonight that seems nice. $350 and you learn how to write a resumé, how to act at a job interview and stuff like that. I’m gonna look into that and we’ll see what I’ll do. It’s too bad it’s so expensive to study here, there are a lot of courses I would like to take. I got a UCSD Extension catalog with all the summer courses yesterday. I will take a look in that one tomorrow!

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.

Yesterday was an amazing day. I got up at 7am to take a shower and eat breakfast in peace and quite. Maj, Pernille and Jessica picked me up at 9am and we drove to LA. It took 2,5 hours with breaks. When we got there we were hungry and bought lunch. Our first attraction was the house of horrors. It was not fun, me and Maj held hands the whole time while screaming, haha!

The next attraction was the Studio Tour, we waited in line for 40 minutes and when we got out it was no line at all… The tour was really nice, I didn’t recognize much though. But the best part of it was the King King 360 3D it was AWESOME! We were sitting in the train in a tunnel where the ceiling and walls were a big screen showing a 3D movie of King Kong fighting two Tyrannosaurs Rex. The train was shaking and it was so cool.

I don’t remember what order we did everything else but we didn’t have time for everything but we did The Simpsons ride, the Animal Actors stage, Special Effect Stage, Shrek 4D and Water World. The Simpsons ride was nothing at all like I expected but it was awesome too. The Animal Actors were super cute and I think the boy would have loved the Water World show!

The park closed at 8pm and we ate dinner at Hard Rock Cafe at the Universal Studios Citywalk. Unfortunately it said Hollywood on those glasses too. I asked in the shop if I could have a shot glass instead but she said that she couldn’t give me one because it was in a different inventory or something. But when she packed down the glass it turned out to be a shot glass anyway and she said ”ssh, don’t tell anyone”, haha!

When I got home my mom had sent me a message on Facebook telling me that she had booked her flights! On June 19th 20pm I will see her again, I can’t wait!!

Now I am off to my 5th LCC meeting in Carlsbad downtown, there’s a Street Faire or something going on today.

Today was the warmest day since I got here. It was awesome! But it was kinda strange to sweat at 8:30am. Our thermometer said it was mid 80s F which is around 28C. The boy ran his usual four laps which is ¼ of a mile while we waited for the girls’ school to start. That school has a running club and a lot of the kids run at recess which is great. I found out about two weeks ago that the boy can get credited for the laps he runs in the morning and since I know that he really wanted to have more than 50 miles at the end of the year I’ve been encouraging him to run every morning and he is really happy that he has 50 miles now, five weeks before school ends. Kindergarten has two running days per week so he has limited time to finish all his running cards. One card in kindergarten is 5 miles and I think he just started on his 10th card. I’m impressed that a six-year-old has that huge ambition and follows it through.

Before lunch it was too warm to be outside for him so we sat inside painting and doing puzzles in his ant book. He recently got his ants to his gel ant farm and along with it came a book with interesting facts about ants and some puzzles. I think him and I should sit down some day and read it.

In my freetime I went to the pool. I only had one hour there but it was enough. I read some and got some new powers for the afternoon.

But when I picked up the kids from school they asked me if we could go to the pool. So we went there again and it was really too bad I couldn’t play so much with them because of the tattoo. The guy who did it specifically told me not to go in to any jacuzzis, saunas or swimming pools until it has healed. That sucks. But it shouldn’t be too long. We did some playing though and I had a really great time with the kids at the pool with all the other million children.

Dinner was takout from Cheesecake Factory, really good! Then I spent the evening with the kids and my hostmom in the living room watching Disney Channel. Kinda fun that I already know all the character in the shows the kids watch and I’m excited when commercials for new episodes run, haha!

Now I’m watching some series and soon I will be sounds asleep. I am so tired and tomorrow’s gonna be a long day at Universal Studios with Jessica, Maj, and Pernille :).

Today I experienced something again for the very first time. There’s a lot of firsts here! Me and the boy spent the morning at the soccer field in a community park and while we were there playing around I heard this buzzing sound. When I looked closer at the boy who had the boy I saw a big and black cloud closing in on him from behind. It was like a thousand bees! They came straight toward me and I had no idea what to do so I just stood there watching the panic rise in the boys eyes. He didn’t freak out as much as I was afraid of, I don’t think it’s good to run around crazily when you have a swarm of bees around you. Before I knew it the bees where gone, they just flew right pass us without stinging either of us. Now at the dinner table my host-dad told me that they do that when there are too many bees in the behive and half of them have to move. Understandable, but a little scary when you’re in their way!

In my freetime today I read in the backyard. Only 400 pages left now! I hope George R.R. Martin hurries on the last two books so I don’t forget too much.

The weather today was awesome! 80F which is almost 27C. Tomorrow’s going to be even warmer, up to 91F! And on Monday it’s gonna be rainy again and down to 66F. The weather here sure is various.

In the afternoon we baked peanut butter/chocolate chip cookies. They were really good! And after that we went out on the street throwing frisbees. And I found out that five houses up the street there is an american nanny. That is really nice :).

My tattoo still hurts and I can’t remember that my other one did that for so many days. It is also still covered with scabs of color. My other one has only thin lines so the scabs fell off very easily in the shower but this just sticks to the skin and looks like a sticker on the skin. I hope it heals soon so I can continue with my exercise!

A new week has begun and will soon be over too, like all the other weeks. I feel like it is both weekdays and weekends all the time. At the same time! It’s such a weird feeling and I know that I’ve written in like a million times but I can’t grasp the flow of time anymore. In one week it’s already been four months!!

Today was like most days, except that the weather was really cold. I was hoping that it would get better after lunch as it normally does, but no. It was cloudy and cold all day which wasn’t so nice at Swedish School where all the parents wait outside. It was Swedish School today instead of Thursday because of a Swedish theatre that were playing tonight. It was about magicians and was definitely meant for kids, but it was okay.

In my freetime I went to the Victoria’s Secret store here in Carlsbad to return my bikini that I ordered online. It was easy to just go there, return the clothes and order new ones. And I will even get $5 back for bigger sizes of the same bikini. Awesome!

Then I went home, took a quick shower and then picked up the kids from school and now I’m ready to go to bed, early for once :).

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 it’s done, my second tattoo is decorating my body. The more I look at it the more I love it. It’s a tiny palm tree on the inside of my wrist. I was a little skeptical to color at first, but now I’m glad I did it in color, it would have been super boring in black.

Vasoula accompanied me, Maj called me right before my appointment and said she had to work but we were more than welcome to her house after. Chris, the guy who did it, was really nice and did a really good job. He has been a tattooer for nine years and really knows what he is doing. I got a little nervous when he took out a Sharpie pen, a really thick pen and started to draw a palm tree after a quick look at the picture I brought. And then he started and it turned out really pretty. Dark colors which is what I wanted and small details. I love the tree trunk. I was a little afraid that it would hurt on the wrist because of the think skin but it wasn’t so bad. It hurt a little, but only for 25 minutes.

We drove to Maj’s house and stayed there for a while talking. Too bad she had to work. She told us about a music festival close to where she lived but we couldn’t find it so we decided to go to Coronado Beach instead. It was windy but really nice. Jessica came and met us there and we stayed for almost three hours. Then back home, some fixing at the computer and now it’s time for bed.