Tag Archives: Serenity Swing

Two days in SLO

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My last full day in California is over. I am really excited to go home if I’m to be completely honest (like I miss eating healthy, even if I have enjoyed every single bite of everything delicious I’ve had here, and I also miss not being this ridiculously tired all the time). But other than those two things, I don’t want to go home. From what I’ve understood, Sweden had better weather than California this past week. I didn’t get tan, but this was not a sunbathing trip though. We have done so many things. And lying on the beach, just soaking up the sun is only fun for so long.

So this vacation ended with a roadtrip. Me and the Elin who is sharing a flight with me tomorrow drove up to San Luis Obispo, my SLOME (SLO-home). It was 3.5-4 hours each way. Up was not a big deal, but going down tonight was rough.

The first Elin flew back home yesterday and the last thing the three of us did together was going to UCLA campus for a pie contest. Miriam’s sister told us about it, and free sampling from the baking competition sounded nice, so we stopped by there to get some free pie. But the tasting didn’t open until 3pm and with the 3 hour drive, it wouldn’t work. And perhaps that was for the best. We had leftover cheesecake for breakfast that day, haha!

We arrived at like 6pm and started with a “fika” at SLODOCO (San Luis Obispo Donut Company) with Rachel, my former roommate. It was so nice to see her again. She still lives in SLO, she managed to get a good job there. I am happy for her, SLO is the cutest city. And it was also nice to see Slodoco again. I have missed their chailatte so much!

Elin and I then drove to Pismo Beach where we had clam chowder soup for dinner and then down to Santa Maria and Steven where we were staying for the night. We watched the last two Game of Thrones episodes. Such a great evening!

This morning it was raining, so we took a slow breakfast at Kreuzberg in SLO. Their acai bowl is amazing! We also did some shopping at Victoria’s Secret.

The weather cleared up and was perfect hiking weather after that. So we parked on campus and did the serenity swing. I love that hike. It is only 6km roundtrip. My calves don’t like it, since it is always going upphill, but for the amazing views, it is totally worth it. Here’s a 3D pic of the swing.

Right after, we met up with my former WOW-leader (Week of Welcome) for lunch at Firestone Grill in downtown. If I have to be honest, it was not as good as I remembered. It was good, but the pulled pork was not as shredded as I remember it being. Very nice to meet Sam again.

I would have loved to go to Montaña de Oro State Park, but it was a 30 min drive up north, and it was already getting late. So we skipped it. Bought some donuts at Slodoco and I also got a picture of the chai powder they are using. If I could get a bag of those somehow, I would be so happy. We will see how that works out.

Then a small stop at Target to get some things to bring back home and then we hit the road. At 9:30pm we arrived back home in La Habra. I can barely keep my eyes open. But everything is packed and I am ready to spend the morning at Huntington Beach playing beach volleyball. I don’t look forward to the flight at 5pm…

German midterm and hike

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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.

So yesterday I had my first midterm of this quarter, the German one, and I have to say that it felt really good. I answered everything and that’s all I can do.

In the evening I went to a presentation given by an immigration attorney from LA who talked about the H-1B visa and permanent residency. It was interesting, and now it feels pretty hopeless to ever be able to move here in the future. Even if I would find a job, there is not even sure that I would get the visa since only 65,000 get it every year and more than 200,000 apply for it. Maybe I should just try to see myself living in Sweden now. Why should it be so hard to move here?

After that meeting I went to Farmer’s Market with David, walked around for a bit and then went for dinner at wunderbar Firestone. The rest of the evening I was just at home, not doing anything special.

Today I was supposed to go surfing in Morro Bay at 8am, but my surf partner lost his car keys so that didn’t happen. Instead, I went back to bed and then skyped with mom. It was her birthday today! Happy birthday once again :).

Then I made an adventure of going grocery shopping. No one was home and I needed food pretty bad, so I picked up my new headphones at the post office (they are amazing! My old ones broke a couple of days ago, but at least 3 years for a pair of in-ear is not bad at all, go Sennheiser), picked up my bike on campus and rode to Haggen (former Albertson’s) on Foothill. As a second breakfast I got a donut from Slodoco and then a bunch of baking ingredients. Since I am all alone (Rachel’s at Stagecoach and Lauren was home in Solvang, but she came back tonight) I knew I would be bored so I decided to bake, or rather make, rocky road fudge.

Right after I came home from the bad bike ride home from the grocery store David texted me and asked if I wanted to hike Serenity Swing and Architecture Graveyard. I never say nay to a beautiful hike, so off we went. First to the swing. As beautiful as always up there. The hills are getting browner and browner. It is sad. Why can’t Sweden send some of its rain here to California? I wonder if I would win the Nobel Prize if I invented something that would transfer the rain from there to here. Maybe that’s what I am destined to do instead of something else that I don’t know yet?

We explored around the different constructions at Architecture Graveyard for a while, took some cool photos, didn’t see any horses (bummer), and then went back where we started making the rocky road fudge. He left at 8 to watch the end of the Cal Poly baseball game but was back at 9:30 and I cooked dinner for the three of us, because he brought Alex with him. Then we just hung out until after midnight. It was a nice and relaxed evening.

Now for some reason, the time is already past 2 in the morning. I am really tired, but still have to make my bed after doing laundry tonight. It will be so nice laying down in newly washed sheets!

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Hike and drive-in movie

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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.

The summer keeps going on and I love it. I slept until noon today (I didn’t end up in bed until 3am). I was planning on doing laundry but realized I would barely make it til 2pm when we were going on a hike. So I postponed it once again. But tomorrow morning it will most definitely happen.

At 2 we were a bunch of people hiking up to Serenity Swing. It was the perfect day for a hike, the sun was out, but not too warm. The hike was not too bad, but we did take shortcuts over the hills and that was hard on my calves. But I survived. We will see how bad they are tomorrow. The view from the top was amazing as last time. Except this time it was greener. So very very pretty.

The way back was hard on the thighs since it was downhill all the way. I didn’t have much time at home after that before Matt picked me up. We went to Sunset drive in. I have never been to one before, but it was really cool. He had borrowed his mom’s car in which you can take down the back seats so you can lay down. He had a lot of blankets and it was very romantic. We saw two movies, Taken 3 and Unbroken. The first one was okay, but the second one was really good. Extremely sad, but a very good movie.

After he dropped me off I hung out with Toby, David, and Rachel for a bit, but now it is definitely time to go to bed. School tomorrow again. Today we were off because of Martin Luther King day. I like these American holidays!

Serenity Swing SLO is so beautiful!Serenity Swing roomies The girls of 310! ❤Serenity Swing This time I actually went on the swing.Serenity Swing