Erica comes to visit!

From March 17 through March 24, one of my best friends from back home came to visit. I've known Erica since high school, and we became very close during senior year. After graduation, she went off to Temple while I went to Penn State. Even though we went to separate colleges, we have remained close and always try to see each other when one of us is in Allentown. We decided back in December (when I was home for 2 weeks, and spent a good deal of time with her) that she absolutely MUST come visit me out here. At the end of February, I started looking up tickets and we found an excellent trip deal so she snatched it up. Erica had never been to the west coast before, so I planned tons of things for us to do and places to visit. I was off for the entire week because of my school's spring break.

I picked Erica up on Monday at LAX around dinnertime. I took her over to Santa Monica to see the beach and also to stay away from the rush hour of LA. Santa Monica was the first west coast beach I had ever visited as well.
On Tuesday, we hung around Bakersfield and I took Erica to my favorite park, which I've talked about on this blog before. It was beautiful out and we had a nice time just walking around and talking.

Wednesday, we drove down to Anaheim and spent the day in Disneyland. We had SO much fun!! We even bought ears!








If you buy a hat, you can take it to the "Mad Hatter" where they will sew your name on...FREE!
Towards the end of the day, we began looking for a ride called Space Mountain. It's an indoor coaster that's mostly dark except for little lights all around, giving the illusion you're flying through space. We asked an employee where to find it and he looks at us with a smile and says, "How would you like it if I took you ladies to the front of that line?" We looked confused and he continued, "Have you heard of Disney's new promotion 'Year of a Million Dreams'?" He went on to tell us that he was a "dream maker" and all day long, his job was to grant wishes - whether it was getting a thirsty mouth a bottle of water, a new shirt for someone who ruined their own, or a replacement popcorn for one that had spilled. I asked him what we had to do in return and he responded, "How about a hug?" I jumped on him before he could manage to say "Just kidding!!" and he led us to the front of the line saving us over an hour wait. It was a great end to our day!
We stayed the night in Anaheim, and drove over to Huntington Beach the following morning. Huntington is known as "Surf City" and we had a relaxing time watching the surfers and walking around the pier, boardwalk, and beach.

In the afternoon, we began our drive back to Bakersfield and stopped in Hollywood to see the typical touristy things.

The following day, Friday, we drove east to Las Vegas. Erica was blown away by all the windmills (get the pun??).We stayed for a couple days with my friend Colin who works for The Flamingo (one of the big hotels on the strip) and the day after we got back, I had to finally say goodbye to Erica. It was awesome for her to stay for so long and it was really the charge I needed to get me through the last couple months of school!

- Carol

Thoughts on a lonely Monday

Buenos tardes!

Nothing special going on for me this Labor Day holiday. It has been a decent weekend and I'm really glad for this extra day to relax.

Last Wednesday was Back To School Night, where parents come in for an open house-type meeting. I was scared out of my mind. It's so weird how different I feel in front of the kids verses their parents. I guess it's because I know how young I look and I AM young and who the heck am I to be teaching their kid and ... it's just really frustrating. So I was really nervous for the first period parents. It was hard to hide my shaking hands and even harder to hide the shaking voice. After 10 long minutes were up, the bell rang for the parents to move to second period class. Two older parents approached me and introduced themselves. The first question dad had was the one I dreaded most, "So how long have you been teaching?" I admitted that this was my first teaching job and the two told me they were teachers as well, so that made me feel a little better because they understood. The other periods went smoother and by the end of the night I felt a lot better. I talked to Marc's mom about it a couple nights ago and she admitted that even she felt nervous when she had to do open houses. I guess it is just one of those necessary things.

On Thursday, I went to Target to pick up a couple odds and ends. When I came out, this is the view I found:

Friday I went out with Jeff to a bar he has been frequenting and met some of his co-workers. Everyone was pretty nice but I just found myself missing my own friends... Saturday really got me feeling lonely again because Lindsey's boyfriend came to visit for the weekend (he's going to law school in San Diego) and I just hung out by myself. I read a book Lindsey told me was a must read, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky. It was incredibly good and had a lot of Penn State references, but didn't help much with my loneliness. A very poor choice for my current mood.

Yesterday, the four of us took a beach trip. We drove west to Pismo beach and bummed around there for a couple hours. Pismo Beach is referred to as "Classic California." I found some more information about it here. I even went in the Pacific ocean for the first time with more than my feet, though it was 56 degrees. BRRR. It was weird to think I was at the beach on September 2nd. Here are some pictures I took at Pismo:

After Pismo, we drove south on the 101 to Santa Barbara. The 101 is so neat because at times, you are driving right along the coast.

It was SO much colder there and Lindsey and I had to buy hoodies. I wish I had remembered that this happened when Scott and I went. We ate at a place called Longboard's Grill for dinner. Speaking of "The 101," Lindsey's boyfriend made me realize something. I am using California slang! Back home I would have never said "The 80" or "The 78" but for some reason, I place "The" in front of "101" here. Weird. Anywho, we were all pretty tired last night and didn't get back until 12:30am.

Today I've just been hanging out by myself. I'm still feeling the lonely blues and not in the greatest of moods. Turkey has been acting like a complete jerk. It's strange but he definitely acts more like a jerk when I'm in a bad mood. And that doesn't help anything. Sometimes I really wish animals could reason. Look what he did to the lower level of his condo. UGH!!!!!!

I'm going to go grocery shopping so I get myself out of the apartment. Oh and since Marc requested it, here is the picture Ellen drew for me and a picture of Turkey to compare. She did a great job. :)

Santa Barbara

Scott and I took a trip to Santa Barbara yesterday. The drive was about 2.5 hours because we had to go south towards Los Angeles, then west, then north on the 101 along the coast. It was really neat to drive next to the coast like that. It took us a while to find the waterfront area - we drove through a crowd walking to a mariachi competition - but it was absolutely worth the wait. I was able to park (for free!) on the road next to the beach and we walked to the pier. One thing I noticed that was different from the east coast was that there were no dunes. I don't know if this is true for all California beaches, or just where we were. The weather was very windy and about 75 degrees - a huge change from the high of 105 yesterday! We had a nice dinner on the pier at a place called Moby Dick's. Every seat in the restaurant has a view of the ocean. Scott had Tilapia and I had crab legs - yum!! After dinner, we walked around a little more, watched some people skateboarding at a skate park along the beach, and took in the cool air. Here are some shots!