Tag Archives: animals

Naminara Republic of Korea, Petite France, Meerkat Friends

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Today was a fun day, 16 000 steps, not too much. We did two things, or three really: Petite France and Nami Island and then ended the day with Meerkat Friends, an animal café in Hongdae.

Petite France

This was part of the tour we got from Klook, to visit the small village that was supposed to look like France. It was cute, but I have been to both Paris and Marseille in France and almost 2 hours of walking around there was a bit too much. Usually the stops at tours are too short, but not this one. Here is a picture of what it looked like in 360. What is funny about this place is that, almost nothing was actually French, lots of German old ceramics, paintings from Italian painters and so on. But I guess that doesn’t really matter for the Asian tourists coming there who never went to Europe.


I miss exercising, so this was at least a small effort today.

In Petite France, there were Swedish stamps.

Nami Island / Namiseom / Naminara Republic of Korea

The main stop for this tour was Nami Island, which is also its own country since 2006: Naminara Republic of Korea. It has its own passport and even currency and government. It is a small half-moon-shaped island, only 5km in circumference. Really pretty place and Winter Sonata, a K-drama has been filmed there. It was pretty, but most of the leaves had fallen off the trees compared to in Seoul. This was an island located in the city of Chuncheon, about 1.5h from Seoul.

There was a main boulevard with restaurants, the famous Metasequoia Lane and other cute stuff. Many snowmen which I think are from the TV series? We had lunch, I tried tteokbokki carbonara. Really delicious. Tteokbokki is stir-fried rice cakes.

We were there for about 3 hours. I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Here is a 360 picture as well.


This is the place where the first kiss between two people on the show Winter Sonata took place.

There weren’t many red trees, but the few ones were glowing and lighting the dull surroundings up.

A pine tree that turn yellow.

Snowman-shaped tteokbokki of course.


I decided to try to be half-asian at least. No posing here!
This is the most bizarre statue I have ever seen.
And of course, the other tit is on her back, feeding the other kid, haha.
The famous Metasequoia lane.
These colors!!
Haha, why bother removing the selfie stick when taking a call.

A setting sun over Seoul was amazing on the way back when we were stuck in rush hours trafic.

We got back to Dongdaemun after 5pm and decided to quickly check out the Dongdaemun Design Plaza for a bit before heading to Hongdae and the special café. It was such a cool place! Here is a 360 picture of it, or at least the bottom of it.


There was a LED rose garden there. Really pretty.

We then took the metro to Hongdae where we went to Meerkat Friends café. It was a cafe with meerkats and other animals such as racoon, cats, wallaby, foxes. It was the cutest place and the animals were so nice and friendly. We even got to feed them all. It was a nice place and it honestly felt like the animals had a good time there with big windows, so much air, and it was kept very clean. Six of the meerkats fell asleep in my lap, the racoon wanted to escape and begged for food. The foxes were so adorable and one of the wallabies had a baby in its pouch. We were there for a long time and got unreasonably many pictures, but due to space limitations, I can’t upload them now, sorry. I will as soon as I possibly can though!

UPDATE 2018-11-10: I didn’t want to wait, but decided to upgrade my blog. I have now 6GB, that should at least be enough for this trip! Here comes the pictures from Meerkat Friends.


They were digging everywhere to try and find food. My hair was completely ruined after those 10 minutes in that Meerkat pen.
When they calmed down and realized I didn’t have any food, they climbed up in my lap one after one and fell asleep. Eventually I had 6 of them sleeping there! So adorable!


Baby meerkat playpen!
One of the babies had a cast!
This was one was not allowed to be touched because she has a baby in her pocket!
Feeding and kissing foxes.
So beautiful creatures!
The most beautiful cat ever. I’m glad my cats can’t read this.

New profile pic everywhere perhaps?

 

Atlantis The Palm, Mall of the Emirates

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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 travels. This full post can be found here.

Today was all about water. We spent most of the day at Atlantis The Palm Aquaventure park which is a water park out on the manbuilt palm in the water here in Dubai. We went several times on the lazy river which had waves coming with short intervals, we went on the rapids “lazy” river and then on several slides. There were two towers with slides, one that shot water on the floatie thing we had so we actually went uphill (we had a two-seat floatie all the time), that was scary. We also went on a slide without the floaties, it was a competition and he won by one second. That one was fun too! And then there were a couple of slides with big rafters or what to call it where you had to sit inside a circle-shaped thingy, up to six people. That was scary with the deep falls. We only did those one time each. We both decided to skip the single slide where you started standing up and then the platform beneath your feet just disappeared and it went straight down (almost). Nope, nope, just nope! Our favorite was either Torrent (the lazy river with waves) because it was so chill, or Shark Attack which was a two-seat floatie slide where you went around in Helixes in complete pitchdarkness and when there was light again you were under a water tank with fish, rays, and sharks in it. It was so cool! And also the water was warmer in that slide than the rest. It is not exactly cold here, but in the shadow it can get a little chilly when being wet. I think Atlantis would be much more enjoyable when it is burning hot in the sun, then the water and shadows would be a cooler.

We would have been allowed to bring a GoPro, but we thought this morning right before we left, that this culture probably wouldn’t appreciate people using cameras inside of a waterpark (and also in general, who would want to be photographed and filmed there?), so we left it at the hotel. But when we got there they asked us if we wanted to rent a GoPro for the day. Bummer. So no pictures from Aquaventure, but you could just google the place to see what it was all about.

Right after the water park we went to The Lost Chamber which is the aquarium at Atlantis. It was pretty big and really cool! I love water animals, they had cool rays and sharks and lots of other fish. Cool experience!

Our third and last stop of the day was the second biggest mall in Dubai, Mall of the Emirates which is the mall that is home to Ski Dubai, the ski slope inside. It was cool, but except for that, I only bought a pair of VS panties and Jesper bought anti-inflammatory pills for his wisdom tooth. I feel sorry for him, I know what it is like to be in pain because of those stupid and unnecessary teeth. I hope these pills will help him feel better soon. My home insurance will probably cover it, but why risk it. We also bought a new sunscreen at Carrefour (a huuuge store) in the mall, and also some snacks for tonight when we watched the move, Ant-Man. Surprisingly good!

We were to late to sign up for the free shuttle to the beach tomorrow, so we can sleep in a little bit tomorrow (the shuttle leaves at 9am). The woman in the reception saw our disappointed faces and said it was okay to sign up for the shuttle on Wednesday, even if it was two days in advance. So tomorrow will all be about sleeping on the beach, and in the evening, another shopping center where Hard Rock Café is.

Also, something I forgot to write about day one, was that we had a celebrity on the airplane to Dubai with us. “Tobbe Trollkarl”, most Swedish people probably know who he is. He was/is (?) a magician when I grew up. Pretty cool!

 

IMG_20160118_184601 Atlantis resort. IMG_20160118_172934 IMG_20160118_174141 IMG_20160118_183630 IMG_20160118_174154 IMG_20160118_174800 IMG_20160118_174936 IMG_20160118_175637 IMG_20160118_180021 IMG_20160118_180301 IMG_20160118_180339 IMG_20160118_182823 IMG_20160118_182156 IMG_20160118_182343 PANO_20160118_183255 PANO_20160118_180605 IMG_20160118_191451 IMG_20160118_195440 IMG_20160118_191554

A week full of stuff

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Whoa, last time I updated was a week ago. Embarrassing! Sweden is definitely keeping me busy. I have been working like crazy the past 6 days, and when I haven’t been working I have spent time with Jesper. Lots have happened, for example I have been at Balderado two days last week and actually enjoyed it and realized that it isn’t too bad that every now and then. On Thursday I was there and finally got Balder! The week before they called me and asked if I wanted to work 1.5h earlier on Thursday so I could get an intro there. I had the intro in the morning before the park opened and climbed up to the top of it. The view was amazing, but it was high up and I was a bit scared. But I survived and got a cool selfie up there. The rest of that 9.5h day I had Balder for most of it. Only 30 minutes were spent at another attraction. But during that long day I got the intro, the check-up and the test. So now I have 9 attractions that I can work at. Cool! Most people only have 5.

Liseberg from Balder Balder is the big wooden rollercoaster.Selfie on top of BalderThe traditional selfie from the top of Balder.

The day after I was at Balderado again with the most chill day ever! But during that day, my boss called me while I was working and asked me if I wanted to work over time the day after, Saturday. So instead of working 11am-8pm, I would work 11am-11pm. I felt like I needed the extra money so I said yes. 12 hours was tough. I was up on Berget and it was an okay day. Very long, I was there from the opening of the park until closing. Crazy! But I survived. Those 3 extra hours gave me 100% OB (Uncomfortable Hours), so instead of 107 kr/h, I got 214.That’s more than 600kr for those 3 hours. Totally worth it!

Both my Sunday and Monday were both only 7-hour days, but I was so tired after 6 days and a week of 43 hours. I am still tired. But today has been busy with laundry and gift shopping for my second cousin’s babyshower on Saturday. The things I bought were so ridiculously cute that I honestly considered buying them for my future kids, haha! I also visited Jesper at work while he was on a break. We had ice cream together down in the harbor in the kinda nice weather.

Right, my Saturday was a very crazy day at work. The first crazy thing that happened was that one of the trains on Helix collided with a bird. The girl in the front seat was very upset when she came back to the station after the ride. There was a big splatter mark right next to her face and half the train had bird gore on it. We had to rinse the train off and it was super gross. I hope the bird died right away. It feel down  from the train, so no bird on the train.

The second thing was during my very last hour of the day when I was once again working at Helix (we move around and change attraction once every 30 or 60 minutes). This is actually very scary but from what I have heard, the boy is stable, even if he was seriously injured. So what happens is that I was working like normal and then I hear the operator say that we have to stop the attraction because someone is on the attraction area which is an extremely dangerous place to be. At first we thought it was a kid who jumped in there to pick something up that he dropped, but it turned out that he fell from a fence and fell 7-8m (23-26 feet) and landed in the area. So it was not an attraction-related injury. Very scary incident, and so real when I was there when it happened. I hope the 15-year old boy recovers soon and that other people will learn from this, do not climb on the fences around the attractions! This accident brought forth some evacuation practice for me though which was actually a good thing. I have never been part of an evacuation at Helix, so I am glad that I have experienced it and will now be more comfortable and confident next time it happens.

I have big plans for tomorrow as well. First I will sleep until I wake up, then I will do chill stuff for a while until I’m going to mom’s work to meet her there so we can go and buy a new phone for me. I love this one and don’t really want to buy another one, but the last week it has been a disaster. It discharges three times a day, and I haven’t been able to connect it to my computer. It is getting old so I guess it is time to say goodbye to the best phone I ever had, my Google Nexus 5. I hope HTC One M9 will be as good! I guess I could just pay 600kr and change the battery, but I would still buy a new phone within 6 months because it is getting closer to its 2-year birthday, and everyone knows phones don’t last much longer than that. I will sleep on it. It is a lot of money for an already old phone. But on the other hand, it is my beloved Nexus 5. But I love new phones… Aargh, dilemmas!

Chip and Stuff My fluffy cats! ❤Rainy at Liseberg This is how fun it is to work at Uppswinget when it is raining a lot!Änggårdsbergen Today I went for a walk with Axel up in Änggårdsbergen. It was beautiful!Änggårdsbergen ÄnggårdsbergenThis was such a beautiful scenery, but I got wrong focus. It was almost 9pm, the sun on its way down and it was so green beneath it. Sweden is very beautiful!

Bvball, surfing, Fair, Cinépolis

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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.

Wow, what a weekend. I am exhausted out of my mind, but what a fun and eventful weekend. Yesterday was a long day and it started with 3 hours of beach volleyball at South Mission Beach. I didn’t play well at all in the beginning, but I got better and I had a great time. Next up was surfing at La Jolla Shores, we were in the water for 2 hours. I have definitely surfed better, but I blame the waves this time, they were really bad. But I caught some and stood up for at least a few seconds every now and then. I thought it was fun.

IMG_20150613_131319 IMG_20150613_132633 IMG_20150613_131409 IMG_20150613_131603 IMG_20150613_131647 IMG_20150613_131728 IMG_20150613_132006 IMG_20150613_132110 IMG_20150613_132230 IMG_20150613_132237 IMG_20150613_132302 IMG_20150613_132311 IMG_20150613_132411 IMG_20150613_132429 IMG_20150613_132419 IMG_20150613_132437 IMG_20150613_132459 IMG_20150613_132553 IMG_20150613_132411-PANO My phone (Google Nexus 5) did this automatically. Google Photos is really cool! It puts pictures from the same geographical place in an album, it creates photo sequences if there are a lot of similar pictures. Or adds effects o pictures, or does this. Pretty cool!IMG_20150613_131918-PANOIMG_20150613_180415 IMG_20150613_182230 IMG_20150613_182819

Third stop of the day was La Jolla Cove. I was hoping to see lots of sea lions like almost exactly two years ago. But we saw just a few. The whole cliff area was changed, and maybe that’s why they left? I hope they were just playing underwater instead, I would be so happy if I could see some while scuba diving this week.

Back to the hotel to shower, then off to San Diego County Fair where we walked around for a couple of hours. It was pretty much exactly the same as two years ago, but it was fun. There were many animals, both small and big, endless with food stands and everything else that has to do with a fair.

IMG_20150613_205258 IMG_20150613_211511 IMG_20150613_213116

Worth mentioning is that yesterday was my big day of luck when it comes to parking. Four times in a day we were extremely lucky and got one of the best spots on four very busy locations. Fist in Mission Beach, then La Jolla Shores, then La Jolla Cove, and at the Fair. I definitely used all my parking luck in one day, so that won’t ever happen again.

At 11pm we left the fair and drove to Del Mar where we spent two hours watching Jurassic World. A great movie, and a great experience watching it at a luxury cinema. The movie started at midnight and was about two hours long. Got back to the hotel at 2:30am and the alarm went off at 6:30 today. You could say that I was tired. And all I did today was play a beach volleyball tournament in Mission Beach. It was a draw 4 vs 4 tournament and I had so much fun all day with some of the people from bvball at South Mission Beach yesterday. You had a partner throughout the first four games and played with a different coed couple in each game. I played with a guy named Bart, and the first game we lost really bad, but we won the last three. I was the setter and everyone loved my sets, and I have to say that they were pretty damn good today! And very many people I’ve never met before acknowledged that, it made me happy.

I was apparently one of the better players with most points in the whole tournament, so after the group plays, the best players in the epic division (the better one) got a buy (was that how it was called?) which means that I automatically won the first game in the playoff. Then there was the awesome division (the not as good division) and the best people in that one won there too. Unfortunately I had to wait for at least two hours before playing the semifinal with a new bunch of people. I had lost it, we were rotating (instead of me setting the whole game), and we lost with 25-17 (we were playing one set to 25). But I am not too sad about it, I was very tired at the end. Michael drove me up to Carlsbad where he helped me in with my suitcases. We said goodbye and I took a shower. I am embarrassed to say that I very much forgot about sunscreen today. It was so cloudy today (June Gloom) and not very warm. It was fine to play in shorts and a tank top. But anyway, I got so burned! My shoulders and especially my face. That sunglass tan is never going away now. It looks horrible…

I have lots of aloe vera on it, so I hope it will at least be better tomorrow. I don’t know what I will do yet tomorrow, I might go to Victoria’s Secret to buy some underwear, I will definitely sleep in first though. I will need a lot of sleep now. And now, I am in bed, and will watch the season finale of Game of Thrones!

Open Water Dive #3+4 (Coleman Beach) = SCUBA CERTIFIED

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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 have to say that I wasn’t too thrilled about scuba diving after yesterday’s disaster. Okay, no, it wasn’t a disaster, I actually did really well under the circumstances. But those dives were scary as shit and were way worse than the training open dives should be. But now I am aware of how bad it can be (haha, wow, I am really making it sound like it was a storm and we all almost drowned, it definitely wasn’t that bad), and it will only be better from now on. Like today was perfect! I enjoyed every second today and I can’t wait to get out there and dive again.

So today we did our two last open water dives before getting certified. We went to Morro Bay, on the tiny beach right next to Morro Rock. No waves, the sky was blue and perfect and it was just a wonderful day. We met at 1pm because of weird tide times. We went in the water for the first dive at 2:20pm and did some exercises on the bottom by the buoy. Since the water was so calm in the bay I had no problem swimming out and everything was fine. I could go down the rope directly. During the first dive we did three exercises. First we had to remove our mask completely, put it on, and get the water out. That was ridiculously scary. In the pool, fine, we even swam with the mask off for a while. But the saltwater is not very fun to get in the eyes. We didn’t have to take it too far off our faces, only like an inch. So I did that and didn’t freak out. Then we practiced neutral buoyancy but with oral inflation of the BCD under water. Piece of cake. The third thing we did was the Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent (CESA). That’s when your buddy is nowhere near you, you run out of air, and have to ascend. So you breathe out an “aaaaaahhh” sound in the regulator all the way while ascending and then orally inflate the BCD on the surface. Then we had to wait for a while before the minidive. We swam on the bottom and looked at cool stuff. I didn’t see too much on the first dive, but the visibility was so much better than yesterday. Okay, it wasn’t great, but we could see tiny stuff on the bottom. But that was the second dive.

Between the dives we ate a little, switched tanks and went in again. I was colder today which is weird, maybe because I didn’t move as much in the still water or because I wasn’t panicking. I wasn’t very cold, but 56F on the bottom is not very much. It wasn’t too bad though. The second dive was just about swimming around looking at cool stuff. We brought the big camera and took a lot of photos. First proof of me being under water! The camera died on the pool so no pictures came out. So, during the second dive we saw so many cool things. On the surface we saw a small jellyfish. On the bottom we saw some small flatfish, cool anemones, nudibranchs (a type of sea slugs). They were all small, but when you saw them they were really cool and brightly colored!

After the dive we filled in our log books, took apart all our gear and drove to the shop to clean everything before we could finally go home and rest after this long weekend. When we got to the shop our instructors surprised us with pizza. It tasted amazing and was well-needed! I guess my pulled pork sandwich is breakfast tomorrow.

I took an hour nap back home, took a shower, and spent too long brushing my hair out. Even with a braid it got so tangled up!

After that I didn’t do much. I wanted to play GW2, but for some reason I found other stuff to do, nothing really. What did I do tonight?!

Anyway, we have the day off tomorrow so I might as well play then. Unless it is good weather, then I will probably chill by the pool for the first time in weeks. Bad California for giving me bad weather my last few weeks here!

549222_966357746731092_2342622644731501470_n Surface Interval with snacks. Matt, Melissa, and I.11251778_966357810064419_1847664718108659097_n Assembling our gear during SI.10422477_966357830064417_7553319148995011328_n Full gear, going to the beach.11227633_966357896731077_8547957776727718607_n 11265314_966358100064390_5960497699443711769_n Me under water.11033148_966358163397717_5941598028179548314_n My diving buddy, Melissa and I in the background trying to photobomb her.11377101_966358056731061_5388539894409880499_n Unintentional photobomb from me.20304_966358866730980_9027100763267396600_n I had the yellow tank during the second dive. It is hard to recognize people unless they have something very distinguishing about their gear since almost all wetsuits and hoods are black.1509965_966358503397683_2302007728259231891_n 11008550_966358790064321_8621675823290864032_n That might be a nudibranch, I don’t know honestly. It was one of the cool things we saw.11219374_966358336731033_5778634720298537761_n Me just chilling, swimming slowly along the bottom.11350572_966358310064369_7908652396377108347_n “I am okay”.11110498_966358933397640_3704618582010447990_n All of our group except for two girls.11219657_966358986730968_6396013168184166467_n Melissa and I. She was a great diving buddy and I am happy that she was so nice and helpful, especially yesterday when I was panicking.10501796_966359220064278_3103918549654657391_nHappy and just certified diving buddies! 😀

Monterey Bay Aquarium

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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 day of the weekend and it was as eventful as all the other days. Today I went to Monterey with Michael, a three hour drive just to enjoy marine life. I had a great time watching the animals. We started with the sea otter feeding. They were given a frozen ice cube with shrimp in it and the four otters put a lot of effort into getting those shrimp out. They banged them on the window and twirled around in the water, adorable. But don’t forget folks, even if they are cute and hold hands while sleeping to not drift apart, they do rape baby seals. They are not small either, they were gigantic and weighed up to 50lbs. This was the first time I saw them walking on land and I was surprised at how they moved, they resemble seals in so many ways, but also looks like big ferrets and also a little bit like a badger. Funny animals.

IMG_20150426_132802 IMG_20150426_152123 IMG_20150426_152038 IMG_20150426_133738 IMG_20150426_133720 IMG_20150426_133630 IMG_20150426_133509

Then we went to the deep sea section where the humongous octopus were and also the jellyfish. I loved the jellyfish, their bright red color against the very blue background, truly beautiful!

11173596_10206431854225911_324907512_n 11125224_10206431853465892_1762794660_n IMG_20150426_140510 IMG_20150426_141509 IMG_20150426_141427 IMG_20150426_135854 IMG_20150426_135715 IMG_20150426_135609 IMG_20150426_135427 IMG_20150426_140424 IMG_20150426_135936 IMG_20150426_135905 IMG_20150426_134541

Then we saw the kelp forest and reef animals and lastly a very colorful tank with Nemo and Dory in it. Very cute indeed. I think I need to rewatch Finding Nemo very soon!

11199011_10206431853225886_1419212792_n 11199016_10206431853185885_1917259921_n IMG_20150426_145308 IMG_20150426_145200 IMG_20150426_145031 IMG_20150426_144745 IMG_20150426_142522 IMG_20150426_142139 IMG_20150426_141811

And lastly we saw the penguins getting fed.

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Afterward we had a late lunch at Bubba Gump and walked through the wharf quickly and then drove back. It wasn’t a bad drive, with good music and company it didn’t feel like almost 3h (or however long it took). Back home I hung out with Aidan for a while and as usual we had deep conversations about life. I really enjoy those.

Now I am so ready to start a new week, but after all these shenanigans this weekend I kinda feel like I need another weekend to chill, haha! I also hate to admit that I feel a cold sneaking up on me… I really hope that is just allergies, it would be so typical to be sick again just as I have gotten back into working out.

Big Falls Trail

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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.

My planned sleep-in this morning did not happen. But I am glad it didn’t. I went on a beautiful hike with Julianne and Sienna down in Arroyo Grande.  It took a while to drive there and we had to drive through the river that went through the creek.

It was very foggy and not particularly warm when we got there, but the sun came out a little after a while. But it was still not warm enough for me to jump in the water. So first we walked and walked and walked. We never got lost but we took the wrong turns all the time. First we came to a tall waterfall where we stayed for a while. The water was full of salamanders and even a turtle. The trail was also full of salamanders, so cuute!

We were told there was a natural waterslide somewhere and it wasn’t by the waterfall, so we climbed up through poison oak (I don’t think any of us actually touched any) and find a trail up on the hill and kept going. We saw some pools of water, another turtle, more salamanders and then we came to a more “foresty” area of the hike. It was pretty, but we decided it wasn’t worth going that far so we turned around, and after a long while we saw the slide, and it was in the beginning of the hike, way before the waterfall. We stayed there for a while until a bunch of freshmen joined us and showed us you could actually go cliff jumping in that pool. The waterslide looked dangerous, but everyone jumped from the cliff. It wasn’t too high, I’m guessing 15 feet. I have done worse and since it was a cold day I didn’t feel too bad about being the only one who didn’t jumped. I can always go back!

Back home I had lunch, watched an episode of the Flash and took a 3 hour nap. Woke up at 7pm and have done nothing since then. I watched another episode of the Flash, I emailed the immigrant attorney and I guess I should go to bed early. But I know myself, that will not happen. I suck!

Cool rock formations Salamander Rock mountains Big Falls Trail Big Falls Trail Big Falls Trail Big Falls Trail Big Falls Trail waterfall Big Falls Trail waterfall Salamander Cute salamander hanging on the ledge in the water.Turtle The first turtle we saw! Not as big as the salt water ones, but still very cute. I love turtles!Big Falls Trail waterfallBig Falls Trail Big Falls Trail Big Falls Trail Big Falls Trail Big Falls Trail Turtle Big Falls Trail natural waterslide The waterslide.Big Falls Trail cliff jumping Big Falls Trail cliff jumping Big Falls Trail natural waterslide

San Diego <3

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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 am sorry readers, I will get better at updating this thing again. I promise I will try at least!

This weekend is a long weekend (President’s Day on Monday) and I decided it was long overdue to go down to Carlsbad and visit my former hostfamily. As soon as I got here I realized I needed this getaway very badly. I got so happy when I started to recognize everything, and when I came to the house, saw my old room looking exactly like it did when I lived there, my hostmom, and the day after the kids. I am happy here and I am so glad I came down this weekend!

 

San Diego Zoo Safari Park

Yesterday I woke up at 8am to have breakfast with my hostmom and the kids (my host dad was on a business trip up until today) and then went to San Diego Zoo Safari Park. I never went when I was here in 2013 (which was stupid when I had a membership). But I got 50% off, so it was not big deal. And it was a very nice day with the family. The weather was amazing, probably 85F, it was still a little bit breezy and we saw a lot of animals. Seeing animals make me happy. We saw a baby rhino that was born on November 27th last year, it weighed 159lbs then. It was super cute. We saw a lot of other “safari” animals like cute lemurs, all the savannah animals, one of the last five White Rhino’s in the world, tigers, and bats. And of course a lot of other animals too. It was a great day! Too bad the boy rolled in some kind of nettles and got rashes all over his body. Poor kid, but he was a champ and didn’t complain at all. He got a cream and it made it all go away very fast.

When we came home I took a nap for a couple of hours while they went to a beach party for one of the girl’s friends’ birthday. Then the plan was to study, but I just couldn’t find the motivation.

 

Beach and surf and sun

Today was all about the beach and an old au pair friend from my year here in Carlsbad. We met up at La Jolla Shores Beach, so many people, so it was hard to find parking. My old car (my silver Volvo V70) was here and for me to use this weekend. Very nice of my hostparents to let me use it. SD is bigger than SLO, and without a car here you can’t do anything. I met three of Johanna’s Swedish friends and they were all very nice and we had a nice day together at the beach.  We went in the water pretty early on, it couldn’t have been much more than 60F, but with the 90F (or something) in the air it was not hard at all going all the way in. It was refreshing. I love the ocean! And it is February! I love California! I love the sun! In the afternoon four of us put on wetsuits and went out to surf for a while with one of the guys in charge of the tent renting out wetsuits and surfboards for free and giving free lessons. It was the best surf session I have ever had. I caught almost every wave I try to catch and even if I didn’t stand up every time I still feel very satisfied and proud of myself. A few times I actually managed to stand up all the way in to the shore, which has never happened before! I don’t think I have ever stood up for more than 3 seconds before and today I did so much better than that almost every time I stood up. I am pretty sure I stood up more today in the hour I was out than in my whole life up until this point. So exhilarating! The last wave of the day was the best one and I drove home smiling like never before. In my old car, good music on the radio, singing, smiling, with the sunset in the west. It was a good, normal day (I don’t like Valentine’s Day, and it has nothing to do with relationship status, it is just a stupid commercial holiday when companies want to earn money, I learned today that Bulgarians celebrate wine on this particular day, I will start doing that too, wine is good).

 

Au-pairing again

My hostparents went out on a date tonight while I stayed in with the kids. Just like old times and I really enjoyed it! We started the evening with watching a movie called Step Dogs, the girl braided my hair in a very cool way, she also baked chocolate chip cookies (some kind of dessert on this “special” day felt needed), the boy played with the 7 month old Portugese Waterdog puppy they have. Then the three of us played the game I got them for Christmas, Totally Gross. It was a fun game where kids learn fun and interesting science facts. And when you earned points you stretched your slime clump from your characters nose, haha! The kids loved the booger/slime.

It is after 1am and I still haven’t started studying. I suck so bad! I am embarrassed by myself for being this bad at studying. But it is hard to find motivation when you are not sure what it is you have to do. Tomorrow evening! I will turn off all my social media devices and just study when the kids have gone to bed!!

If I will be able to wake up at 8 tomorrow I should probably go to bed now. I am not catching up on sleep at all this weekend, haha! Goodnight! And I promise to start this spiderweb of a blog up again!

IMG_20150211_152548 After my infection/cold or whatever it was, my left wrist got filled with liquid and started hurting like never before in the beginning of this week. When it was at its worse I couldn’t move it the tiniest bit. The doctor told me to rest it and that it could take up to 2 months for it to go away. But luckily it is almost 100% restored today, four-five days later. It still hurts when I flex it to the max, but I could surf today without any problems. I have to go back in two weeks for a check up though. Hope it is all good then!IMG_20150211_193005 On Wednesday I went out to the restaurant on Avila Pier with Jason and after dinner we watched the big fat sea lions under the pier. They are way bigger than they appear to be. This one was withing touching limit and probably as big as a three seat couch. A little bit scary. There were also normal grey seals and an otter swimming in the water. A starry night at the ocean was very nice.IMG_20150213_115220 IMG_20150213_120359 Baby rhino!IMG_20150213_122207 Bats are actually kinda cute.IMG_20150213_131743 Lemurs are adorably cute!IMG_20150213_132950 IMG_20150213_134853 One of the five last White Rhino’s in the world. One was at another zoo somewhere and the last three in a reserve in Africa and have armed guards 24/7. So sad! And all except one are too old to reproduce. This one was 40 years old.IMG_20150213_143212 Baby rhino again! (rhinosaurus)IMG_20150213_145537 We timed the feeding of one of the tigers perfectly. These animals are so beautiful and majesticIMG_20150213_145713 IMG_20150213_145840 IMG_20150213_150149 A cool waterfall on the Tiger Trail. Pretty good camera my phone has, which can capture the drips in a waterfall.IMG_20150214_104500 I did get my share of Valentine Day chocolate. From one of my roommates and my wonderful hostfamily. My not-eating-candy rule this year has a few exception days :). I haven’t had any candy in more than two months and this was divine today!IMG_20150214_120244 I have missed southern California’s beaches so much!! This is La Jolla Shores where I actually only went one time last year, and that was to take a surf class. It was a packed beach on this wonderful summer day in February, but I loved every second of it. This is where I belong, on a sunny beach!PANO_20150214_162304 Snapchat-1987100777812013018 I definitely got color today, yay! Nothing burned, just a pretty tan :).IMG_20150214_214531 This is what the girl did to my hair. I hope it will survive the night so I can showoff on the beach tomorrow!PANO_20150213_003105My room looks exactly the same. I was so happy when I saw this on Thursday late night. I really needed this weekend to get away from everything up in SLO for a bit to get perspective on life again!

Friday night bowling

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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.

This morning Toby and I went for our second run this week. I wasn’t too excited when waking up at noon (after 12 hours of sleep), with hurting calves, but we did it, pretty much the same as last time, some walking, mostly running, and then walked through all of Architecture Graveyard. Up there we found some horses and slowly approached them and we even pet them. That was so cool. I have a huge respect for horses (they are huge and strong and love to bite and kick so I have my reasons), but these guys were friendly and didn’t mind posing with us. It was pretty awesome.

After a well-deserved shower my roommates and I went downtown for a little bit of shopping and then I just spent an hour or two in my bed watching Arrow. At 8pm we were a bunch of people going to the UU to bowl. For once I sucked big time! Like really really much! The person who came second to last had 30 more points than I. Embarrassing. I am usually pretty good at bowling and at least get over 100p, but today it was just 52. We played another game and I did as bad. BUT, my second to last turn I got a spare with zero the first try (so that is a strike). And my next time, the last of the whole game, I made two strikes in a row (three in total in a row which must be a record for me), and I ended up third instead of sixth. That was amazing! It was a very great evening.

We walked home and now I am ready for bed. The beach (and Matt, I haven’t seen him since Wednesday morning) is waiting for me tomorrow.

Architecture Graveyard SLO is so beautiful and green in the winter!Architecture Graveyard Toby and the horse Toby to the left, and the horse to the right. Or wait, was it the other way around?!The horse and I Bowling game 2Toby, David, me, Rachel, Lauren, Cody. I played as Zlatan since he is from Sweden. And this shows how badly he sucks! Look at my last two boxes!!

Kanelbullens dag

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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.

This Saturday was amazing. We were supposed to start it by playing beach volleyball at the PCV court but it was so windy outside it wouldn’t be fun, so I cancelled. At 11am we went to the beach instead, me, Kelsey, Tobi, Coby, Evan and Julia. We did the right thing. In SLO it was too hot, over 100F. Out at Pismo Beach it wasn’t even that warm. It was okay to lay in a bikini, but it wasn’t super hot. So we spent five hours there. We played beach volleyball (no wind out there surprisingly), went into the cold water (17C /65F), and lay on the beach tanning. It was an amazing day. I didn’t get burned and the water was so much fun. It was cold, but after a while your body got numb and all the big waves made it easier. We also saw several dolphins pretty close to the beach and also some seals. I still get very excited when I see dolphins.

Oh right, I almost forgot. I also tried skin boarding, which is when you are standing on the beach and ride on a thin board out in the water when the wave is just on its way back to the ocean. It is very very hard and I fell on my butt the second time I tried. It didn’t hurt, but I got sandy and had to go in the water again.

Dolphins at PismoDolphins to the right and left in this picture. A surfer in the middle.

Before we left Pismo at like 4pm, we stopped by this awesome place called Old West Cinnamon Rolls. I got a cream cheese frosted one and coby a walnut and we shared so we each got a half of each. So good! I remembered when we were sitting there that it was ”kanelbullens dag” (the day of the cinnamon roll) in Sweden yesterday. Then I googled it and it turned out to be today. Awesome! Not Swedish cinnamon rolls, but still delicous.

The day of the Cinnamon RollAn american cinnamon roll.

Back home we all chilled for a bit. Taking showers and I ordered a new bikini in which I will be able to play beach volleyball in. The ones I have will probably fall off if I go all in. I think it was worth it.

Then me, Kelsey and Lauren went downtown where we met up with Rachel when she got off work and we had a roommate date evening at Firestone Grill. They have the most amazing pulled pork sandwhiches. THE BEST EVER!!!

Roommate date at FirestoneMy amazing roommates. Left to right: Me, Kelsey, Rachel and Lauren. Roommate selfie

Our next thing was to go grocery shopping. I got everything I needed except pasta, but that was probably for the best anyway. I don’t have a scale here, but I am afraid that I’ve gained weight. It is hard being healthy here, but as soon as I start working out it will probably be fine. And speaking of, I just signed up for TRX classes twice a week for te whole quarter. It cost $40, but I think that will be worth it. It is every Tueday and Thursday between noon and 1pm, when I am out of class, so I didn’t really have an argument why I shouldn’t sign up for it. I love TRX and that would be a good motivator to get me to start work out again.

After grocery shopping we went to the room above ours to a party. It was fun for a while, but I got tired. So I stopped by another room on the third floor (which is my floor) to hang out for like 30 minutes before going back home. I won’t be able to get up early to go to the gym, but whatever. I feel good about myself just signing up for TRX. There were only 4 spots left. It will probably be extremely hot tomorrow as well, so I will probably just hang out by the pool. Even tonight it was hot, we were al sweating in shorts and tank tops. In the middle of the night! It was around 30C. Ridiculous.  I like it though, I get tired from it. But the oppurtunity to be in the ocean in October doesn’t come too often.

I love my life here!

New tattoo, where?! Shit, my calves look gigantic on these pictures… Anyway, I wanna get another tattoo. Any input, calf or ankle (the same foot as my first tattoo)?TarantulaWhen we came home from Albertson’s and we were gonna park the car inthe parking structure, there was a big tarantula walking around in there. And I was just telling Kelsey at the beach today that I never saw a single one in San Diego and that she probably wouldn’t see one here in just a quarter. Oh, I was wrong… I’m guessing it was about 2-3 inches (5-8cm).