It's a long one!!

Well, that was a fun trip! :) It was, that's not sarcasm...
Got back last night from Cali and went straight to the girls' night function for youth! Whew.. I was tired this mornin, but it was worth it.
Here's a quick run down of what Wendy and I did over the past few days...

Tuesday:
Got up at the butt crack of dawn.. actually it was more like the lower back of dawn because the sun wasn't even up when we left CS. So we left super early and got to the airport at a reasonably good time! We made it all the way to the airport in an hour and a half! Yeah, that's good time.
Anywho so we got all boarded and stuff then took off into the wild blue yonder. The in flight movie was Beautyshop with Queen Latifah.. I'm really glad they have headsets for that stuff because I really didn't want to have to watch that, much less, listen to it all the way to CA. It wasn't necessarily a long trip, but it seemed like it took forever I think because you can't really see where you are. You know when you're in a car, you can see what towns and states you are riding through. But on a plane, you can't see state lines and stuff.. all you see is dirt or mini mountains or squares of land. A nice flight nonetheless. We landed and Wendy saw Kat Osterman in the women's bathroom! I don't know what she looks like so I completely missed her.
We got our rent car and headed out onto the highways of California. We took an exit and were going to go look at the USC campus, but ended up driving downtown to the big buildings of LA and seeing tons of cool stuff. We drove all the way through downtown and eventually somehow decided to get onto Santa Monica Blvd and see what we could see. We didn't see much.. haha. No actually we saw some fun stuff! We drove through Hollywood and Beverly Hills and saw lots of nice cars. We didn't recognize any person of fame while driving, but it was fun all the same just to be driving!! At one point, we were driving down a different road and Wendy said something like, "No, I think that's back in Hollywood, we're in Beverly Hills." She then proceeded to say, "This is not real." Haha! Seriously though, who thought we'd be driving through Beverly Hills ???
So anywho, then we drove over to Pasadena, where Wendy's school is. As we drove in, we saw lots of just shops and stuff and just tried to figure out where the heck we were. We saw parts of the college and even drove past Wendy's new apartment! (more on that later) We checked into the hotel and then got ready for an "Evening Visit at Fuller." Basically it's a night thing to let people know what Fuller is like and if they want to come, it's informational and stuff. It was pretty cool actually. We sat at a table with other students who were interested in the school of psychology. They were pretty cool people. We had dinner which was salad and some breads. Welcome to California! Haha.. no, it was really good actually. After dinner, there were some formal stuff that we did, like hear a short speech from one of the deans of the school and watched a video of alumni testimonies. (I think that was my favorite) We went and listened to a mini-lecture from one of the professors of the psych school and had a little Q&A time there. The lecture was Wendy's favorite part, and it was a highlight for me simply because I could see the interest that she held for the subject and also because I understood what he was talking about!!
After the function, we went back to the hotel and went to bed cuz we was wiped out. :)

Wednesday!
We got up, had breakfast, got ready and headed out! Wendy wanted to drive around Pasadena a little bit and see what we could see. There are SO many shops!! I was in heaven.. all my favorite shops! But we stayed in the car and pressed on. We drove around Pasadena for probably an hour, just seeing what streets did and exploring.
Then we headed out onto the highways again. I wanted to put my toes in the ocean, just to say I had, so we headed for the coast. We were going to take a very direct way there, but instead hit Sunset Blvd because it goes all the way to the coast. So we drove down Sunset and saw a bunch of stuff. It's kind of like Santa Monica Blvd, but I think there's more. We drove through Beverly Hills again and saw the Beverly Hills Hotel :) And then we drove through Bel Air !! Whoo hoo! Fresh Prince! hehe.. Then we drove through Brentwood, which as Wendy informed me, is where OJ lived. tsk tsk.
We hit the Pacific Coast Highway and went South to Venice Beach. It was sooo cold !! The atmosphere, not the water! It must have been like 75 with no sun and a breeze. We had lunch at this little Mexican food restaurant, it was really yummy!! We walked to the beach and saw the muscle men, and I stuck my toes in the cold water for all of two seconds! It was just too cold ... We left Venice and went back to Pasadena .. I think. .. What did we do after that.. ? OH!
Yeah.. We headed back to Pasadena because that afternoon, we were going to see Wendy's apartment!! So we went and met Irwin, her floor director at the bookstore and walked to the community where she would be living. It's called Koinonia, which I absolutely love because I love the idea of Koinonia and everything it stands for. Yay! So we walked around the community and found out where the laundry facilities and everything is and then went upstairs to see her place! Wow.. can we say small? It's wow, small. But I think it's totally liveable for one person. Her bathroom is bigger than mine right now!! But like I said, it is totally do-able for two years.
After that, we went and got ready for Hollywood Blvd!! We were going to meet Lindsay and Aaron and his parents for dinner out in Hollywood. It was fun!! We drove down Hollywood Blvd for quite a while and saw Grauman's Chinese Theater and also the Kodak Theatre where they have done the Oscar's for at least two years now.. It was cool (and dorky) to think that we were walking on the same ground that celebrities have walked on before! We ate at Mel's Diner, a little place off the blvd that serves burgers and all sorts of stuff. I got a BLT with avocado.. so yummy! And it totally hit the spot .. We walked around for a while after dinner, up and down the blvd there are the stars in the sidewalks. You know when you hear about so and so getting their star on Hollywood Boulevard? Well, that's what we saw! There are so many of them!! It was hard to walk and also read the sidewalk at the same time. But fun all the same. And in front of Grauman's are all the concrete slabs with people's handprints and footprints! It was cool - Lindsay saw Shirley Temple's and I saw Tom Cruise's and even R2D2's ! haha.. It was cool.

Thursday:
Wow. Today we were so tired waking up!! But it was all good. We got ready for the day and then checked out of the hotel and got back on the highways! We drove to Burbank, which is not far from Pasadena. Wendy wanted to check it out. We drove down Burbank Blvd, but there was like, nothing there. Bummer! We headed to the airport to return our car and eat. We got the car returned and then ate our most expensive meal of the whole trip... a hot dog, fries and a drink for $9.50 !! Holy mackeral. That's what we get for eating in the airport I guess. We boarded our flight and made it back home!!
It was a great trip and I gotta say I'm so lucky for Wendy letting me go with her!

Be praying for the Cooper family as they follow God's voice to different points of the earth!!