BEACH DAY | B

Finally we got to the walk around the beach! We walked to the very end of the beach and passed some true EF-beefcake-adonis-leaders lying under the sun!

The houses near the beach were A M A Z I N G ! Like from movies! The whole beach being your backyard. Next thing that happened was Oona kinda sinking in the sand. In the end me and Iida a.k.a Lida were laughing around her cause she was knee-deep in the sand. The next very reasonable thing to do  was of course to put your head in water... I mean that´s something we all would do if we got stuck in waterfront right? Well I can say that Oona´s head was not long in the water cause some couple near us shouted "OMG Look!!! 2 sharks in the water!!!!!" We saw the sharks so yeah they were real and we quickly pulled Oona outta the sand. This really belongs to the group "Once in a lifetime experiences". 

CRABS! So many crabs running around the outcrop! Iida wanted to be a part of crab-family and danced a crab dance to those little animals but sadly she wasn´t accepted to live with them under rocks...

After a few minutes me and Oona went to find a pizza place cause why not! Iida was supposed to come with us but she disappeared... probably to dance with crabs. We were feeling lazy and didn´t wear any shoes which was a mistake cause the pavement was like a grill. We walked ages through streets and across a railway and all the time behind a farting man and his son. Getting really into that lunch mood :)))))! We finally arrived to the pizzeria only to notice that it was closed that day. Tears. We walked back to a supermarket we saw on our way to pizzeria and got some cherry coke and something else. Okay Oona bought drinks for me and her cause I was broke.

BLUE ICE CREAM FINALLY! I mean a holiday ain´t no holiday without blue ice cream! And that is what I bought. The shop clerk refused to understand what I mean´t when I said "2 balls of blue ice cream" so I gave her no tip. We walked happily back to beach again after the farting man eating blue ice cream and drinking kerry. While we were entering the beach area we talked in Finnish about how weird and disgusting that fating man was. Then suddenly some guy stops as and asks what language we are speaking and says that it sounds really beautiful. It was hard not laugh I mean the subject that we talked about couldn´t be described with a word "beautiful".

We also invented some code names to French people like "Aurinkokuningas - apparently Mandarin king in English, Pärre/Pertsa and Jartsa.

BEACH DAY | A

"let's go to the beach each let's go get away" 

Today we headed towards Carpinteria beach! The weather was perfect! Everybody´s mood was perfect! Bus drivers were happy! Seemed like an amazing day-to-be! And I can tell you now that nothing bad or catastrophical (?) happened it really was a perfect day!

When we arrived to our destination sun was shining delightfully and I´ll stop trying to act like Dostoyevsky with these adjectives.... Anyway those who had booked a surfing lesson started right away and those who hadn´t done that just spread around the beach to sunbath or something.

I was carrying a huge red cooler-box with me which had mine and Pierre´s lunch inside. For some reason I was carrying the box all the time during the school day and after it... Pierre where was your sense of responsibility of our lunch ???? Oh now I remember! It was when the lunch suddenly disappeared somewhere... But I´ve almost forgotten that!

I wanted to go wander around the beach but people didn´t want to get their lazy asses up from that hot sand so I waited for ages for Oona to arrive from photo-shooting of one certain ´Tyylilyyli´ and after that and the surfing lesson

Eating Wrong

Okay so in the afternoon we went to eat out in a Mexican restaurant! The daughter of my HF, Lily, had came back from Australia and we celebrated her homecoming.

I was pleased as Punch when I heard that we were about to go to a restaurant ´cause I had been hungry the whole day. Okay I´m sorry! Nobody says ´pleased as Punch´ I just found it and had to use it!!! Anyways I was happy.

The only problem was that it was my first time in a Mexican restaurant (don´t judge me now!) and I had no idea what o order... I desperately tried to google the names of the foods so I could see how they look like and at the same time I really ried to hide that I had o idea what Im doing.. It didn´t work so I let Josh, my host brother, to order for me.

The problem number dos! Once I got the delicious looking meal in front of me I didn´t know how to eat it. I know I know! I´m hopeless! The result was a mess that I tried so hard to control! And the the portions were so huge that it is hard to eat everything no matter how hungry you are!

In the evening we tested the swimming pool! it is smply awesome with the waterfall and hot tub and lights with different colors.

Swedes everywhere -.-

Chill Day | kaksi

I was right.
The walk was not short. But getting inside the air-conditioned Teen Center was surely great! But there wasn´t much to do inside... I mean there were computer games and games like billiard and a basketball court... But I didn´t really feel like doing sports that day (hah! Like I´d ever feel like that! Bullshit!). So as creative Finns we made an escape plan! Though the success wasn´t nearly as good as in Brighton. The fact is that we were hungry and A) I didn´t want to eat some healthy cornbars and B) I had no coins left to buy them (no I wasn´t broke yet... Got only paper-money left).

Our plan was this:
1. Ask Antti if we can go for a walk to the park and get the permission to do that
2. escape through the bushes to nearest Starbucks a.k.a "Tähtidollari" in our code language
3. get back quickly and nobody would notice anything

Fly Fan in Swedish:  FUCKING ESCAPE !

I don´t even know how we thought we actually could just quickly drop by a Starbucks and get back without anybody suspecting anything! I mean this was no Europe! You don´t just quickly drop by something without a car.

Anyways we got out the Teen C Carol (the US leader) just arrived to the parking area while we were walking out the place where we were supposed to be playing games and being social. She was shocked and we had a little chat but we got to park and sat there and watched ducks swimming in a pond. After we decided to stay in a park even though I was complaining my hunger all the time.. Sorry about that. 

dream car <3

enter without any1 suspecting but then....

Our hostparents came to pic us up from teen-center and already a lot of  people had been picked up. I was chatting wit Sini inside who wasn´t sure whether her hostmum had come or not. I was already wondering when my hostmum is gonna come and then somebody came to say to me I guess Pierre or Sini or some member of staff like "Your host mum has been sitting outside the building in the car about 20 minutes :)!"

Chill Day

The day was good but it started badly. I found myself standing outside the classroom with the teacher because apparently he suddenly felt that I wasn´t respecting him and his work and apparently I was the only one not respecting him. I actually liked and respected him BEFORE he "wanted to have a word with me in privet". I admit that I was talking during the class but I can only blame the teachers for that. They were talking all the time during the class and we didn´t get to say much anything compared to the amount of their speech producing. I was so pissed but stayed calm. But inside I was transforming into Maleficent or something.

Anyway enough of that. There must be bad things on a good trip too! I mean nobody believes a story about a complete paradise. After school our plan was to go to Thousand Oaks Teen Center.  It sounded really cool until I realized we were going to walk there. From the first day in the States I remembered that a "short walk" was everything else except a short walk.  To be continued....

LACitytour | five

"And in a pipe she flies to the Motherland
Or sells love to another man
It's too cold outside
For angels to fly
Angels to fly" 
-Ed Sheeran

Angels Fly was our next destination (not really I´ve just completely messed the order). If I remember right it was almost right opposite the Grand Market. Angels Fly is the world´s shortest railway in the world. It´s kinda weird cause it goes uphill. It wasn´t in use that moment so  we had to walk the stairs. There we met our  always happy leader Antti who possibly had already visited nearest Starbucks.

LACitytour | four

After our interesting trip to COLA we headed towards a market place which was marked on our map. Okay I´m not completely sure if we actually did everything in this very order but anyways that´s not the point.

It was actually pretty hard to find the market place but then we realized to follow the guide signs  and found the place. Now imagine the stereotypical Asian marketplace where you will most likely be robbed. It looked just like that!

The Grand Central market was located indoors and it was basically a huge room with a lot of people selling food and other things under big colorful neon-lighted signs. People were crowded on small aisles pushing each other out of their way while trying to make sure that their recently-bought blackberries (nope not the phones) won´t get squeezed.

Talking about blackberries! Me, Oona and Iida bought some of them from some old man/woman (can´t remember). At first we were thinking  that how hygienic the berries would be and would we be sick the entire trip after eating those berries... But you know, these are one of those YOLO moments so we ate the berries which tasted delicious and didn´t get sick at all.. At least I didn´t.

LAcitytour | three

After Disney Concert Hall we headed towards the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Pretty long name huh? That´s why I´m just gonna shorten it into ´COLA´ and pray for forgiveness for making up such an unholy nickname... MOVING ON NOW!

Most of us will think about a large, old, monumental building with high towers and beautiful ornaments when talking about a cathedral, and well that was something I was trying to find. Thank God (badam tsss) we had the map because even though we were literally standing next to the COLA´s back wall we didn´t recognize it. Seriously we were so close that we were actually able to touch the COLA. We  almost started to cross some bridge so we could find what we were looking for but then after having a few doubts we took the first turning to left and walked downwards the street.

And that was when we saw the cathedral! It just looked completely different that I had imagined. it was really modern... no towers were seen but it still impressed me. We had a small conversation if we should go in or not but eventually we found ourselves inside sitting on one bench and listening to cantor who was playing the organs... It made me feel a kinda good person for a while. Me Oona and Iida also dipped our fingers into the Holy Water and made the cross signs. The water burned none of us so I gotta say that there ain´t  no sinners in my squad!

After the visit in COLA we had a picnic in the church´s park which was located next to the COLA´s parking hall... guess Our Lady was a kinda car-geek. There were all kind´s animal statues in the park... a statue of a lion, snake, fish, zebra or smthng and so on. We sat on a bench and started to unpack our lunch... Then one particular statue, a fine piece of art, got our full attention. It was right in front of us and I guess it was supposed to be a beehive with bees walking on it. To us it looked like a huge pile of crap with flies all around of it. Holy shit indeed!! Otherwise the picnic was nice... eating our sandwiches and wondering who left the pile of shite in front of us. I guess you can say that this  is one of those ´Once In a Lifetime´ -experiences.

-Take Me to Church - Hozier

LAcitytour | two

random homes in LA

After getting out of the parking hall and finding our way to Iida we decided to follow the map and find these sights marked on it.

We were´t really sure about where we should head and cause we didn´t want to follow the others we turned to wrong direction a couple of times. Iida´s faith for mine and Oona´s map reading skills began to falter and at one point she announced that she´ll leave us and go follow the others. Luckily the traffic lights were red so Oona had time to think where we had to go and Iida happily followed us.

The first thing on our list was the Walt Disney Concert Hall. It was a hot day and we had to walk uphill so once we saw the building we really wanted to go inside where it was a lot fresher. Of course we would have went inside anyway! I mean it must have been really finely designed from the inside by the astounding architecture of the exterior. Well what we saw inside was a kinda cramped hall with an empty front desk. Maybe the biggest disappointment of the LA city tour cause I waited to see a bit more...

Okay I remembered that the uphill climb was bigger

And this is what we saw :)

Finally there!!! 

PS. If u travel with EF once you´ll
always recognize the pink color
wherever you go!
Spotted this in Barcelona

LAcitytour | one

El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula, The Big Orange, La-La Land, Shaky Town, The City of Angles

All these names for only one city. The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels - LA!

Anyways let´s get on with this... Today was the day for LA City Tour. At first we were driven near Stables Center. Some American women´s soccer team had won some big championship and people were celebrating there. I didn´t really get why we went there cause we didn´t go inside the center. We just chilled outside and watched people lame-partying. All free cokes were already given away which was disappointing. 

The next stop was a hotel. When we got off the buss the leaders gave us maps printed from GoogleMaps (imagine the quality)  and we were told to walk from the place A to place B. There were certain sights on the way that were were supposed to visit and check out like Walt Disney Concert Hall and catholic cathedral: Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. We could have walked with the leaders but you know it´s more fun to walk with ur friends. Oona and Iida were my sightseeing buddies. In the beginning of that walk we were like a huge group of tourists.... which we technically were (?????). Anyway me and Oona didn´t want to walk in a huge herd of EF students so we tried our best to lag... to fall behind. There was this old man in a wheelchair who desperately tried to get in the buss and we stopped to help him.Well actually it was Oona who helped to push the wheelchair into the buss. Unbelievable that everybody, including the leaders, just walked past him and didn´t help. But we still weren´t enough left behind.

That´s why when we saw a quite long escalator going up to somewhere I decided that I want to try it. Oona came with me but Iida stayed on the pavement and looked us like "Are you fucking serious now?!". When we came to the other end of that escalator we realized that we would have to walk down (I know horrible right?) So that´s why we went to a random elevator and tried to get down with it... Instead of getting back to Iida we found ourselves from a parking hall. And up we went again deciding to walk back ´cause Parking Halls are scary and we didn´t want to get lost.  

Disneyland III

This post is gonna tell you how the wonderful day in Disneyland ended not so wonderfully.

It started to get dark and we were already a bit tired and some of the rides were already closing because it was late. We were advised to get these pineapple soft-ice creams and when we finally found the place where they sell this so-called amazing ice cream, it was obvious that a few other people had also found it.  The queue was  huge!  Eventually after ages of waiting this delicacy it was our (us = me, Sini, Siiri and Amanda) turn to order. I guess all of us ordered that soft ice in a way that it´s floating in pineapple juice cause it looked cool. Now was the time to taste it! I have a perfect word to describe the experience: DISAPPOINTMENT. I like pineapple nut that was seriously too pineapple-ish. I guess people praise that painapple ice cream only because it´s horribly high price.


And that´s enough talking about ice creams! Moving on to lunch (I´m not telling this in a chronological order so u just gotta suffer... sorry not sorry.)! As people tend to do we got hungry as the time passed. We had to find something to eat and quite quickly we found this food bar (?) near Indiana Jones ride. Me and Sini chose to take chicken skewers! I was excited cause the smell was good and I really needed to eat. I made my order and they quickly gave me my coke and the skewer. It´s a shame that I hadn´t yet bought eyeglasses because now was the time when I really would have needed them. That freaking "skewer" was only about 6 inches long! Yess I have heard about economic depression and cuts but how am I supposed the get full from that... I mean there was more coke (which sadly wasn´t cherry a.k.a kerry coke) than actual food. Well we only laughed about this whole thing and in fact they tasted great.

Now it was really dark. You´ve probably heard that parades in Disneyland are amazing. Well I don´t know about the parades during the day but the parade I saw in the evening was amazing! All the bright lights and just wow! The famous firework show was about to start and the Disneyland crew was guiding people to walk closer to the center of the park so after the fireworks they would be able to get everyone out. Of course we didn´t want to follow their orders so we went to a shop and walked where we wanted through shops. I bought a Mickey Mouse necklace for my sis from one of the shops. I hate buying souvenirs.

AND NOW IT WAS TIME FOR THE FIREWORK SHOW!!!!!! Each one of the visitors were gathered around the central something in front of this castle. We waited and waited. And waited. The we heard this announcement: "Due to technical problems the firework spectacle is cancelled." Our reaction was that it must be a joke.. Like of course and soon it would start. But no... It really was cancelled. I was pissed off. And that led to a situation where I ended up angrily and very slowly eating a chocolate muffin and drinking kerry outside the school buss on a parking area. Now you are wondering why the hell I didn´t go inside the bus. Well, my loves, I was there at first until I was told to go outside or stop eating cause it was prohibited in our buss. All other drivers allowed it but not ours. So I was like "OK then. You won´t go anywhere until I´ve eaten this muffin and drank all my coke. Just to remind you I ate only that tiny skewer and painapple ice cream.

All in all the trip was amazing though and you should definitely go there!

DISNEYLAND II -rides

So now I´m gonna tell something about the other rides I rode! And I gotta add here that if you are thinking whether you should pay for this trip or not just pay! I don´t know how much this trip is gonna cost after this year but at least my trip was worth it (only with a little exception but I´m gonna talk about it later)

Mickey Mouse -roller coaster! Okay it´s not really called a Mickey Mouse roller-coaster but its located near a huge Ferris wheel with Mickey´s head. It  was one of the first rides we did and I really loved it! It went quite fast and had this kind of frill where you go upside down for a while. We had to wait quite long in the queue and it wasn´t fun. It was really hot day and some crazy/scary girl wearing a cap with Mickey Mouse ears was looking at me all the time (Not talking about Sini here). Oh and now I think I remembered the name of that ride!! I think it was called Paradise Pier.

After that we went to a shop and Sini and Amanda bought the same kinds of hats which that scary queue-girl had. Sini demanded that next we should ride this chain-carousel kind of thing (ketjukaruselli?????) It didn´t go really fast and was probably meant for small(er) kids than us but we gave up to Sini and queued for that carousel. But little did we know how fierce it actually was! You see after a while going around Sini´s new fabulous Mickey -cap was caught by a gust! It flew near the fake lake and we had to climb over fences to get it back! That´s what you get for forcing your friends to kids ride Sini!! Naaah not really it was ok and we got a good reason to laugh at Sini :)

We rode a Starwars ride, which was similar to the ´Linnunrata´ ride in Linnanmäki, and Buzz Lightyear ride where you were supposed to shoot targets with toy lazer guns. There was obviously something wrong with my gun as I got the least points! One of those really cool rides was Indiana Jones -ride! The queue went through a jungle camp and a entered an ancient temple. The decor of that place was fantastic! The ride itself was a bit scary tho... I mean I wasn´t like scared but well it´s hard to explain. The most scariest thing was when the car suddenly stopped and the place looked like dead end. And suddenly you notice this huge round rock rolling towards you! It was so cool!!!!

It started to get late and eventually because of that dark. That´s why we decided to visit the Haunted Mansion.The queue was really long and we weren´t able to get fastpasses there so we just had to wait. Finally we got inside and waited there about 5 minutes. Then we got to another room where we waited for at least the same 5 minutes. Then we were told that due some technical problems the haunted mansion was closed and we had to  leave... You can imagine that we weren´t really happy. The only thing we got to see inside the house wasn´t even scary! It was this gay couple dancing in one corner... Awwwws. Most likely the scariest thing there was me. You see I noticed a  big chandelier hanging from ceiling and started singing "IIIIII wanna swiiing from the chandelieeer, from the chandelieeer!" Oh God I guess everyone who reads this is getting a really weird image of me.

-Chandelier - Sia

DISNEYLAND I

One of the extra curricular activities was a trip to Disneyland and California Adventure park.I was really hoping that we would go there with coaches but instead of that we found ourselves sitting in those yellow school buses... Don´t get me wrong now! They are really awesome but if you have sat there every morning for now about 1.5 weeks you slowly start to realize that those buses are not the leaders of travel facilities!

Anyway those who had paid for that trip (´bout $200) were soon sitting in the bus on the way to our destination. We were really excited to see the place and especially the famous firework show!! I was absolutely jazzed up when I saw these "Disneyland 60 years" adverts while driving through the gates... Wait nobody says like that.... let´s just strike through that: jazzed up. Anyway you got the point I think! The 60th birthday of Disneyland, California.

We were told to go always to right when we we walking from the parking area to cars that drove us inside the park. Me, Sini, Siiri and Amanda were a group. Or well there weren´t actually any formal groups... We just moved together. The only thing we had to remember was the "Buddy Buddy rule". Which means that you can´t move alone and if you see somebody walking alone you have to take them with you. And when I say ´somebody´ I mean someone familiar of course.

We chose to go first in the California Adventure park -area because it seemed like all the others chose Disneyland -area first. I don´t  really remember anymore which rides were at Disneyland´s side and which of them were at Cali Advntr. side of the park but anyway all the rides we rode were AMAZING tho I didn´t go to SixFlags Magic Mountain so I can´t compare it to Disneyland. We were able to get fast passes over the queues when we showed the code in our tickets to this machine. It was really great but you could use them only after certain amount of time had passed after the last time you used the fast pass. For example if I used it with one ride I was able to get another fast pass again lets say after 20 minutes.

There were several cool rides I really enjoyed! You just can´t experience things like them in Linnanmäki amusement park, Helsinki. One of my absolute favorites was a "Californian landscape ride". it was a huge 4D experience. You were lifted up a few meters while sitting in your seat in rows of 5. Basically the idea of that ride was that you felt like flying  over California. First you were above the clouds and and then suddenly you can see the Golden Gate Bridge. It was so amazing! There were also added some scents in that experience. For example when flying over a forest the smell of fresh wood and rain  was spread all around. It was so cool!